The Arrival

One of those projects where the music and the energy guides the grade. We all knew exactly what was needed, a high contrast gritty look, the artists and the performance had to look raw and unpolished. In fact it was the story of young musicians grinding and finding their way up the growth ladder.

To add authenticity to the project, the sequences were shot on the location where the studio was being built. We went with minimal lights and spaced them far apart than usual. The sparse and scarce lighting we see in the frames is a direct result of this planned execution.

A new plot was introduced to us when the crew added a digital mixer to the fold. Up until this point we had a noir-like high contrast desaturated picture in mind. I had also made a Show LUT for this using the bleach bypass feature of our RH Filmic Colors DCTL. Now the buttons and the colorful lights of the digital mixer, rythmpad and MIDI device had to be shown in their full glory.

We reworked the LUT using RH Chroma Gate and RH Hue Compressor to dial in the hue angles as the picture required sharp and crisp colors. As we graded skin started to become challenging, this is when the Dye Crosstalk controls of RH Film DRT, helped us selectively push the skin zone organically without breaking the overall look of the image.