Dear Mama

7/12 - Update: “Dear Mama” Emmy nomination for Best Documentary or Nonfiction Series

Well, if you are my age and grew up in the ’90s, you listened to Tupac. Even all of us white boys from Camarillo knew every word to every song. His music really was the soundtrack to the last decade of the millennium and my youth.

Tonight is the final installment of “Dear Mama.” FX’s most-watched unscripted show.

Perfect for a Mother’s Day weekend! Please go check it out on FX tonight or streaming on Hulu.



Allen Hughes directed this insightful docuseries. Fitting because Allen and his brother directed Tupac’s early music videos. Sure, there was a bit of drama, but that adds to the flavor of the story. That connection to the material made Hughes the quintessential choice for captaining this ship. Tupac wasn’t any one thing; more like an eclectic stew of many influences and identities. One thing is for sure. Dude was thug life for real.

Cognac hues or Hughes as it were

Allen was clear on the look and vibe he wanted for the series. Cognac was the word. We spent a couple of weeks developing a look that feels like you have filtered the light through a fine liquor. We also used Live Grain to achieve that end-of-the-film-era perfect Kodak grain structure of the 90s.


Documentary grading is an entirely different beast. Here are a few tips for you to tackle your next interview-based production.

  1. Color management - I preach this a lot, but even more critical with many different sources.

  2. Sounds basic, but group your interviews.

  3. Normalize the frame rate upfront.

  4. AI up-rez is like salt; a little is good, but too much ruins the dish. Don’t be afraid to let some pictures just look old.

  5. Build a KEM reel of all interview setups. Having the A and B cam shots together in the timeline will help you reference grades quickly.

The first step was look development. Allen had already shot some of the interviews we used to refine the look. I built an LMT that had the cognac golden vibe. I used that look and the ACES standard outputs to create a 709 LUT for Avid media creation. Eric DeAzevedo was the operator responsible for many terabytes of dailies. We also normalized all the archival footage to 23.98 during the dailies step. Cortex was used to make the mxf files and bins. We had to double-hop to render in LiveGrain since it wasn’t supported in Cortex at the time.

Early on, we were still in the late stages of the COVID lockdown. I built a reel of every interview setup and had a ClearView session with Hughes and Josh Garcia (Producer). This scene was super critical to our success going forward. It set the bible for the show's look and ensured that Allen’s vision was consistent through the many days of shooting. At the start of each episode, I applied our base settings using a “Fuzzy” match. (yes, that is a real Baselight thing.) Basically, “Fuzzy” is a setting that allows the machine to match grades presumed to be from the same camera roll rather than a timecode approach. This put all the interviews 90% of the way there from the get-go. The next step was to sort the timeline by clip name and time of day. I would then work through a pass where I would track the shapes and balance out any inconsistencies in lighting as the sun hung lower throughout the day. The archival footage didn’t have as graceful of a strategy applied. Each shot was its own battle as the quality differed from source to source. My main goal was to ensure that it was cohesive and told the story Allen was crafting.

The first deliverable out of the gate was a theatrical version for the Toronto International Film Festival. I graded in ACES cc going out to PQ 1000nits. Then that was run through the DoVi analysis, and a P3D65 48nit version was trimmed. Finally, we applied a P3D65 to XYZ lut on the output render to create the DCDM.

The biggest challenge of this show was keeping up with editorial. As you can imagine, documentary storytelling is honed in the edit bay. The edit was constantly being updated as shots were cleared or discovered. Back at my shop, Leo Ferrini would constantly update my project to chase editorial. Multi-Paste (Remote Grades for our Resolve friends) was clutch in this situation. We took the old grades and copied them across. Leo would categorize the new material so I could sort the scene for the changes. The timelines constantly evolved and took shape until we got Allen in for the final grade. Allen has a great eye and religiously kept us in the world he had envisioned. We paid particular attention to eye-trace and ensured the information from each visual told a straightforward story without distraction. Next was a pass of Dolby trimming to take the approved PQ to 709. We would send that 709 file to Allen and get notes before creating the final IMF for delivery.

A super big thanks to Paul Lavoie for managing this one. There were many moving parts on this production but thanks to him, I rarely felt it. It’s a blessing to have a partner that doesn’t mind getting his hands dirty even though he’s one of the suits😜.


Be sure to check out this killer doc about one of our generation’s most prolific artists, told through Hughes's equally unparalleled artistic voice. Allen is a true master of many formats but has solidified his place as one of the best documentarians. Thanks for taking the time to peek behind the curtain, and let me know what you think.

Here are some more before and afters. Mellow yella’ Dan Muscarella would have been proud.







DC League of Super Pets

Super excited for everyone to check out the latest from Warner Animation. DC League of Super Pets is a super fun romp expertly animated by the talented team at Animal Logic.

Toshi the Wonder Dog!

Anybody that has ever had a pet is going to love this movie.

Post services provided by Warner PPCS include an ACES HDR picture finish and sound. Truly a post-production one-stop-shop.

The project was supervised by Randy Bol. The great thing about working with Randy is we have a level of trust that has been built over many other projects collaborating together. There is definitely a shorthand when both of us are in the suite. One of the best post sups you’ll work with plus just a good dude too.

Color was supervised by co-director Sam Levine. This guy was cracking me up every session. Not only was he hilarious, but damn, what an eagle eye. I was sort of bummed when our time together ended.

A big thanks to Paul Lavoie and Leo Ferrini too for keeping the ship afloat. I would be drowning in a pile of pixels without these guys.

Now go see DC League of Super Pets only in theaters… Preferably a Dolby Cinema one.

Looking Back on 2021

I wanted to take a quick moment to look back on all the great work that the team and I accomplished this year. There were a ton of fantastic projects with amazing filmmakers. Paul Lavoie and I also got the opportunity to take a second crack at some of our earlier work by giving it a 4k HDR makeover. Have we really been at it that long?

I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Leo Ferrini and Paul Lavoie for their dedication to our clients and never compromising on quality. They keep me honest. I’m very grateful to have partners like this A-team. Our operation is strong here on the Warner lot. Looking forward to what will come in 2022!

2021 New Theatrical and Remasters

Happy New Year and happy grading everyone!

-JD

Space Jam: A New Legacy - Multiple Worlds, Multiple Deliveries.

Hey Everybody! Space Jam: A New Legacy directed by Malcolm D. Lee is out today. I wanted to take a second to highlight the super slick color workflow which allowed us to work on multiple versions concurrently.

Capture

Space Jam: A New Legacy was masterfully lensed by Salvatore Totino. The two primary capture mediums were 35mm Kodak film and the entire lineup of Arri cameras, mainly the LF. The glass used was Zeiss Supremes and Master Primes. There were also a handful of scans from archival films which were used as plates for animation.

VFX

ILM was running point for the VFXs on this show. Grady Cofer and his team were a dream to work with. There is a reason ILM continues to be the best in class. The knowledge and expertise ILM employs is second to none. Early on Grady connected me with their head of color science, Matthias Scharfenberg. I thought I knew what I was doing when it comes to color science until I saw what Matthias had going on with CTL and Nuke. I learned a lot from our chats. He was super gracious in sending over his Nuke scripts which allowed me to build a Baselight transform that matched ILM’s pipeline. This insured a one-to-one representation of their stellar work.

Two Worlds, One Grade

The show can basically be broken down into two looks. In “Space Jam: A New Legacy” there is the real-world and the Warner Bros Serververse.

We chose an analog celluloid vibe for the real world. The Serververse has a super clean, very 1s and 0s look to it. Most of the real world is shot on film or is Arri Alexa utilizing film emulation curves paired with a grain treatment. Some sequences have a mix of the two. Let me know if you can tell which ones😉.

The look of the digital world changes depending on where the characters are in the Serververse. The base look of the Serververse is the vanilla ACES ODT with restricted primaries in the mid-tones complimented by exaggerating the saturation for highly saturated colors.

All the other looks are riffs off this base LMT with the exception of the library classics. These were graded to look like their existing masters and the new footage was matched in.

Multiple Deliverables, One Timeline

The challenge of this show, beyond the sheer number of VFX and moving parts, was the delivery schedule. The Post Supervisor Lisa Dennis asked to have the theatrical version and the HDR video versions delivered days apart. To hit the dates requested, I graded simultaneously in HDR and SDR. I did most of the heavy lifting in HDR PQ 1000nits. Then I trimmed at 14FL to ensure the reel was ready for filmmaker review. Poping back and forth between outputs was made possible by two great tools. Firstly, I used ACES 1.1 color management to normalize all the different sources into one grading space.

Secondly, I used Baselight’s “Bypass Categories” functionality to if/then the timeline. Basically, I had one timeline that would represent itself differently depending on the output selected. Different layers were toggled for different sources and outputs. The LMTs used often had SDR and HDR versions to further exacerbate the combinations. This was a critical hurdle to overcome and the Baselight gave me the tools to accomplish the organization of a very complicated timeline with ease.

Approvals

The Color sessions were supervised by Malcolm, Sal, and Bob Ducsay. We used Nevion and ClearView for remote sessions, but most of the work was done in-person on the lot here in Burbank. The Animated sequences were supervised by Spike Brandt and Devin Crane. These guys are animation heavyweights, so very cool to be in such good company for an animation nerd like me.

Most of the tweaking on the animation was for continuity fixing. A few of the shots we composited for final in the Baselight. This gave Devin and Spike a little extra creative freedom than a baked shot would have.

Reference for Tweety’s floor

After all the color decisions were made, Malcolm had his final pass and the masters were created. All deliverables from that point were sub-masters from the hero PQ deliverable. These included deliverables such as the Dolby Vision Theatrical version and 709 SDR version derived from the Dolby XML metadata.

Go See It!

Thanks for reading how the look of this candy-colored revival came together. Working on Space Jam was a wild ride. I had to tap into my background in photochemical film processing and knowledge of the latest digital grading techniques to create unique looks for all the different cinematic worlds visited. The film is a nostalgic love letter to the rich history and legacy of the Warner Bros. Studio. I couldn't be more proud of the Warner Color team, especially Leo Ferrini and Paul Lavoie. A big thanks to you guys! Putting this film together was a monumental task and I am ecstatic with end result. Check it out in theaters and on HBO Max today!