American Cinematographer - May 1997 - 60

Local Facilities

Join Forces

on

"Colorful"

Job

to 2.35. With the reversal

2048

blow it up. For the negative stocks,
we telecine-transferred to
Digital
Beta at 525 Post Production. Then
we did two
processes. We either
took the master to 4MC, where

x

1556,

or

what

we

call 2K,"

explains Horsburgh. "We uprezzed the video using software we
wrote in-house. Basically, we re¬
size the image; an algorithm extrapo¬
lates from pixel to pixel and creates
new
pixels in high resolution."

by Debra Kaufman

Selena
presented
some with
unique
challenges,
especially
re¬

The second step was to
color-correct these home video im¬

gard to color, for Los Angeles-area
postproduction houses Warner
Digital, 525 Post Production, and
CFI. The film's principal location
photography took place in Texas
between September and Novem¬

ages

ber of 1996; all of the dailies were

management tool that allows you
to analyze the grain structure of a
reference shot that you want to
match, and then apply that same
grain structure to another shot -
in this case, the home video mov¬

processed at CFI in Hollywood,
where lab contact/color timer Art
Tostado oversaw film processing
for the daily prints, which were
delivered to the location.
Notes Tostado of collabo¬

rating with cinematographer Ed
Lachman, ASC, "I've

never seen a

who works with such
extreme colors. He has a great love
for using and mixing primary col¬
ors with complementary colors in
the sets and in the film as a whole.
He'll push you to the limits, and
when you fall off, he'll enjoy the
ride down."
The challenge of working
with the colors in Selena continued
cameraman

past the dailies stage. The picture
features several segments in which
the 2.35:1 frame is split into a "trip¬
tych" juxtaposing home moviestyle video and Super 8 footage
with 35mm images shot by
Lachman. One of the biggest tasks
with regard to these triptych se¬
quences was integrating the color
of images that came from a range
of

with director Gregory Nava, visual
effects supervisor David Garber
and alternate media supervisor
Barbara Martinez Jitner to create
this three minute tri-image "tribute

sequence" at the film's end. Ac¬
cording to 525 Post producer
Neysa Horsburgh, this home video
footage came into the facility in a
range of formats: VHS; Hi8 video;
and

Super 8 film.

The first challenge was to
"up-rez" (increase the resolution

of) the home video elements

American

and create

a

grain structure

that matched the 35mm film. 525
Post visual effects artist Alex Frisch
did just that using Discreet Logic's

Inferno software. "One of the new
features of Inferno is a new grain-

ies that have been

up-rezzed," says
Frisch. "These images had a very
big grain structure because they
low-resolution elements. We
had to first de-grain it, and then

were

apply the grain that

was analyzed
from the reference shot."
Frisch also used the In¬
ferno for color correction. "We
the Inferno a little bit like we

use
use

Cinematographer

so

we

went to Monaco

footage,

Labs [in San

Francisco] and had them optically

they would output that to film
negative, or brought pieces into
an SGI
platform to construct se¬
quences using Inferno and then
output back to film.
"We

soon

realized that the

Super 8 image started to fall apart
when

we

went to

a

2.35

frame,

so

decided to

play with aspect ra¬
tios in regard to all the formats. The
beginning of the film is shot in Su¬
per 16, at 1.66:1. The minute the
title sequence ends and Selena
walks onstage, the image becomes
Super 35 and we go to a 2.35 frame.
we

Within that, the home movie and
media sequences - in both video
and Super 8 - are at 1.33. So we
had 1:66 and 1:33

aspect ratios to

play within the widescreen frame."
On the subject of lighting,
Nava comments, "Ed and his gaf¬
fer, John Deblau, do a great job of
creating lighting that is naturalistic
but extremely beautiful. I like
things to be real, but still striking

Pogle or da Vinci in a telecine," ex¬
plains Horsburgh. "We had to

and

color-correct each shot from the
home video footage because the
colors were all over the place. Some
shots were totally colorful, and oth¬
ers didn't have much color at all.
The idea was to maintain the origi¬
nal look of the shots, but adjust
them so they would be more con¬
sistent colorwise. We corrected
with color dominance to maintain
color consistency among all three

Lachman offers, "It often becomes
more about the
light in the space,
or the room, or the area, than about

images in the triptych. The Inferno's

sources.

525 Post Production worked

58

they would meld with the 35mm
negative. "In video, you have 720 x
486 pixels. With film, you go to

color correction tool is very, very

powerful, and allowed
everything we wanted."

us to

Frisch's next task

was

do
to

composite the images of the trip¬
tych. He says, "I positioned the
three images in three shapes. The
panels weren't of equal size, with
two-quarters in the middle and
one
quarter on either side. Those
sizes also varied during the se¬
quence, because the framing
came back to two images and
even one.

The

compositing was

pretty simple because it was only

May 1997

a

bit dreamlike."

Describing his approach,

trying to light specific people in the
space. To me, that type of approach
can result in more honest
images.
Conrad Hall [ASC], whom I greatly
respect, once said to me, 'Why
does everybody always have to be
standing in perfect, beautifully
rimmed light? Light doesn't always
fall that way in real life.'
"I lit many scenes for
Selena in hotels and motels, literally
from the lightbulbs in the fixtures.
I didn't mind the shades burning
out, because that gives you the feel¬
ing that the light was emanating
from those sources
I'd just con¬
trol the look with ND gels. I'd also
-

let exterior windows burn out over
three stops but still hold detail,
while many scenes on the tour bus
were done with available
light.

Shooting with the

new

sion 50.0T stock in low

Kodak Vi¬
light situ¬

ations, if you can see it,

the film
American Cinematographer - May 1997

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