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www.postmagazine.com 14 POST OCTOBER 2017 INDIES ased on the novel by Brian Selznick, who penned the book behind the Academy Award- winning Hugo, Wonderstruck tells the story of two children, Ben and Rose, living in different times — 1927 and 1977 — and different places — Hollywood and New York City. The 1927 portion of the film is presented as a black-and-white silent movie. Todd Haynes directed the film, which was shot in Peekskill, NY by Edward Lachman, ASC. Wonderstruck garnered a three-minute standing ova- tion when it premiered at Cannes last spring and is scheduled for a limited US release this month by Amazon Studios and Roadside Attractions. New York's Harbor Picture Company (harborpicture- company.com) oversaw the film's entire post workflow and process — grad- ing and creat- ing dailies for editorial, renting and supporting the edit systems and managing the final 4K DI and sound mix. Lachman shot most of the feature on 35mm; with the 1970s sequences set in the Museum of Natural History shot on Arri Alexa cameras. At the time, there were no labs on the East Coast to process film (Kodak Film Laboratories has subsequently opened in Long Island City, Queens). So at the end of every shoot day, the negative was black bagged and shipped to FotoKem in LA in a bi-coastal workflow that lagged only about a day behind production. FotoKem used Spirit to scan the processed negative to Avid DNx 175 MXF files and sent them back to Harbor via a secure, private network for dailies grading, audio sync, metadata manage- ment and the creation of Avid DNx files for the editorial team working on site. It was critical for editorial and FotoKem to maintain a relationship with the keycode on the film through the Avid for the final 4K scan for DI. "Digital filmmakers are used to the instant gratification of seeing every- thing on set now, but Todd and Ed have shot many films on film and were com- fortable with the whole film workflow," reports Joe Gawler, Harbor's senior colorist and partner. Gawler had done early tests with Haynes and Lachman using look books and references to establish the visual identity of the two time periods. Using Colorfront's On-Set Dailies system, col- orist Jamie Payne handled the day shift, color timing the dailies with Lachman. Then Gawler came in to address the DP's notes from the previous day. "Ed was very much involved in coloring dailies," Gawler says. "It was important for his intent to make it into the dailies; he didn't want to have to overcome any temp look later." Affonso Goncalves, Emmy nominated for his work on the True Detective TV series, and his assistant Perri Pivovar cut Wonderstruck on Avid Media Composer. It marked the third feature Goncalves has edited at Harbor. A number of en- vironmental VFX shots were intercut to eliminate period anachronisms, add set extensions and blend in some stop-mo- tion storytelling. After the picture was locked, it moved to Harbor's Blackmagic Design DaVinci Resolve, running on Linux, for the 4K fin- ish with Gawler and editors Chris Farfan and Dylan Ball who did the conform. "We had been so intimately involved with the dailies that we had a solid starting point: We weren't setting looks on day one of the DI," notes Gawler. "We could further refine the color from there." He adds that, "Todd and Ed put so much effort into the costume design, production design and lighting that there were many elements in the frame to play with in dailies. It wasn't all left to the finishing process to come up with a magical look." Nevertheless, Gawler enhanced the saturated and warm yellows, oranges and greens that Lachman used to emphasize young Ben's summer in New York. "We were constantly push- ing toward a warmer palette," he says, a palette that also served as a coun- terpoint to the silent 1920s black-and- white footage. The film's deliverables included an HDR master. "When we know we'll need an HDR master, I usually prefer to start in the larger dynamic range. Then it's easier to build the other masters from that," Gawler says. "But Wonderstruck was going to be screened at Cannes so there was a time crunch for the theatrical master. As I was working on the theatrical master, I'd switch to the 1,000-nit HDR universe to make sure things were still working. Then, once we had the theatrical master, Ed and I sat with the same material and our 1,000- nit Sony display and trimmed the whole film for HDR." Livegrain software proved to be a handy tool for compositing varying amounts of film grain into the digital footage. "It was great for getting the digital and photochemical to match," Gawler says. "It was very true to real film grain." Gawler emphasizes that having the film's post concentrated at Harbor was a huge boost to efficiency and creativity. "The film lived here, under one roof," he says. "It was cut here, the sound mix was done by Drew Kunin on Harbor Grand Stage, Todd had the actors record ADR on our ADR stage, VFX supervisor Louis Morin QC'd the VFX shots projected in 4K in our theater. Throughout the editing process I'd see Todd and Affonso in the kitchen, and we'd talk and bounce ideas off each other. It all made for a nice creative environment." POSTING WONDERSTRUCK B BY CHRISTINE BUNISH FOLLOWING THE WORKFLOW THROUGH NEW YORK'S HARBOR PICTURE COMPANY The 1970's scenes were shot on Alexas in NY's Museum of Natural History. Harbor Picture Company oversaw all the post workflow. Harbor's Joe Gawler was senior colorist.