Netflix’s new thriller Dark Desire (Oscuro Deseo) stars Maite Perroni as Alma Solares, a respected lawyer and college professor who visits her best friend for the weekend and meets 23-year-old Dario Guerra (Alejandro Speitzer). They have a wild tryst. What started as a minor adventure becomes an incendiary passion and then a dangerous obsession, unraveling a chain of secrets of a past that fatally binds them.

The show’s 18-episode season was shot in part at Estudios GGM, the independent production complex located near central Mexico City where production, editorial and post production were all located. Deep Desire is a Spanish-language show available with English subtitles.

Editorial was led by 101 Editorial creative producer Tonalli Jimenez Villaseñor. Much of the action unfolds at a feverish pace, and viewers are constantly left guessing what will happen next. “This show is about the dark side of sexual desire,” explains Villaseñor. “But pretty soon that evolves into a desire for power and revenge. The performances are very strong, and so we gave them a lot of room in the cut. We wanted viewers to feel like they are right there with the characters … to understand and empathize with them.” (101 Editorial is a creative editorial

Tonalli Jimenez Villaseñor

The crew included lead editor Luis Zerón and senior editors Christian de la Vega and Karina Espinoza. Working just a few steps away from the stage where much of the series was shot, they began assembling sequences from the first day of production.

The editorial team — using eight Avid Media Composer Ultimate systems with Nexis storage —worked closely with series creator Leticia López Margalli in crafting the 18 episodes. Villaseñor says their focus was on refining and tightening the storytelling, tracing the development of the central characters and heightening suspense. “The writing is very clever in that you’re never quite sure what’s going on,” he explains.

“Once you think you understand what’s happening with Alma, a new ingredient is introduced that takes the story in a different direction,” Villaseñor observes. “That creates a lot of opportunities for the editor. One of our main goals in the editing room was to subtly draw attention to certain details and characters, playing with emotion and empathy throughout the story.”

The storytelling is also enhanced by the meticulous work of Academy Award-nominee Martin Hernandez and his sound team, whose tasks included production sound, ADR/loop group recording, sound design/editorial and mixing — using Avid’s Pro Tools Ultimate 12, S6 24-channel S3 control surfaces Dock Control, S2V 7.1 studio monitoring and S3V 7.1.4 Atmos studio monitoring. Sound design is employed throughout to create the ambience of the Mexico City homes and neighborhoods where the story takes place.

Music, primarily provided by 101 Editorial, is featured prominently and includes tracks from artists Comodo, Nicky Neon, X-Ray Dog, Audrey Morgan and Juliette Armanet. Hernandez says the music worked best when applied with restraint. “During mixing, we began pulling music cues out little by little to let the acting and the directing drive the story,” he explains. “It was important to focus attention on what was happening between the characters on the screen.”

Martin Hernandez

On the picture side, Cinematic Media began its work during preproduction of Dark Desire, which was shot entirely on Red Gemini in 5K. Senior colorist Ana Montaño worked with cinematographers Juan Pablo Ojeda and Jeronimo Rodriguez-Garcia in creating the overall look of the series. Consistency between shooting units was essential, and it was accomplished through a color-managed workflow, with technical director Gabriel Kerlegand supervising day-to-day shooting while in close communication with the DIT teams and DPs. They used DaVinci Resolve Studio 16.1, Colorfront On-Set Dailies and Colorfront Transkoder. Hardware used was an HP Z840 workstation, Blackmagic’s DaVinci Resolve Advanced Panel and a Sony BVM-X300 OLED 4K mastering HDR monitor.

Ana Montaño

As the series was Cinematic Media’s first project to require HDR delivery, the facility had to tweak its workflow to support grading and finishing in Dolby Vision’s color space. “We had to adjust some technical specs, but it wasn’t significantly different from our normal workflow,” explains Humberto Flores, who served as post supervisor for Cinematic Media. “Our pipeline is able to easily manage big data files, and we were excited about the creative possibilities afforded by the expanded color space.”

Montaño says that Dark Desire was the perfect project to grade in HDR. The added dynamic range gave her lots of room to manipulate light and shadow to enhance mood, drama and eroticism. “It was beautiful…and surprisingly easy to handle,” she says. “Creatively, it was challenging at first to use the highlights, as there are so many. If you use too much luminance, the audience becomes fatigued, but applied properly the effect is stunning.”

Working in collaboration with Villaseñor and the DPs, Montaño developed a polished, signature look for the show. The color scheme is light and sultry, with gold highlights, an aesthetic that evokes the atmosphere of sexual intrigue and subliminal violence. “The premise of the show is that nothing is as it seems,” Montaño explains. “The warm golden style feels sensual and at the same time conveys the sense that something is not quite right.”

Cinematic Media managed its collaboration with the team by providing work-in-progress media via its dedicated Sohonet connection. Final media was delivered to the streaming service the same way. Cinematic Media delivered the show in Dolby Vision HDR.

Having production, editorial and post based in the same physical space was a huge advantage, according to Villaseñor. It resulted in numerous practical benefits and inspired a higher level of creative participation. “It’s essential to have good communication across departments,” he says. “When people are working together, you can feel it in the creative process, and you can see it on the screen. All the departments on this project excelled — editorial, sound and picture. Everyone was committed to delivering a premium series.”

Dark Desire is now streaming on Netflix.