Blog Archives

Colouring

14/7/2014

Joseph Bicknell in the grading suite.

Yesterday I sat down with the very talented Joseph Bicknell to begin colour grading. For those who aren't familiar with the term this is where you start to really fine tune the look of the film by manipulating the colours of the picture.

It's an exciting part of the process for two reasons. One, it begins to look like an actual finished film and we get to make it look "noir". The original ideas that I had for the look and Sam's concept art only start to be fully realised now.

The second reason is that I have been editing the film, and thus watching it, as 360p proxies for the past month and a half. Basically, that means I made lo-res copies of all the raw footage so it doesn't crash my laptop every time I make a cut. You then relink it to all the full-res 4K files afterwards. So I've been watching the film on something most suitable for this...

When the final thing will be suitable for this...

The indoor kind as well.

Now Joseph doesn't even use the full-res files, he makes his own intermediates, but they're much bigger and boy, is there a difference! What was once just a mess of blueish pixels in the background are now highly defined blades of light.

So yesterday Joseph and I simply worked out a general look of the film and tone of the colour palette. We looked at a few other films for references and experimented with the different variations. We've now got that look pretty much defined so we'll continue later in the week with Michael, our DoP, to fine tune each shot. MT

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The Making of The Alpha Invention

10/7/2014

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Earlier this week our fantastic behind-the-scenes videographer and photographer James Gourley sent me the behind the scenes featurette for The Alpha Invention. It gives a small taste of what it was like on-set making the film. Includes interviews with Billy. Enjoy!

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Makin' Movies, Makin' Music

4/7/2014

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Doug at his home studio.

Once upon a time someone said that music is the pathway to the soul and they weren't wrong. In my opinion it's one of the most powerful tools, maybe even the most powerful tool after actors' performances that a filmmaker has.

The tone of the film can be swung and dictated to the audience in a matter of seconds with music, the composer can mould how your film feels more than nearly anyone else. My task to find a composer was therefore not without a small sense of trepidation.

Fortunately, I needn't have worried because I found Doug Berwick. We talked about the film, its influences and the tone we are trying to achieve - for me it is important for the film's soundtrack to encompass virtually the entire scope of the noir genre from The Maltese Falcon up to the modern neo-noir era of Elliot Goldenthal and Hans Zimmer. This is not for the sake of referencing or tipping-the-hat but simply because that is the feeling of The Alpha Invention; it is an amalgamation of the different times of the genre visually and in its plot so it is important that the music reinforces that.

Doug's compositions seem to have that blend of the modern with inflections of the past it was obvious that he was our guy. After some initial pieces sent back and forth through email we sat down last Sunday and tweaked the music to the picture. It is quite an experience watching a talented musician play music in real time to your film as it plays on the screen. It allows for a great amount of experimentation and freedom which the vocabulary of a temp track, no matter how good, just can't match.

Doug will continue to add layers and tweak his compositions but with that almost done we head onto sound design. The finish line is near! MT

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