Feature film

Role: Colorist

Synopsis:
A reluctant leader heads up a team of seven Christians intent on smuggling Bibles to underground churches in a future America where the Bible is illegal and danger is around every corner.

Director: Brett Varvel
DP: JJ Bukowski
Colorist: John-Clay Burnett
Release: Fathom Theatrical

Watch the film trailer below and keep scrolling to read the case study!

Watch the Trailer

CASE STUDY

As a docu-drama, there are of course interviews in the film. The three interviews were filmed individually against greenscreens that were later replaced with simple monochrome backgrounds.

In the party scene there were a lot of strong colors flashing and pulsing throughout that needed to be tweaked and adjusted to bring the hues closer in line with the DP’s vision.

The first “park bench scene” in the film was actually filmed at the end of a day as the sun was setting. Naturally, there was a bit of work to be done to match the changing colors and exposures together to form a cohesive scene. The director was also was looking to tame down the warm tones in favor of a cooler feel in order to better match the mood of the story.

For these night scenes in the kitchen we wanted to continue pushing the color contrast between the warm “sodium vapor” light coming through the window and the cooler lights inside the house.

BEFORE

AFTER

In the hospital scenes, we wanted to keep a defined color contrast, but lean more into the clinical colder blue hues to match the mood of the story.

An important part of these outdoor scenes was to warm up the skin tones while cooling off the green trees and grass…BUT without turning the yellows in the trees too much into fall/autumn colors.

For these interior scenes in the main character’s room, the focus was primarily on matching the scene together.

This party scene is a direct contrast from the opening party scene. Dark night vs bright evening, indoors vs outdoors, and wild colors vs natural earth tones. 

We added an overall film look to all the “cinematic scenes” in the film (excluding the interview footage). This final before/after image is a good example of the film look, including halation of the highlights and decently strong film grain…especially in the highlights of the image.

THANKS FOR READING!

STILL IMAGES