Light Iron supervising colorist Ian Vertovec provided the final color grade for the film Devotion, which tells the true story of Jesse Brown, the first Black aviator in US Navy history, and his friendship with fellow fighter pilot Tom Hudner.
Ian Vertovec
Vertovec worked closely with the film’s DP, Erik Messerschmidt, ASC, to create director J.D. Dillard’s desired look, getting involved before cameras started to roll. We reached out to the colorist, whose other credits include a mix of series and features, such as The Old Man, Resident Evil and Being the Ricardos.
When did you start on the film? How did that help your process?
I got involved very early in the prep stage, and Erik and I kept in touch throughout production. There were scenes he wanted me to take a look at to make sure things would match, and I could quickly do some power windows and send him and J.D. some stills to show them what it would look like in the grade. That was really helpful.
Did you create on-set LUTs?
We did. Erik wanted to build a single show LUT that could be loaded in-camera so he could move relatively quickly. And he wanted to monitor HDR and SDR on-set, so we built the LUT in HDR and derived the SDR version from that. He had also used ACES before, so I built the LUT to exist in an ACES ecosystem.
Can you describe the look of Devotion?
Erik and J.D. knew they wanted to shoot as much as possible practically, so they wanted the grade to look natural as well. It being a film about the Navy, we knew we wanted to have rich, deep blues and greens since the sets and uniforms would be using those colors in nearly every scene. Complementary yellows should always be gold or mustard, never canary or fluorescent.
Erik really liked the idea of being more modern but still having a vintage element, so we used a warm white point to match the period, and then we had a very modern film transform underneath, creating kind of a push-pull between the modern color rendering and the more old-fashioned warmer white point.
How was that look communicated to you by director J.D. Dillard and DP Erik Messerschmidt? Was there a lookbook?
Erik had a lot of period photography and a bunch of stills from different films, and he and J.D. shot a lot of test footage during prep, including airplane footage, which gave us a really good reference. We used that footage to build the show LUT so we could see how sunlight wraps around and gets really bright as the planes turn, and we could decide how warm we wanted the highlights to get.
It’s a period piece, so how did that play a role in the look?
We didn’t lean too heavily into a vintage or period look — sometimes that can feel a bit overly processed — but we did specifically create something that felt a bit more nostalgic for a beach scene at Cannes when the pilots are on shore leave. We wanted that to feel like early Kodachrome, almost like vacation photos from the 1950s. It feels great to open up for that moment.
What system did you use to color? Any functions of that system that came particularly in handy on this one?
We graded in FilmLight Baselight. One of the features that we really found invaluable for this film was Baselight’s extremely flexible color management. We started grading during COVID lockdown, and I was working with theatrical projection but sending HDR and SDR reviews to Erik and J.D. over Frame.io.
We really didn’t grade in the traditional way of working only for projection and then making the HDR and SDR trims later. We considered the HDR to be the hero and moved seamlessly back and forth between the projector and the HDR and SDR displays.
It’s a VFX-heavy film. Can you talk about working with the VFX and that process?
I’d say a challenging part of the DI was the fact that many scenes were assembled from shots that were photographed several days and sometimes thousands of miles apart due to the use of real airplanes in flight and practical locations. Because of that, weather and time of day needed to be brought together with the DI and VFX, so I was in close contact with the VFX team on a regular basis to sort all of this out.
What else sticks out as challenging scene-wise?
The most challenging scene by far was the Chosin Reservoir battle sequence, when the group of naval aviators come to the rescue of US Marines who are pinned down by enemy fire. We had a massive battle sequence on the ground that was shot in Georgia, looking up at the Corsairs flying overhead. Then we had the Corsairs in the air, shot in Washington state, looking down at the battle; the close-ups of the pilots were shot on an LED volume stage. This action sequence is quickly paced, so any mismatch of cloud coverage would be quite noticeable.
On top of this, the scene following the battle is a crash sequence that plays in real time at sunset. Fortunately, we had mattes made for all the sky replacements, so even though there was no greenscreen used for this sequence, I was able to dial in the continuity and the transition to dusk.
What stands out to you about this film from your perspective as a colorist?
It doesn’t feel so much like a war movie from previous generations, which tended to either feel explicitly pro-war or anti-war. It keeps its focus on the human drama and tragedy. The movie feels very modern, but there’s also a timelessness to it.
On a personal level, my uncle was a pilot in the Navy, and I idolized him. And it’s a very personal story for J.D. — his dad was a Blue Angel pilot — so we both have this generational connection to Navy pilots.
Gordon was also a key part of the collaboration, playing an active role in the DI, working closely with Gardiner to craft the images. “She really got into the color aspect of the workflow,” notes Arnold. “Of course, she had a vision for the movie and fully embraced the way that color impacts the story during the DI process.”
