What was the color grading workflow on IT: Welcome to Derry?
(FotoKem Senior Colorist) Dave Cole was the Supervising Colorist and created the show LUT, which is how we built the show color-wise. Dave had worked previously with Director of Photography Daniel Vilar, who’s the main DP on the show, and who brought the show to Dave. But as it went, Dave got a little bit busy so I took over color grading. Dave was supposed to do episode one initially, but episode one wasn’t ready – they were reworking the edit – so he ended up doing episode two.
So episode two is where the show’s creatives came in and set the look. And it went great. Obviously, Dave’s an outstanding colorist and my hero at the moment, so working with him has been just the best for me. And then taking over the show and just working it with the creatives going forward. That’s how that worked out. So we had the show LUT and I colored underneath that.
And the LUT has a lot of characteristics on it. Like there are certain hues that go a certain direction, for example, maybe the yellows aren’t like primary-color yellow. They’re going to have a little bit of another hue change to it. So all these little like things that Dave has put into the LUT: that’s my basis. That’s what I start out with. From there we add different levels of contrast, of saturation, we cool things down, we warm them up—all just based on the emotion of what’s happening. So that’s where the actual fun part of the color grading takes place.
How was it working with the creatives while color grading Derry?
BORREGO: The creatives let me do my thing, and then we would come in and review it, and if we needed to make adjustments, we would. Director Andy Muschietti would come in and sit with me and he would think of things like, for instance (paraphrasing), “Okay, so this character has been underground in the sewers for a while. There’s no way he’d be saturated and warm. Can you put a power window around his face and desaturate him? If you can’t do it, we can get our VFX guys to do it, but just see if you can handle this.”
And so that’s exactly what I did. I constructed a mask, qualified his face, and took all the color out. Like a zombie. Then we’d adjust from there. He wanted it to stand out because this character, when he makes his reappearance, we haven’t seen him for a while. In fact, we think he’s dead. So when he finally shows up having that feeling like, “Oh my God, he looks bad!” you know, like that’s one of the things that we do.
For my initial pass, I get like X amount of hours, depending on what the material is, and we have an offline reference. I look at that and do my pass, looking at that reference to see what the DP shot and see what he was intending and say, “Okay, so this scene should be a little warmer, because they’re outside and it’s a happy moment.” So I’m not going to cool it off. I’m going to continue the vibe. And I do that throughout, then the creatives come in and watch it and then we make changes from there.
Mostly for me, I’m trying to keep everything moving. Movement is essential in these color grading sessions. If we’re doing a power window and it doesn’t track as well as I like and needs a lot of keyframing, I would always say like, “We’ll stick a pin in this, and I’ll come back.” And then I’ll do it afterwards” For example, you and I are talking right now and you’re not moving a whole lot. So the power window will track. Resolve is amazing and it does a really good job at it. If there’s too much movement the tracking does fall apart a bit so I have to hand track and start keyframing. So there were a couple of shots: (snaps fingers) It went right through. Easy.
But other shots you could burn 20, 30 minutes on. And we had so much to get through, so I would take care of those after the session so I didn’t burn up all the creatives’ time. Because you got to keep the rhythm going. If you hit a roadblock in these sessions, it’s just not good. Everybody’s having fun: we’re laughing, we’re enjoying what’s happening… If we slow down for a shot that’s going to take about 30 minutes, it just kills the vibe. But it happens sometimes. And sometimes I know we actually need to get this out tonight. So we go ahead and work on it. So it’s like, okay, at that point, then you got to do it.
What were some of the color grading challenges on Derry?
BORREGO: Sometimes VFX needs some adjusting or we’re looking for things like, “Oh, there’s maybe some problems with this particular VFX. It’s not working.” And then the VFX supervisor, Daryl Sawchuk, he was in every session and he’s in there taking notes and making adjustments, calling his team and saying, “Hey, we need to have this or that done. Can you get us revisions?” And for power windows, that’s basically a lot of keyframing and a lot of animation.
Then there are always the artistic questions to work through like: How dark should something be before you can’t see it? How bright should a monster‘s face be when they’re running through the woods? Those are the kinds of questions that we’re all asking ourselves in the room.
Were there any eureka moments during your color grading sessions for Derry?
BORREGO: Just working with Dave is a learning experience. It’s like a master class in its own. You know, having him look at my work and say, “This looks good. I would adjust this,” or any notes that he gives me—it’s immediate feedback. It’s pretty nice. And he lets you know when you’re doing something right.
Every job I learn. So this has been a fun one for me because this town Derry where it’s based in, it’s so idyllic, it’s set in Maine, you know, they’ve got really pretty wide shots, and you get a vibe of “that’s a really great place to live.” But obviously there’s an entity there and it can’t leave. And you find out why in the show. And then you start to really feel like there’s sinister undertones. So I ask “how can I use that in color grading?” That’s something that was on my mind.
I had watched a few episodes as far as the offline reference so I knew where we were going to go, but the creatives did say, (paraphrasing) “You know, the first episode of one and two especially, we want it to look nice, feel nice visually, make it look nice and warm.” And that’s what we did. As things progressed, we did start changing the tone.
So that’s a really, really fun thing for me to be like, oh, we started here. Now things have gotten really crazy. Let’s take the color somewhere crazy. Now we’re in the sewers at some point. So how do you make that look? So that was a lot of fun to watch the arc of color. And I was actually looking at my stills and I started realizing they hit almost everything on the palette. There’s gold scenes, there’s full red scenes, there’s blue night scenes– like full blue. I’m like, man, they went everywhere. Even green. Like, we went to all these different places that most shows traditionally don’t go well. With horror, you get to be pretty wild. So they let me get there. Very, very cool experience.
Be sure to check out IT: Welcome To Derry on HBO Max.
