feature post production Feature sponsored by
It’s not very often that a documentary picks up the ‘best cinematography’ award at a major film festival. And certainly not one that was shot on a DSLR and the occasional consumer camera. But that’s just what Dragonslayer did at the South by Southwest Festival this year - and it also picked up the Best Documentary Feature Award too. But then Dragonslayer is no ordinary documentary - it is the first film directed by Tristan Patterson, and he brings an entirely fresh approach to the art of documentary making in terms of how it was conceived, shot and posted. Dragonslayer brings together movie-like qualities with the stark reality of a close-up documentary, and the result is a revealing, disturbing and moving film. Colour correction and finishing on Dragonslayer was carried out in the space of just two days by colourist Milton Adamou at In A Place Post in LA. Here’s his report.
Dragonslayer: a new approach to the documentary
between the two viewpoints which Tristan Patterson has pulled off perfectly to give an extra unspoken dimension to the whole piece. Eric Koretz has beautiful and unusual
framing - a very sensitive eye. Focus is part of the storytelling - the shallow depth of field gives a cinematic feel to the documentary - almost an oxymoron! It's just not what you expect to see in an age where bad photography has somehow become associated with what is current and real! For the finishing and colour
around California skateboarding in abandoned pools, schools - anywhere unusual and interesting. He’s heavily into music, drugs and alcohol but nonetheless his life has occasional glimpses of beauty - he is at a crossroads where he either continues to follow his reckless path into oblivion or perhaps takes a different direction
D
ragonslayer follows the life of Josh ‘Screech’ Sandoval, a twenty- something skateboarder in California. Screech spends his time travelling
Shot by Skreech on a Kodak Zi8 in SD using an HD camera! I added grain primarily in the blue channel to scramble the most severe noise in the image. I then blew out the saturation while keeping the reds under control, in addition to concentrating the focus point of the image by ‘dodging and burning’ with asymmetrical vignettes.
20 l ibe l september/october 2011 l
www.ibeweb.com
as he begins to fall in love. It’s like a small boy against the world - a David v Goliath but where David doesn’t win. It’s not a rags to riches story - just a lost kid trying to find his way in a broken world. The documentary was filmed off
and on over the course of a year and a half by cinematographer Eric Koretz, using a Canon 5D Mk2 DSLR as his primary camera with a combination of Canon and Zeiss lenses. Screech was also given a Kodak Zi8 camera to record the world from his point of view. The edit is a fine balance
correction, we relied on a Quantel Pablo 4K at In A Place Post in just two days, which is no small task. Documentaries tend to be shot over long periods of time, with little time available for preparation. As a result, we're cutting between shots where the exposure can vary wildly, and it can be a real challenge to bring it all together in a visually coherent way. In order to meet the two day
deadline I had to rely on some tools in the Pablo that I may otherwise overlook. For example, the ability to group entire scenes together - 20 or 30 shot at a time - was a real life- saver. You basically give the shots a base grade and then clean up the inconsistencies in a second pass. I
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84