Post Frontier’s lead post supervisor and colorist, Daniel Dode, recently provided the color grade on the film The Pink Cloud, which premiered at Sundance 2021. The Pink Cloud is a story about a deadly cloud of gas that appears above cities around the globe, forcing people all over the world into an indefinite period of lockdown and social isolation.
Daniel Dode
“Any similarities with the situation we’ve all been thrown in by the COVID-19 crisis are mere coincidences, as the film was written and shot before the pandemic,” explains Dode, who works out of Post Frontier in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and spends time in London.
The Pink Cloud was directed by first-time feature director Luli Gerbase. She and Dode had previously worked together on her short film, The Stone (2019). Dode is also a frequent collaborator of The Pink Cloud’s DP, Bruno Polidoro, with whom he worked with on over a dozen other film projects.
Let’s find out more about Dode’s color workflow:
What direction were you given on the color? Did you get a look-book?
The characters in The Pink Cloud are trapped inside an apartment for the entire length of the film. This means that pretty much all shots are set inside this one location. The director’s idea was that the cloud should emanate a pink light, which should be always present, constantly coming through the apartment windows. These two factors meant the first challenge for the photography was to avoid visual monotony and to create enough variety so spectators would never “get used” to this presence, which should remain “strange” for the entire story.
Another idea that was part of Gerbase’s vision from the beginning was that the actual hue of the cloud’s pink color should be “mutant.” The cloud’s color should reflect the changes that progressively take place in its relationship with the characters. This meant the cloud was going to become a real character in the story.
Polidoro had a number of film, photography and painting references for each of the “stages” of the pink cloud well before the shoot, and these were further developed by means of extensive testing prior to filming.
How do you prefer getting this info on your projects, generally? Physical examples, film references?
During the preproduction stages of a project, we generally work together with directors and DPs by repeatedly reading the script and exchanging ideas regarding what they have in mind for each scene as well as for the film as a whole. We’re very much used to looking at and discussing loads of references offered by DPs.
Personally, I am always very keen on working with as many camera, lighting and grading tests as possible. That really helps me anticipate any problems and difficulties in achieving the desired look and feel. It also allows us all to plan for shooting so that photography and grading will nicely come together during post, taking into account the unique characteristics of each project.
In this film’s case, Polidoro and his camera team also produced a number of LUTs that they were going to use for on-set monitoring. These “proto-looks” already included a number of ideas that were explored more deeply during the grading process. They worked as a great practical starting point, like a “grade before the grade.” (The film was shot on an ARRI Alexa Mini.)
How early did you get involved in the film, and how did that help?
Our team at Post Frontier worked with Gerbase and Polidoro from very early on in the process. (Here’s a shout-out to my fellow colorists, Gustavo Zuchowski and Arthur Bovo).
We did a lot of pre-shoot work together in order to establish what could/should be captured live on set and how grading and visual effects could help the photography in carrying the narrative forward, as well as establishing the desired look and feel for the movie.
I am a firm believer that the earlier the colorist (and, indeed, the whole post team) can get involved in a project, the more we are able to help. I think The Pink Cloud was an excellent example of that.
How do you prefer to work with the DP/director? How often are you showing them your work?
I am the kind of colorist that loves to interact with DPs and directors as much as possible. I am always very keen on sharing different looks for the same scene just to gauge reactions. In my opinion, the greatest challenge in grading any film is that the picture every person has within their mind of what a shot can look like is invariably different from what’s inside everyone else’s brain.
Words can only go part of the way in this communication process toward reaching the final look and feel. Color is a highly subjective thing, and the process of turning those mental images into pictures on a screen is full of discovery. Showing people images and getting a feel for their reactions is an extremely interesting human experience and one that invariably leads to exciting surprises that can challenge everyone’s preconceptions about what a shot, scene or a film can look like.
Polidoro and I were in constant contact all along the way. I would work on chunks of the film (sometimes just a few minutes long, sometimes much longer), and then we’d look at them together. Sometimes, that first look was the one. However, most of the time we’d go back and forth fine-tuning or even redefining these looks until we were both happy.
Once we reached that point, we’d share that chunk with the director, and then a whole new cycle of confronting our (now unified) mental picture with the director’s would push us onto a new and different phase. That was a fascinating exercise in understanding the different visual and emotional perspectives brought to the table by each person involved.
Did you work on this during COVID? If so, were you working from home or in-studio with safety practices in place? What monitor were you using and how did you go about calibrating it?
Although the film was entirely written and shot before COVID, the whole post process happened while restrictive measures were in place. I set up a grading suite in my house. During the first half of post, we all worked separately from our homes, exchanging material via cloud platforms. The issue of proper monitoring was a constant concern during this period.
From the moment the restrictions were made a little more flexible, Polidoro and I started working physically together in a world full of face masks, hand sanitizer and taking turns coming close to the monitors. Later on, we were also joined by Gerbase. This context gave us all that strangest of feelings that we were somehow trapped inside the very film we were making.
Our main grading monitor was a Sony OLED, part of the BVM Trimaster EL Series.
Director Iuli Gerbase
Any challenging scenes that you can point to?
The omnipresence of the color pink (even in the actual title of the film) became a challenge in itself. We had to dedicate special attention to the adaptation capabilities of the human visual system and the fact that the constant presence of pink might progressively desensitize our audience’s eyes (as well as our own) to this ominous ubiquity. It was important for the narrative that the audience effectively felt the cloud’s presence all the time.
During our grading sessions, that also meant we had to be extra careful that our own eyes didn’t get desensitized to how pink these images actually were. We had to be even more zealous than usual in terms of establishing a neutral viewing environment and using our scopes as a solid reference. We also had very frequent eye breaks in order to approach the material in a manner that was as fresh as possible.
Our DP chose to work with a large number of different light sources with different color temperatures in order to create the necessary visual variety. Thus, the grade constantly tried to guide the viewers’ eyes toward the source that was right for each moment of the story. Our approach to cuts between scenes also aimed at giving our audience a necessary “eye reset” whenever possible.
Daniel Dode at work on Resolve.
The Pink Cloud is a great example of color working actively and consciously toward pushing the narrative forward and establishing the dramatic moods and sensations that the director intended to achieve.
What system did you use?
We used Blackmagic’s DaVinci Resolve Studio for the color grade. The Pink Cloud had a pretty traditional grading workflow, as we never used any flashy plugins or effects. Having said that, we had a massive number of secondary adjustments.
DaVinci Resolve Studio’s ultra-flexible color selection tools were crucial in helping us fine-tune and manipulate a considerable number of different light sources within our shots. They also allowed us to have constant control over the specific hue of pink the cloud should have for each step of the story.
We also made extensive use of Resolve’s Power Windows and tracking tools in order to control the direction of the cloud’s pink light, which came through the windows. By using a lot of dynamic shapes, we were able to easily manipulate the lights that were shot live on set and add some lights in post whenever the scene called for it.
