Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/915639
www.postmagazine.com 15 POST DECEMBER 2017 COLOR GRADING color temperatures. From a narrative viewpoint, upstairs was the palace and the war rooms. We spent a lot of time in the war rooms, with smoke, so to go with a classic 'sepia' look would actually detract from all of that." Doyle says the idea was to try to make it look "as visceral as possible, but really catch the feel of the time." The film's exteriors would be blacked out from soot and camouflage. "That all lends itself to building a color palette that really zeros in on the particular colors that would have been there at that period of time," he explains. "The fabrics would be wool. Joe and the costume designer had specific ideas for the greens and pinks. Winston's smoking jacket, and dressing gowns, were a very intense pink, so the idea was to go through and play on colors, but also reinforce that 'war time feeling' of everything being quite dark." Characters' skin tones were also af- fected by the color treatment. "The skin tones were of utmost importance, and play up the fact that in war time, people wouldn't be that healthy," notes Doyle. "When he is de- livering speeches and is quite agitated, there's a lot of blood and fired up skin tones, and very intense eyes. It's a subtle thing, but to try to enhance that, I think, adds enormous value to the experience of watching the film." At Technicolor's London location, Doyle operates a suite that centers around a FilmLight Baselight system, a custom interface and keyboard, and proprietary Technicolor color science. "We try to reproduce the theatrical ex- perience so that what we see in the room would be a true and accurate represen- tation of what is out there in the com- mercial cinemas," he explains. "We work at 2K, rather than 4K, because 2K still represents at least 80 percent of theatri- cal distribution chain that is out there." Darkest Hour would see a range of distribution mediums, so Doyle says he created "a classic Rec. 709 pass, an HDR 1000 Rec. 2020 pass, a Xenon 14-foot lambert 2D pass, and a Dolby Laser PQ pass." For monitoring, he drew upon a range of display devices, including a Sony's BVM-X300 for the HDR grade, a Christie Xenon 2K DCI-compliant projector for the Xenon grade, and a Dolby laser pro- jector for the Dolby Laser release. Beyond the initial discussions and dai- lies, Doyle says he spent between three and four weeks on the final color grade and approximately two weeks making sure it worked across the different distri- bution formats. Darkest Hour opened in theaters, initially, with a limited release on November 22 nd . The film was shot on Arri Alexas. Doyle completed the color grade on a FilmLight Baselight system.