Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/87274
Women in Post H By RANDI ALTMAN EDITOR-IN-CHIEF raltman@postmagazine.com Technicolor's Jill Bogdanowicz Born to be a colorist. OLLYWOOD — It would be hard to deny that long-time Technicolor col- orist Jill Bogdanowicz, an art and physics major while attending SUNY Geneseo in upstate New York, was born to do this job. Clint Eastwood's go-to colorist is the daughter of Mitchell Bogdanowicz, a former color scientist who worked at Kodak head- quarters in Rochester. Her grandfather, Mitch- ell, Sr., owned a shop in New York City, retro- fitting cameras for cinematographers, making them, in a sense, hand-held. Oh, and her little sister, Corinne, is an on-staff colorist at Light Iron in Hollywood. See? It's in her blood. With credits that include Hancock, Source Code, Cinema Verite, Ted, Expendables 2 and the current Trouble With the Curve, starring Eastwood, Amy Adams and Justin Timberlake, Bogdanowicz's official career began at then-Kodak-owned Cinesite in LA. While there, her and her father developed a 3D look-up table, which allowed you to see on a projector exactly what you see on film. POST: The film business is definitely some- thing you were well aware of, but how did that lead to being a colorist? JILL BOGDANOWICZ: "For my 18 birth- day my father took me to San Diego to attend a conference. I was in college majoring in arts and physics at the time, and people there said I had the perfect background to be a colorist. At the time, I didn't' even know what that was. "So I went back home, and there was a col- All in the family: Jill (center) flanked by colorist sister Corinne and color scientist dad Mitchell. orist in Rochester who was running R&D in the film department at Kodak. I got an internship and started learning all the equipment. After college, in 1999, I was hired by Cinesite in LA. My very first DI was as the assistant colorist on O Brother Where Art Thou. From there I worked my way up, and Hart's War as my first full film as a colorist. When Cinesite merged with Laser- Pacific, I started looking for other opportunities. I moved to Technicolor in 2005." POST: Back then, female colorists were few and far between, and you were young and female. Did you find it hard to adapt? BOGDANOWICZ: "I had to do my home- work and stay head of the curve because it was so competitive. I was a young female out here and, in general, I felt like I had to prove myself a little bit more — most of the color- 16 Post • October 2012 ists I was learning from were older males. I had to make sure technically that I had all my ducks in the row. I would lean on my father a lot — even now my dad is still very in the loop with technology and color science and look-up tables. I never stopped learning. It's so far in the last 10-12 years." POST: Has the technology changed the way you think as a colorist? BOGDANOWICZ: "The tools now allow me to do a lot more. I used to think more along technical terms, like, 'I can't push it too Bogdanowicz, who works on the DaVinci Resolve, recently finished Trouble With the Curve, starring frequent collaborator Clint Eastwood. kind of how I am now, but not because I still have to prove myself; it's fun learning new technology and tools." POST: The technology has come a long way since you started. Can you talk about how you have evolved with the tools? BOGDANOWICZ: "In the beginning, people were telling me the DI wasn't going to catch on, that no one was going to want to pay for it, and that it would never be streamlined. At the time, we had to hang an original cut negative up on a Spirit and trans- fer at 2fps. It was painful, and a long process. Then new tools and faster disk drives came... and LUTs. The technology grew, and once the studios realized that you can get other deliverables quickly — the film release, digital cinema and home video — without having to start over, that workflow became accept- ed and DI became mainstream. "Early on, the tools weren't as high resolu- tion, and how to work in film color space digi- tally wasn't refined as much — it has to do with how you manipulate the image to make it look filmic vs. digital. Both the craft, from the colorist, the resolution and tools have come www.postmagazine.com far, because the film won't work as well,' or 'I can't add too many layers because it will take too long.' Now, I work on the DaVinci Resolve, and you have an unlimited number of layers, and I can take alpha channel maps from VFX and track things realtime. So how I color can be more intricate now. The tools have evolved to let me become more detailed with my color and do more things like beauty fixes, — getting rid of pimples, or wrinkles, making skin tone even. It's all routine now." POST: What is your relationship with DITs working on-set? BOGDANOWICZ: "Every movie is differ- ent, and I always try to talk to the cinema- tographer and the director about looks since I'm doing DI. If they are going to be doing color on-set, I can supervise dailies and make sure we are all on the same page so when they get to the DI there are no surprises. At the moment that's rare, and only for clients I work with a lot, like Clint Eastwood. In gen- eral, if it's going through the ASC CDL, I'll get those values in, and if it's way far off, I can use continued on page 46