In January 2016 We ran completely out of money and I started to gather information how a feature film's color correction workflow should look like and shoud be done.
I was working at that time on the sound and music post production. Kamen, our sound designer, linked me to one of the most popular color grader and DIT person in Bulgaria. We met with the guy in person and we talked for around seven hours. He was very helpful and he shared a lot of helpful information but his quote was extremely high even if we had a budget so we couldn't hire him. I was ready to go and do another thing by myself. I bought with my credit card a color grading monitor, I downloaded DAVINCI RESOLVE and started to watch all of the tutorials out in the world. I became quite proficient with the software but still I wasn't sure whether I was doing it properly because I was grading the film in a way to be best suitable for cinema projection. Actually I was playing around with a few scenes, tasting the tonality of them, I was trying to make the same scene in warm and in cold tonalities and thus I wanted to see how the story was communicating by only changing the tonality, the contrast and the saturation of the scene.
I was very active in a Facebook group dedicated for color grading by asking lots of questions and by sharing some filmgrabs to the group members. This is how I met Ivo Velkov, he was a member in the same group, and he appeared to be a highly skilled and experienced color grader who is working for big Hollywood films. He offered me his help. I sent him the film and he watched it. He said that he might be able to help me pro bono, working in his spare time.
We started working two-three days per week with him on the color grading of the film. He was doing some initial grading at his home and then he was bringing the project file and he only with my feedback was tweaking here and there until we got the final graded film.
To grade an 8 bit 4:2:0 footage is not the nicest thing in the world, but Ivo was really surprised how well the picture was holding his treatment. We had some shots which were very problematic, mostly, the shots which were overexposed. We were working on an DNXHD mxf master, exported straight away from Premiere Pro and from the source material which was 4K, mp4, 24fps.
Ivo was with an amazing eye for detail, he was recognizing even the subtlest shift in the color, He was very eager to make the film look like a proper independent European feature film. We decided that we would keep the organic and natural feel of the image, without overtone it, or push it in either of the opposite spectrum of light. We had another quite big issue, the ND filter was making the entire footage a little bit more greenish, Ivo started the work flow in reverse order. He was using LUTS before to start the color correction and the color grading of the image. He did this in order to remove the greenish leakage in most of the shots. We were very careful with the black also, so it was a very delicate and emotionally consuming process.
Ivo did a fantastic job grading and color correcting the footage. He cleaned and fixed almost everything which was possible to be fixed, he used at the end some power masks and filters to polish and fine touch the picture so at the end of the second month we had everything done.
By doing color correction and color grading( the difference is very simple: color correction is about adjusting the image exposure, saturation and contrast, while color grading is about working on color, overall tonality, skin tones, and matching the different shots from the scene) I felt that the film's mood and feeling was created.
Initially during my pre production research, where I was watching and selecting a lot of Scandinavians and British dramas, but mostly I was watching Andrey Zvyagantsev's films. I had in my mind that I would like to make No One's first part with a similar color palette as those films. I imagined the first half of the film to be and to look cold, muted, bluish everything which evokes loneliness, separations, sadness, agony, suffering, misery etc. And as the film progresses the feeling and the mood to transform into its natural summer mood and feeling.
Ivo and I discussed this my idea and he dropped his point of view about that matter. He suggested to me that we had to stay as close,honest and truthful as possible to the location and place where we shot the film. First of all because the place in our story had a very significant role and second of all, because the nature and the value of the film was its rawness, its organic and natural feeling and mood. I agreed with him and I gave up my concept and idea how the film should have been looking.
At the end of February 2016 we've got our entire post production completed. Ivo wanted to test the film in a specially selected cinema theater in order to see if everything that we created was OK when being projected on a big screen. He helped me to make a DCP too. DCP manufacturing is an entirely different science and I won't go into detail into it, but it is a painful and time consuming process especially if you are going to do it from your bedroom as we did.
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Yatagan’s color correction and grading was done in a professional setting and manner. Christo our producer hired a post production house to do the grading and color correction of the film. They work with a big professional grading desktop console with cinema projector, in 4k real time and in a big professionally equipped dark room.
This was the good news for us. Kalin Petrov was our grader and color corrector. I wanted to work with Ivo Velkov with whom we did NoOne, but Christo preferred to work with a Post Production house like Concept Studio. And I wasn't in situation to negotiate. However, I knew Kalin from his previous project and I liked he way he grades his former projects.
Our color correction journey was an emotional roller coaster. We spent so many hours in the dark room and more hours spent in nerve wrecking situations especially as the premier's date was coming closer.
Christo and I decided to go absolutely crazy. Christo wanted the film to have n american blockbuster look. With bold and sharp texture and Teal and Orange look. I wanted only the film to keep its low key mood and to be as natural as possible regarding the colors. However, I liked the crazy idea and wish which Christo suggested.
I have to be honest that at that point I was already emotionally drained. After the hectic pre production and production and crazy two months of editing. I felt the need to step a bit back and leave Christo run the show for awhile and see what the result would be regarding the graded film look.
So we started as Christo wanted - TEAL AND ORANGE.
Christo and I suggested to kalin to work with pre set LUTs. He didn't want to do it, because he was skeptical of how the footage will be reacting with LUts which are not designed specifically for our RED setting. However, we convinced him to start working on it and he downloaded already made LUts form internet. We wanted to use JOKER LUTs which were available for free. So we downloaded them and Kalin start playing.
Kalin finished the grading for around three weeks. We were sitting beside him for most of the time. He was skeptical even afraid bu the direction in which we asked him to go regarding the intensity, saturation and then the grading masks and tweaking of the color and the grading.
It was at the end of January when Christo, Antoni, Kerezov, and Itco our camera crew plus Kalin went to see the final grade being in a proper average cinema. And we watched it.
OMG We were shocked from the image which We were seeing on the big screen. It was an awful projector but this wasn't the biggest problem. The biggest problem was that The OVEARaL ,THE General look of the film was dreadful.
The picture was braking down from the pushing it so much in the post. I couldn't believe that our source 8K Raw footage was damaged so much from our ludicrous intention and process. The color balance, the saturation and the artificial color painting on the walls, the vignettes and the masks which we wanted just broke down the picture into very low quality not attractive standard definition video look.
Everybody were shocked. Everybody were furious. The camera guys were in awe they couldn't believe what we have done in our post. Christo too was shocked and literally scared from the what he saw.
And I was furious on myself, and Christo, and Kalin because I was so disturbed that the quality of the image and its cinematic look was in many times worse than the look of No One despite the fact that we shot NoOne with GH4 and Yatagan with RED RANGER HELIUM .
We went straight to the post house studio and discussed that we had to start from scratch. Kalin was pissed off from us and even more from himself that he allowed us to push him in such a crazy and radical direction.
Kerezov and Kalin started to build a clean grading from the reference screen-grabs. And thus the final grading was done. Chrysto and I didn't participate actively. To be honest I was visiting them few days per week and Christo came just to see the last and final color grade. He wasn't happy from the result, because he still waned something which was absolutely impossible to be achieve in our film.
The conlusion is if you want a certain LOOK shoot it in CAMERA and leave the finishing to be done in POST but not the entire FILM LOOK.
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