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WORLD MUSIC www.postmagazine.com 24 POST AUGUST 2015 earlier projects involving live action and VFX, but this was the first to call for animated elements. Music videos are often budget-challenged, but Hallelujah actually had "a very decent budget that enabled us to put together a great team," he says. Still, Raffi helped Norton plan how to "spend money wisely" for the complex production. The director began by editing his sto- ryboards against the music track to get the label and the band's go-ahead for the concept. "We had a good balance of animation and performance shots," says Raffi. "Then our friends at Stratostorm got involved." Previs by Stratostorm, which was dis- tributed to desktops at Nightshift, helped resolve some technical issues, such as how to reverse-engineer the shot of the woman on a turning, twisting beam with- out using cost-prohibitive motion control. "We figured out a way to shoot it with a low-tech jib," Raffi reveals. Norton revised his edit of the story- boards, adding previs elements and a voiceover explaining the action. That cut was sent to the label and band for anoth- er round of reviews. Only after that edit was approved did production begin on an LA soundstage where the principals were shot greenscreen amidst mock ups of the CG environments. "We shot everything in one day with only a couple of takes for each shot," says Raffi. DP Martim Vian used an Arri Alexa to capture the live action; production used a video assist system to create live rough composites on the set. "It was very useful to overlay the takes and do rough positioning and timing so we were sure of getting what we needed," he explains. Norton edited with Adobe Premiere at Nightshift LA and sent his locked cut to Nightshift Paris for color grading by Mathieu Caplanne on Resolve. The col- orist sent the graded clip to Stratostorm (www.stratostorm.com), which did the CG animation with Autodesk 3DS Max, final rendering with Corona, and extensive compositing with The Foundry's Nuke. Mario Pece was the VFX supervisor and CG lead there, with Helena Hilario acting as VFX executive producer. "Half of the music video was CG, so there was a lot of compositing and rotoscoping," says Raffi. "Stratostorm pulled off something amazing." Caplanne did a final color pass in Paris after the animation was complete to grade the performances and action in context with the CG elements. Norton did the conform at Nightshift LA. Working across three continents wasn't a bit daunting for Nightshift. "It's our speciality," Raffi declares. "We do a lot of work with the Brazilian market and were looking for a project to collaborate on with Stratostorm. They do a lot of work in LA and are used to working the American way. Post production is at the heart of everything we do." CINELICIOUS: EL PERDON Nicky Jam and Enrique Iglesias team on the reggaeton song, El Perdon (Forgiveness) whose music video was directed by Jonathan Craven and Darren Craig, and shot in Colombia. It captures the feel of sun-soaked shanty towns by day and the moody, saturated colors of their nightlife. Caitlin Diaz, junior colorist at Cinelicious in Hollywood (www.cineli cious.tv), graded the project. "I was really excited when the video came in — I love reggaeton," says Diaz. "We wanted to highlight the energy and vibrance of Colombia. I went for an overall saturation boost but with a muted, hazy vibe for the daytime shots and more contrast for the night and club shots. I also wanted to use the grade to enhance a few in-camera effects Darren incorporated into the video. I was really happy to see he was experimenting on- set, so I kept true to those effects and adjusted accordingly." The music video was shot on Red Dragon. The directors cut the video with editor Vinnie Hobbs at The Uprising Creative. The locked cut came to Diaz, who worked unsupervised on the initial grade using Resolve Version 11; then Craig and Craven came in separately to tweak a few scenes and VFX shots. "I graded from the Red Raw footage, but they used a LUT in the reference video that established where the look was going," she says. "They had saturat- ed colors throughout, but I had to bring down the vibrancy in the [shanty towns]. I wanted to enhance the spirit and energy of the culture, yet didn't want to push it to an unnatural territory." The night scenes were "dark, vivid and saturated — I wanted to highlight the visual points of interest while crushing the blacks," she continues. "The gelled lights really amplified the tone of the scenes, so I enhanced their vibrancy. I played with the contrast throughout these scenes to create a moody atmosphere — especially the scenes with the lead woman in her apartment and in the warehouse." Resolve's hue and saturation curves "helped adjust the different hue and saturation levels of the dominant col- ors, such as blue and green," she says. Power Windows enabled her to track the performers and "soften the clip in the highlights while making sure the points of interest were visible." Diaz was tasked with matching pick-up shots of Iglesias in the shanty towns to the rest of the video. "The pick ups were shot on a different day and location," she notes. "I created a new LUT to match Nightshift provided post for Panic! at the Disco's Hallelujah video. Post/ VFX producer Raffi is inset.