By Corinne Bogdanowicz

As someone with a long-standing family association with the profession of colorist — I’ve been in the industry for 17 years, my sister is also a colorist, and my dad is a color scientist — I’ve always been interested in how light reacts in different situations.

Corinne Bogdanowicz

This was a key consideration during my recent stint on the production of HBO Max’s comedic period series Our Flag Means Death, which follows the adventures of a gentleman-turned-pirate and his crew. Being set on a ship at sea, the production presented some interesting challenges. Here’s what it was like behind the scenes.

Setting Sail
I got involved very early in the production process before shooting had begun. The series used a lot of LED walls to provide the various backdrops, which meant we had to do plenty of testing before the production could start shooting.

This testing involved monitoring in SDR then taking the footage and viewing it in HDR to help us spot any artifacts or seams on the LED wall that wouldn’t be visible in the on-set monitors. This was something the production team was worried about, as unexpected surprises could ruin the shot, but it wouldn’t be discovered until the footage was seen in HDR.

So the goal of the testing was to get ahead of any potential issues and to find out which angles and kinds of lighting would work best. We wanted to have all of this worked out to ensure the actual shoot went as smoothly as possible.

The next step was creating a LUT to help with the color adjustments in post. The team already had a primary LUT that the digital imaging technician had made, so I built a corresponding HDR LUT using FilmLight Baselight so the production team could view the dailies in HDR. This involved a technical conversion from SDR to HDR by matching grades and then extending up to HDR.

The look we were going for was essentially filmic, with a soft contrast. As the show is set on a boat, there’s a lot of water and skies — blue was very much the dominant color, and we wanted to take the edge off of that a bit by desaturating the blues. Pulling back the blues in this way provided a more natural tone and a softer look. The approach was similar for the scenes inside the ship. Although the lighting was more dramatic and moodier, with candlelight and rays coming through the windows, we still wanted to maintain the soft contrast.

Using Baselight, the workflow was seamless. Making the on-set looks and then having the grades to integrate the looks into the final color was all straightforward, and the whole system was color-managed. No matter what color space I needed to go to, I could do an easy conversion all within one system using Baselight’s display transforms. It worked really well for the show.

The High Seas
The production went very smoothly. Mike Berlucchi, the lead cinematographer, was wonderful to work with, and we had a great collaboration. In terms of challenges, the main issue was integrating visual effects into the scenes that also used LED walls. Even though they used a lot of the same plates in their compositing, there were occasional color differences that I had to adjust. In particular, I had to ensure that all shots flowed smoothly — although the visual effects team did a great job of integrating the greenscreen and LED wall shots

The greenscreen shots did have a slight advantage in that the visual effects team would give me mattes for the background, which meant I was able to adjust them separately from the foreground. I didn’t have that with the LED walls, which meant I had to make mattes myself. We had to integrate all the elements however we could. Luckily, as most of the scenes involved a mixture of LED walls and effects, I could match one side to the other and address any issues that came up.

The most challenging scenes were the ones with characters in smaller boats with water surrounding them plus a background like an island in the distance. These scenes had lots of elements that we had to integrate, and again, they used a mixture of LED walls and visual effects, making it even more important to make sure everything matched.

Dropping Anchor
Our Flag Means Death was a great show to work on. The team was wonderful, and I really enjoyed working on the content — which always makes things easier.

One big takeaway from the experience is the role that testing plays. The team really put themselves ahead of the game by doing as much testing as they did to make sure there were fewer problems later. It’s always a delicate balance.

We did a lot of pregrading of background plates, but you still want them to look natural and real. You don’t want them to have a “look” on them — that comes after. So sometimes we would pregrade plates to get them in a good place and then make adjustments later as needed.

In the end, I think we created something that looks very real, filmic and beautiful. The initial testing really helped the whole process.

Corinne Bogdanowicz is a senior colorist at Panavision’s Light Iron in Los Angeles.