For 30 years, civil rights attorney Larry Krasner called out policies that led Philadelphia to become the major city in America with the most incarcerations. More than 75 times, he sued police officers who perpetuated corruption and brutality. This made him an unlikely candidate for district attorney, but in 2017 he launched an election campaign that promised to reform the system. After winning office, Krasner set out to revolutionize his city’s criminal justice system from the inside.

Philly D.A., whose first two episodes premiered at Sundance this year, is a docuseries that follows Krasner and his team over the course of his first two years as district attorney. Over eight episodes, viewers get a front-row seat on their efforts to change the culture at the DA’s office and the challenges they face in doing so.

      
L-R: Ted Passon, Nicole Salazar and Yoni Brook

Directors/creators Ted Passon, Yoni Brook and Nicole Salazar spent three years following Krasner and his team as they set out to revolutionize the city’s criminal justice system from the inside.

In order to get access to the DA’s offices, police cars and other intimate situations, the filmmakers needed a small crew to shoot the footage. It just made sense that in addition to directing, Brook should also be the project’s main DP. To help provide a look for the footage, which was captured on a variety of different cameras, Brook and Passon called on colorist Natacha Ikoli, who worked with Brooklyn-based post house Nice Dissolve on the project. We reached out to her to find out how she worked on Philly D.A.

How early did you get involved in the film, and how did that help?
Pierce Varous at Nice Dissolve contacted me. As a longtime collaborator, he knows that I have a soft spot for documentary films with audacious content and that I relish the kind of creativity that documentaries demand from me. He also knows that I can handle the variety of source material without difficulty. He had me liaison with the creative team at the final stage of editing, and this allowed for a conversation on looks and visual intentions and provided time to design a workflow for remote color grading.

Philly D.A.

Like with many documentaries, multiple cameras, archival material and creating a unifying world are the main challenges, but this year working remotely meant the more time we had ahead of the finishing to prepare, the better we could establish a system that allowed for some supervised sessions.

What direction were you given on the film?
The main direction was to create a vivid world to balance the monotony of office spaces without being too stylized. Additionally, because visuals were captured over the course of many months on different cameras mixed with archival material, one of the key guidelines was to unify and create a distinct universe for the series. The narrative in itself is very dense and has some tragic storylines for the viewer to connect with. During early conversations it was agreed that color should be a complement to understanding another aspect of the story by bringing an uplifting dimension instead of hammering the viewer with heavy shadows, desaturated looks and gloomy overtones.

My approach for documentary films is to build a look based on what the directors want to convey in terms of emotions and moods. This is often something that transpires from conversations about what the overall intentions are and how each specific scene will build the dramatic tension. No look book was used in this case, as part of the collaboration was to embrace the idea of experimenting and starting with no preconceived concepts.

How do you prefer getting info on how they want the project to look?
The most effective way I have found is to have a discussion about what the director likes. It’s always easier to describe what someone doesn’t like, but it takes longer to decode and capture what inspires, especially in the language of color, which is so very subjective. That’s when film references and stills become useful, because I now have a sense of what moves the director, how they view palettes and what stands out to them in a piece.

Director/DP Yoni Brook with camera

It’s really deciphering and creating a common language, since all artists have very unique ways of talking about color and describing it. Before I see anything, I need to get a sense that I understand how they talk about colors, time of day, moods and tones. I also find that too many film references can sometimes short-circuit the creative process. References can be good jumping-off point, but I never find them to be liberating. In fact, in many cases they can become a creative wall. The color process is a verbal process for me — to capture the intentions of the film and the emotions needed, I need to understand how the directors communicate colors and the intangible world that surrounds them.

How do you prefer to work with the DP/director? How often are you showing them your work?
When collaboration with the directors and DP starts during production, it means I can provide feedback on how the camera will perform with the palette and mood the team wants to create. Giving creative input early on before edit is locked saves time during color — especially because color can be a visceral process wherein something that felt beautiful one day feels dull under different viewing conditions. So it is really important to let the image set a bit, like in painting.

Then, once we are in the middle of the grading process, keeping the team involved by posting stills and passes on a daily basis is paramount to good communication. We need to make sure that we are all aware of how the color is evolving and where we were and where we are heading with the palette. Using Frame.io and PDF contact sheets allows the team to monitor progress, and sometimes we end up back where we started after a little exploration. And versioning really helps keep track of what worked and what didn’t. Of course, being together during supervised sessions using remote grading is crucial at the beginning, halfway through and toward the final steps of grading. But there are really precious moments when I can work uninterrupted and embrace the flow of the grade and not think about it too much.

Can you talk about working during COVID?
I invested in a system composed of a DaVinci Resolve Micro Panel, an HP DreamColor monitor and a Blackmagic eGPU. The directors were able to supervise through remote grading while watching on a calibrated Flanders monitor, so we were physically apart but together during live sessions.

The 27-inch HP DreamColor Z27x G2 comes equipped with an integrated pop-up sensor that calibrates the display on demand or on a regular schedule. 

Can you give us an example of a note you got about the color?
For this piece, a lot of notes were related to the quality of light and temperature. A lot of the action is taking place in conference rooms or outside with natural light. Conference rooms tend to have fluorescent lights, which affect different skin tones very differently, so it was agreed upon early on that we would pay particular attention to the intensity of the brightness and the temperature of those lights.

Any challenging scenes on this one that you can point to?
Challenges often occur in scenes where there are multiple skin tones involved, and this piece has many group scenes with diverse-looking subjects. The grade might work on one person but be inadequate for the person sitting next to them.

Is there a tool you used a lot on this one?
Within Resolve, I used the RGB mixer, disabling the “luminance preserve” to control each color output.  I also used the layer mixer to add and subtract channels as needed for this piece because the team really wanted to render people’s skin tones as accurately as possible. This method gave me the most control without compromising on the overall vividness of the piece.

Main Image: Colorist Natacha Ikoli