Filmed Stage Show

Role: Colorist

Synopsis:
For more than 25 years, in front of more than 1 million people, THE THORN has shared history’s most epic story in a spectacular way: God’s love for the world amidst the spiritual battle for all of humanity. Best described cirque meets the passion of Jesus, THE THORN is an immersive stage show featuring emotionally powerful music, drama, aerial acts, movement arts, modern dance, and big visual effects.

Now, THE THORN is available to watch at home, in a beautifully filmed version of the stage show.

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Watch the trailer below and keep scrolling for the case study!

Director: Andrew Harmon
Colorist: John-Clay Burnett
Release: Fathom Theatrical

Watch the Trailer

CASE STUDY

In this case filming the live stage theater production for release on the big screen involved more than a full run-through of the program with 5 cameras. They filmed over several days, performing select sections of the show, with different takes, and also filmed a couple of a live performances with the cameras in different positions each time. This amount of effort is great for a well polished final result, but adds a layer of complexity to color grading. Generally I like to use the same color throughout a long take (lighting rarely changes much in narrative or documentary interviews) but in a stage production the lighting changes a lot and definitely so across scenes…which meant I also needed to find a way to finesse individual scenes and clips. As a result I used “Remote Grades” across each camera angle and then created “versions” of the color to group together changes for each scene

That probably didn’t make as much sense as I had hoped, but it did work well and allowed me to work with speed and efficiency!

Stage productions often use a lot of haze/fog in the show to make the beams of light more visible, however this can wash out the image making it appear flatter and less saturated on camera. Also I worked on balancing the overall brightness of scenes to match what the audience would have felt at the live show.

Cameras don’t always record the same color from LED lights that we see with our eyes. In the show the colors blue and red are used for the themes of good vs evil, and it was important that the hues were accurate for the film. Oddly the blue came out very purple in the filming and needed a lot of close attention to bring it back in line.

One of the specific requests was to have the orb in this scene appear to be glowing.

This scene was filmed at sunset, but needed to look more like a sunrise. I worked to overall change the blue/red/orange colors more toward teal/yellow.

There is a moment in the show that they wanted to do different for the film by using the ability to do flashbacks…so we made sure those had a different feel by turning it black and white, and adding a layer of heavy glow to the highlights.

BEFORE

AFTER

The cave scenes were filmed on a set and intentionally filmed brighter so that the level of “night” could be determined in post.

Another adjustment from stage to the scene was the crucifixion scenes. Since they now had the ability to film closer, the blood and wounds were a lot more gruesome. We used a stylistic blurring to help maintain the desired rating.

Not every scene needs a lot of work or correction. Here is an example of a more “minimal” scene.

If you ever get to see a live performance of the show, I highly recommend it! I was able to attend when they came through near us, and even got a picture with the producer and director!

I am grateful to have been part of such a powerful project with a very talented team!

You can see more color breakdowns and techniques by watching the full color behind-the-scenes.

THANKS FOR READING!

STILL IMAGES