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September 2017

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www.postmagazine.com 14 POST SEPTEMBER 2017 wanted sort of grittier color tones to the overall color palette," she explains. "Our DP Christian Sprenger, who is amazing, did a really great job between what he shot on-set and in color, and staying true to that." Glazier points out that there are many parts of LA that still haven't changed all that much since the '80s, so the production's location department did a terrific job at finding just the right areas that could "sell the '80s." There was some post work required to remove time-inappropriate cars (that didn't belong in an '80s setting) or more modern streetlights, signage, etc., but she says it was min- imal. "For the most part, a lot of what we had was all practical. It always feels more genuine, when it's the real thing, as opposed to trying to put some- thing back in that's CG." Surprisingly, considering when the show takes place, it was not shot on film. Rather, the series was shot 2:1 on Red Weapon Dragon cameras in 6K. "You know, that was a creative conversation that our creators and DP had early on — how dirty do we want the show to look? They didn't really want it to look as though it were shot in 1985 by any means, in the sense of it being 4x3 or having the grittiness of actual film dirt," Glazier explains. "Instead, they wanted it to look like a current television show, just kind of gain that grittiness, just with a color palette and in other ways as opposed to really making it feel like it was pro- duced and shot in 1985." She also points out that DP Sprenger "really wanted to use that camera. I think he felt that between shooting and then in the post process, he'd really be able to get all the color information he wanted there." Once in post, GLOW was cut on an Avid by editors Tanya M. Swerling and Tyler L. Cook (with the pilot cut by Bill Turro), while color grading was completed by Light Iron's Iain Vertovec on a Rio system from Snell Advanced Media (SAM). There, Vertovec used a 4000-nit Dolby Pulsar ref- erence monitor for HDR mastering. Light Iron also handled the show's dailies. "We pretty much had a traditional workflow," Glazier says. "We shot about 30 minutes away from Light Iron, who would process our dailies, so the next morning, editorial would get them and we'd go through the process. It was all very old school." Glazier points out that one big difference be- tween working on a streaming series, compared to a network show, is that, "when you're on a network show, you don't have that luxury of time because you're shooting and airing all at the same time and producers really have to split their time. Here, we were fortunate that our schedule allowed our producers to spend their time on-set and focus on that until production was completed, and then they could go into post and power through all the episodes as soon as shooting completed." Overall, Glazier feels that for a first season, the production and post on GLOW "was really smooth. It was a really good team effort. If there was anything that was foreseen that could be an issue down the road, we talked about it early on in production meetings, pre-production meetings and had plans set up. So, I feel like at the end of the day, there were very little surprises once ev- erything came around to post, which is huge. It was a wonderful experience." THE HANDMAID'S TALE The Handmaid's Tale, now streaming on Hulu, is one of the year's most acclaimed new shows with 13 Emmy nominations, including cinema- tography, directing, acting and more. Based on author Margaret Atwood's award-winning, best-selling novel, The Handmaid's Tale is the story of life in the dystopian Gilead, a totalitarian society in what was formerly part of the United States. Facing environmental disasters and a plunging birth rate, Gilead is ruled by a twisted fundamentalist regime that treats women as property of the state. As one of the few remain- ing fertile women, Offred (Elisabeth Moss) is a handmaid in the Commander's (Joseph Fiennes) household, one of the caste of women forced into sexual servitude as a last desperate attempt to repopulate a devastated world. The story is both haunting and mesmerizing, as audiences watch Offred navigate her way through one terrifying situation after another. In creating the look for the series, director Reed Morano (Episodes 1 through 3), a cinema- tographer herself, worked closely with DP Colin Watkinson (who received an Emmy nomination for "Outstanding Cinematography" for his work on the show's pilot episode) and on-set grader Ben Whaley. Deluxe Toronto colorist Bill Ferwerda then worked closely with the team to maintain the subtle layers of color throughout the rest of the series and accentuate when possible. Here, the color choices were especially sig- nificant, since reds and blues played heavily in Atwood's novel as the women were reduced to color assignments, based on the importance of their roles in society. The color red, for instance, was assigned to the handmaids, while blue was the color given to the commanders' wives. "Early on, we had a lot of discussions about colors — what colors we were going to use and what would be complimentary colors," says Watkinson. "Red was a really good starting point, the handmaids' dresses, and then we were looking at the blues that would go with that. The col- or red needed to stand out and be significant. Everything in the production design from the col- or of the houses to the specific peacock blue of the wives' wardrobe was selected really carefully. As we were doing that, everyone else started get- ting involved — wardrobe, production design — so everyone was working from the same palette. We also knew what sort of lighting we wanted, and compositionally what we wanted to do. We knew gradewise, we were going to be aggressive. We just didn't quite know how aggressive. The first day, I think we did our on-set grades, which had Reds and blues are significant colors in The Handmaid's Tale. The Handmaid's Tale is shot in 4K using Arri Alexas; DP Colin Watkinson with Moss (top right).

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