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HomeIndustry SectorFilmBaselight Sets the Look for Jersey Boys

Baselight Sets the Look for Jersey Boys

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Jersey Boys
Jersey Boys
Warner Bros MPI colorist Maxine Gervais recently relied on FilmLight’s Baselight color grading system to create a characteristic 1960s look for Clint Eastwood’s Jersey Boys. Adapted from the popular stage play, Jersey Boys is the musical story of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons.

Shot in 2K anamorphic using an ARRI Alexa, Gervais worked with cinematographer Tom Stern to create initial looks. This meant the dailies had some of the character that Eastwood was looking to achieve before they even got to editorial. These looks formed the basis of the finished digital intermediate.

“I first met with Tom early on in the Jersey Boys project, prior to shooting,” explained Gervais. “Tom and I discussed doing dailies on Baselight, as they’d never done it before. We established looks that we converted into LUTs to plug into Baselight, so when we started getting the material all I had to do was grab the right look and balance things out.”

LR-Maxine Gervais, colorist, Warner Bros MPI
Maxine Gervais

“Clint wanted to create a strong, de-saturated style with a very periodic feel to it. He really wanted to portray the ’60s so we let certain colors breathe – mostly elements of the wardrobe and details like the girls’ lipstick,” recalled Gervais. “I would de-saturate the overall picture then grasp and pull through certain colors, making it look very similar to television in the sixties.”

“It was an intricate look,” she added. “When you go very de-saturated, it always requires a little more balancing. Tom is a wonderful DP who shoots fast, knows what he wants but always got time to light it well. With Tom’s support, knowledge and understanding of how Clint works, coupled with the power of Baselight, I really felt I could do anything with the look. We ran a first pass by Clint who just had a couple of notes and then we just went from there and let our creative minds do the work.”

Eastwood and Stern have already moved on to their next project, American Sniper, which they are grading in Gervais’s Baselight suite at Warner Bros. They will be using the same workflow but also introducing CDL for visual effects.

“Grading is moving away from one heroic session at the end of the pipeline towards a cumulative and collaborative process,” said Wolfgang Lempp, co-founder of FilmLight. “Today grading is a continuous process from set to deliverables, with colorists working alongside directors, cinematographers, editors and effects artists, rather than in sequence with them. That’s why we offer ‘Baselight at every stage’ – not just in the grading suite, but on set, in VFX and in editorial as well.”

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