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www.postmagazine.com 27 POST MAY 2018 DP/COLORIST RELATIONSHIP hen cinematographers and colorists meet in the color suite, their respective talents fuse to bring a project's ultimate creative vision to fruition. Working together, they enhance and extend what's been captured in camera to give film and TV audiences a look at worlds beyond their own, whether it's prospecting in another galaxy, growing up in sunny Florida, spending an awkward weekend in the Catskills, being a unique telenovela heroine or living the life of America's favorite sitcom family. ANDREA CHLEBAK/ZEEK EARL — PROSPECT "For me, color is the most fun phase of post production," says DP Zeek Earl, who shot and, with Chris Caldwell, co-wrote and co-directed the sci-fi feature film, Prospect. "Editing can be intense and stressful, but color makes things look beautiful and supports the story by polishing the images. Color is kind of my happy place." Based in Seattle, Earl and Caldwell have been working on their "passion project," for a num- ber of years. Prospect debuted as a Kickstarter short, then the duo developed it into their first feature. Prospect finds a girl and her father prospecting on a resource-rich, green moon in another galaxy, an outpost that has an Old West feel to it from its remoteness to its vil- lains. The film premiered at SxSW, where it re- ceived stellar reviews, and heads to the Seattle International Film Festival this month. Earl opted to do post in Vancouver and spoke to "a lot of people" before deciding to partner with supervising colorist Andrea Chlebak at Umedia (www.umedia.eu). "I really clicked with Andrea. She understood the vision I was going for, and it worked out great," he says. "I've done color for commercials and shorts but this was the first time I worked in a DI theater." Chlebak notes that, "The DI used to be an unknown [process]. In my first years as a colorist, DPs were not always available or invited to the final grade. Now, 90 percent or more are thrilled to come into the suite and finish their work." Earl uniquely wore both DP and director hats for Prospect. "That's not a common experience," she says. "But he could switch between two mindsets marveling at the color on the big screen and focusing intently on the story." Chlebak was especially qualified to grade Prospect since she had previously supervised the grade for Elysium and other films in the genre. Prospect stood out for her, however, for creating a sci-fi world that "almost has the tone of a western." Even before Earl decided to work with Chlebak, he sent some images "to see what I would do on my own," she recalls. "I sent back a variety of looks. From that first set, Zeek gravitated toward two of my approaches in- spired heavily by specific film print looks, one which leaned more heavily on warmer tones and was more naturalistic, which we dubbed the 'Kodak print' look, and the 'Fuji' look, which emphasized blue and was somewhat alien looking. After a bit of play, we narrowed in on the 'Kodak film look,' and I began pulling images for inspiration: The Coen brothers' True Grit, Solaris and old NASA images." Earl shot Prospect in the rainforest of Oregon's Olympic Peninsula using Red Weapon 6K and Helium 8K cameras. "I had very basic LUTs to gauge the image on set, otherwise all the color was done in the theater," he says. "The location has a very distinctive color palette. There's quite a lot of moss with a spectrum of yellow, which I wanted to push further. I wanted to find subtle ways to make the natural and organic look alien and otherworldly. It was important for me to create a world that was uniform on a textural level and immersive and stylized in W Color for Prospect was completed at Umedia in Vancouver. Colorist Andrea Chlebak