The classic western standoff was the reference for Sunny’s introduction to the series, starting with the antagonist entering the saloon, culminating in the showdown in the empty street. The Mift Office needed to feel like a saloon in a small, dry, hot, old west town at high-noon before the villain strolls into town..
The desire was for whatever color treatment was applied was not over the top and should not break the overall look of the world. As we did not have a color-correction pass, all work needed to be done in nuke as retakes. As the schedule did not allow for many iterations or retakes to apply the look, we sent a conservative look for the vendor to apply, planning for a final to be done here. As the sequence spanned 41 scenes with less than a week to complete (along with other retakes), we needed an approved look that could be easily propagated throughout.
A generic bleach bypass or sepia grading would be too strong and potentially affect the compositions. It was important to make sure that the characters didn’t blend into the background and that nothing would stick out or become distracting in that background.
As Sunny slams open the doors to mift, we really wanted to capture the feeling of the outlaw kicking open the doors of a saloon silhouetted by the bright midday sun. As an HDR production, it was important that the cheated backlight in the hallway worked, especially as technically the look would have required inverting the standard lighting and would be too jarring cutting back and forth.
The transition back into normal color also needed to be subtle and smooth, not jarring. In the end it was a slow grade over 4 scenes after Sunny leaves.
The Before video is the final version received from the vendor, the After is the final graded version.
