After working for weeks with DP Nate Eckelbarger to come up with a color grading look for Depleted: Day 419,we’re nearly complete with this element of the filmmaking process. To reflect some of the bleakness of humanity over a year into the Fall, we chose to use some subtle desaturation and curves generally. To replicate older lenses, we used anamorphic lens flares when characters are outside, while, indoors, a higher contrast look with more subdued flares conveys the look we’re going for.
Initially done with a variety of different plugins, we eventually chose to go with a straightforward combination of AE/Premiere Pro’s Unsharp Mask plugin and the Magic Bullet Looks suite (with a few uses of Colorista for certain scenes). The power of Magic Bullet Looks is really impressive when you delve past the presets and start using real world camera knowledge. Coming from a digital world, I’ve really enjoyed learning about traditional film recording from my DP, as he’s much more comfortable with film based recording. His knowledge of cameras, lenses, and film helped insure that the looks we came up with are authentic to what real film could capture with specially chosen lenses and glass filters!
To get some previews, you can check them out below.
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