By Randi Altman

Just in time for Halloween, we decided to take a closer look at the color grade behind the Belgium comedy/horror film Yummy. It’s the country’s first zombie movie … because every country should have a zombie film of its very own.

Yummy follows a young couple who travel to a very questionable Eastern European hospital so the girl can get cosmetic surgery. While there, the boyfriend discovers a patient suffering from an experimental rejuvenation treatment. He frees her but doesn’t realize she’s ground zero for an outbreak that will turn the doctors, patients and his mother-in-law into bloodthirsty zombies.

Yummy was directed by Lars Damoiseaux, who co-wrote with Eveline Hagenbeek. It was shot by Daan Nieuwenhuijs, NSC, with a color grade by freelance colorist Tom Mulder.

How would you describe the look of Yummy?
It’s a grainy, crunchy, colorful look that starts pretty natural and evolves over time when things get out of control. 

How did you work with Lars Damoiseaux and the DP on the look? How did they communicate what they wanted?
I mainly worked with the director, Lars Damoiseaux, and the production company, A Team Productions, on this film. A Team Productions and I kind of grew up together making films, as we worked together from the start on Black, Torpedo, Gangsta and lots of award-winning short films. We know what to expect from each other.

Since the DP, Daan Nieuwenhuijs was already busy working on other projects it was difficult to sit together for the grading. But I got a good briefing from him about how he saw the look of the film, and it was already well-established on set. He wanted it grainy, gritty and yummy (smiles).

The DP used about six different colors in his lighting to establish where the characters were in the hospital. Most of the time, the film takes place in a hospital where the rooms and corridors all look the same, so the different colors helped a lot to guide the viewers. This also determines the look from the start.

I graded the trailer first and this was my guideline for the rest of the film. I started grading on my own to get it more or less in the ballpark, exported a version, got feedback and continued. At the final stage they came over and we went through it together.

What did they shoot on?
The film was shot on the ARRI Alexa Mini and Amira (B camera) using Leica Summicron lenses. The shooting format was ARRI 3.2K ProRes 4444 XQ. ISO 1280.

Can you talk about workflow?
This was a pretty standard workflow for me. When the edit was locked, the conform was done in Resolve by InBlik, a post house in Belgium, who also did the VFX for this film. They sent the conformed project over to me some time before grading started so I could go through it in my spare time to see what could work.

Before grading started, I got updates from VFX, which were prepared on a timeline so I could just copy them over to my grading timeline. During grading there were still some updates coming in that integrated nicely. The film was finished in Rec709 because of limited time and other practical reasons.

What about working with visual effects files. Do you know approximately how many shots there were?
There were about 300 visual effects shots in this film, maybe more. They were delivered to me as ProRes 4444 XQ files. I didn’t use mattes. If I wanted to change something specific, I could just ask the visual effects studio and they did it for me. Since everybody was on the same page for the style of the film this was something I trusted them to do. After the first pass I shared my project with InBlik so they could see how the visual effects reacted to the grading and tweak them if necessary.

What tools did you use for the color grade and why?
For this film, I worked on Blackmagic’s DaVinci Resolve. Since time was limited, I made a LUT — based on the feedback given by the DP and director — to use during the grading. I used printer lights and primaries to fine-tune the base look. Then I used hue vs. hue and hue vs. saturation curves to push the colors where we needed them to be. I like how natural the curves bend the colors to certain hues … if your initial balance is good, of course.

Since I had limited time for this film, I didn’t use keys too much. Because of the fast editing (done on Avid Media Composer) at some moments I used Power Windows to get focus on the faces or other elements we really wanted the viewer to see.

Were you working remotely or at the post house?
For this film, I mainly worked at my home grading suite. Because of the limited time and the smaller budget, this was the best thing to do. The first pass and additional correctional passes were done at my home suite on a reference monitor, the DM240 by Flanders Scientific.

Then we took the project over to a DI grading theater at ACE Image Factory, where we did the final tweaks. I wanted to do this because it’s not just about getting the look where it needs to be. Since there was a theatrical release for this film, I wanted to be sure that it also looked good on the big screen. How the audience will see the film for the first time is a very important factor. It’s all about perception. An image feels completely different on a small, 24-inch monitor than on a big screen. In the end, I ended up darkening down some scenes to make it denser.

Have you worked on horror films before? Did the content play a role in how you worked?
I didn’t do many horror films before — some short films in the past, but that’s about it. It’s a very specific genre that has a particular audience, so not many of these films are made over here. But I would like to do more of these films. I like this genre a lot and love to create those weird, sometimes uncomfortable, atmospheres in grading.

The content was very specific. Many colored lights for a lot of interior and night scenes, natural lights for exterior/day scenes, lots of moving camera, about 2,000 cuts in 85 minutes. Since I had about seven days to color, it was important to work efficiently and fast. That’s why I created a good base LUT to help me do a big part of the work.

What stands out as the most challenging or fun part of this particular job?
The most challenging for me was working without a DP present. It’s definitely not my ideal way of working. For me, a colorist is the right hand of the DP in post. I try to create the DP’s vision to the screen. There is no flying solo in these types of projects.

The fun part was working together with people you can call friends and who trust your work. We had a lot of laughs during this crazy project.

How did you get into color grading?
I graduated RITCS film school in Belgium, and my first intention was to become a DP, so I started working on set as a camera assistant (clapper/loader). Apart from some small projects in school, this is where I got to work with film for the first time. The TV show I was working on called Vermist was shot on 16mm.

Tom Mulder

During those months of changing and reloading the film magazines, I became more interested in what happened afterward. How was film developed, and how did the picture transform from film to digital? Luckily, a position as a colorist assistant became available at ACE Digital House, which at that time was one of the best high-end post facilities in Belgium. It was there I started working on the Spirit telecine driven by Pandora Pogle. I did mostly one-light grading for dailies and scanning film in 2K in the beginning.

After a while I started coloring my first short films using Coloris, a proprietary grading software created by ACE Digital House. Those were my first steps into digital color grading. Ten years and lots of projects later I decided it was time for me to start something on my own. I’ve been a freelance colorist now for a little under two years.

How do you prefer working with the DP and director on projects? Best-case-scenario type of thing.
I think the sooner a colorist is involved, the better the final product will be. I always try to spend some time creating a show LUT before the shoot starts and during the first days of shoot, together with the DP and director. This way everybody has a good idea what the final image would look like. Of course, there will be changes afterward, but the general look and feel will be set.

Where do you find inspiration?
I find inspiration in lots of things. I watch a lot of films, TV shows and commercials, analyzing the work of other colorists. Still photography is something I really enjoy as well. Even just going outdoors gives me inspiration, like how natural colors react in a certain light in different seasons (sunrise, sunset).

Randi Altman is the founder and editor-in-chief of postPerspective. She has been covering production and post production for more than 20 years.