By Alyssa Heater 

The Little Mermaid, Disney’s latest live-action adaptation of the animated classic, uses color to convey a “sense of reality” in both underwater and above-water worlds. Michael Hatzer, supervising digital colorist/VP of creative color finishing at Picture Shop, was enlisted to grade the feature, detailing to postPerspective how the process consisted of two simultaneous workflows to achieve the end result.

Michael Hatzer

Hatzer’s relationship with cinematographer Dion Beebe, ACS, ASC, spans over 20 years, with the two first working together on Equilibrium in 2002. Since then, the two have collaborated on multiple films including Gangster Squad and Mary Poppins Returns. Explains Hatzer, “Dion is fantastic to collaborate with. He creates such beautiful images, which provide a great canvas for us both to build upon.”

Beebe also has a longstanding relationship with director Rob Marshall, dating back to Memoirs of a Geisha for which he won the Academy Award for Best Achievement in Cinematography in 2006. The two brought Hatzer in to grade Mary Poppins Returns then tapped him again for The Little Mermaid, when the team worked out of Picture Shop’s New York facility.

How did this collaboration work? Hatzer got involved early in the preproduction stage to help establish looks. After Beebe selected his camera equipment and lens packages, in this case the ARRI Alexa 65 with Hawk65 anamorphic lenses, he shot a multitude of tests — lens, camera and on-screen followed by hair and makeup. Beebe and Hatzer then set looks, with Hatzer creating LUTs for the various settings — day exterior, night exterior, on-set, off-set — to offer a multitude of options to enable the dailies to look as similar to the final results of the DI as possible. From there, Beebe presented the tests to Marshall and his team for final approval.

Two Simultaneous Workflows
Preproduction on The Little Mermaid began close to four and a half years ago, but due to the pandemic, filming was postponed for a year. When regulations eased, the principal photography was captured on-set at Pinewood Studios in London.

In addition to Marshall, Beebe and Hatzer, editor Wyatt Smith, ACE, served as another key collaborator, overseeing the VFX and underwater sequences. Together, they needed to come up with a solution to integrate the above-water scenes into the VFX scenes that took place underwater, which were shot against a bluescreen. They devised two simultaneous workflows to handle the complexity.

Hatzer provided Beebe with two LUTs: one for each workflow. Those LUTs would then go to the VFX house for the VFX team to use to create visual effects aligned to the color. Picture Shop color scientists Josh Pines and Chris Kutcka designed the ACES workflow that streamlined the thousands of visual effects shots in this feature.

“It was a very complicated film, but everyone was so well organized,” says Hatzer. “From the first day of shooting, my team worked in conjunction with the camera and editorial departments. We came into the project very prepared on how to deal with the two different color spaces and the thousands of VFX shots that were coming in hourly during the DI process.”

How Color Sets the Tone
In contrast to the 1989 animated version, the filmmakers wanted the look of this retelling to feel much more realistic. While Hatzer did reference the original to familiarize himself with the story and take note of the saturation, color palette, hair and beyond, he explains that the filmmakers looked elsewhere for inspiration. “We actually referenced David Attenborough documentaries, like Planet Earth.”

Marshall and Beebe were extremely prepared and knew exactly how they wanted each unique world to look. The level of darkness or brightness was motivated by where the characters were in relation to the depth of the ocean. In Ursula’s lair, which was located deep beneath the surface, the saturation and levels of blackness would change. When Ariel goes to the Shipwreck Graveyard and encounters the shark, it again becomes a deeper world. When the mermaids were closer to the surface, it became brighter and more colorful.

“The motivation is that Rob wanted a sense of reality, so as the characters went deeper into the ocean, the light would get darker,” explains Hatzer. “That was one major difference between this and the animated version, which was consistently bright. He wanted to keep everything grounded in a sense of reality, so it didn’t have an overly saturated, cartoonish look.”

Color and VFX
Hatzer credits FilmLight’s Baselight system in helping streamline the color process on this massive VFX undertaking. Because the VFX were constantly being updated, and mattes were not used for the various characters, Baselight enabled Hatzer to draw multiple windows around characters, roto and track them, and bring up the color very subtly.

Through use of Baselight, Hatzer could augment the VFX grade without breaking the VFX. When the VFX shots go out, there are always changes. For example, Sebastian the crab might need to be redder. Rather than sending shots back to VFX, which would delay the process by two days, Hatzer could draw a window and bring up Sebastian to look redder.

“Working on the Baselight was incredibly indispensable in tackling this huge Disney tentpole movie. It could handle the two different workflows, it allowed me to manage the multiple VFX coming in and the different versions of each VFX, and I could set up different timelines for the editor.”

The New York-Based Color Suite
Marshall and his team prefer to work out of New York on their projects, and The Little Mermaid was no exception. Picture Shop New York managing director Thomas Centrone and director of engineering Ahmed Barbary were critical in optimizing the color suite, which was outfitted with new 2D screens, a removable 3D screen and a Barco 4K projector. Editor Everette Webber and assistant colorist Kevin Schneider joined Hatzer in New York for two and a half months to work on the film.

Picture Shop colorist Alex Durie helped with the HDR/SDR home video passes, and the team brought in colorist Jonah Braun for help on the RealD 3D elements. Together, they tackled multiple color passes, including the normal 2D xenon pass and a normal projection 3D pass. They regrouped at the Dolby Theater headquarters in Midtown Manhattan for the 2D Dolby laser pass then returned to LA for the 3D Dolby laser pass on the Disney lot.

When asked what made this a memorable experience, Hatzer says, “For me, it’s the personal interaction and the creative process of working with these amazing filmmakers. Rob Marshall and Dion Beebe are such a pleasure to work with, and they’re true professionals. It’s always great to see the process from the very first day grading your first shot all the way to the end. It’s like watching your child grow. Every day, it’s getting stronger and more robust and becoming more of a finished product. We’re all really satisfied with the overall look of the film and had a fantastic time working together on it.”

Alyssa Heater is a writer working in the entertainment industry. When not writing, you can find her front row at heavy metal shows or remodeling her cabin in the San Gabriel Mountains.