Egg uses Nucoda Film Master to grade multi-format feature Dreams of a Life
London, UK, 7th February 2012 – Image Systems has announced that its Nucoda Film Master system has been used by Egg Post Production Colourist Sebastian Guest to grade the haunting documentary feature film Dreams of a Life. Written and directed by Carol Morley, the film tells the true story of a 38-year old woman Joyce Vincent, who lay dead in her bedsit above a shopping mall in North London undiscovered for three years. Chillingly her remains were surrounded by the Christmas presents she’d been wrapping, the gas and electricity supply had never been cut off and the television was still on.
Filmed on location in England and Ireland the shoot, which was overseen by DoP Mary Farbrother, involved a number of different formats as the Director wanted to keep to the authenticity of the four decades that spanned Joyce’s (Zawe Ashton) life beginning with her childhood in the seventies. The fabric of the film is made up by interviews shot by DoP Lynda Hall with people that knew Joyce and imagined scenes from her life (shot by Farbrother).
Guest explains, “They used mini DV and S8 for the gritty street scenes, Digi for the rostrum scenes, HDCAM for the interviews, 16mm for Joyce’s earlier life and finally RED for her recent adulthood and the time leading up to her death.” Carol deliberately used each format to keep specific looks for particular purposes and environments. Guest says, “When Joyce was growing up in the seventies for example, there is a certain look that reflects that era created by Mary Farbrother using 16mm with swing and tilt lens and also by the lighting. When we graded the 16mm we gave it a really nice palette that was true to the decade.”
He continues, “The multi-format aspect of the film works very well with the toolset on the Nucoda Film Master, particularly the DVO image enhancement and restoration tools. We had to upscale from SD for certain parts of the project and remove artefacts from the film components such as scratches and dust. The DVO Clarity noise and grain reducer was another tool that we used quite frequently as there was a lot of night time material that was slightly too dark.
In the scenes where Joyce’s remains are finally found by forensics, Guest wanted to create an uncomfortable and unnatural colour balance to emphasise the morbid and awful nature of the discovery. He says, “We added slightly burnt out highlights and a yellowish green look to those scenes. When they find her they discover a blue dress where the body would have been. This was a device that was used to remind the audience that this was a human life as there’s really nothing left of the remains. It was important to make sure that we didn’t lose the connection between the viewer and this blue dress in the grade.”
Dreams of a Life is still playing in cinemas across the UK and premieres in the US at SXSW in March. The nature of the piece has generated huge interest that has gathered pace over the last few months and is likely to continue to make waves for some time to come.
