by Lizbeth Nunez
From left to right: Daniel Andrade as Nigel and Janelle Garcia as Raven from Sherwood © SkySoft Entertainment
The year 2020 has been a rather disappointing one for many of us. I, for one, was looking forward to my first job as a color grader for a new show on SkySoft Stream. Of course, life had other things planned for us, which came hand-in-hand with some important lessons, one of which is the power of patience. Learning to do anything that you plan on getting really good at requires lots of it, whether we like it or not. Becoming a color grader is no different, which is why I’m grateful to SkySoft and all its subsidiaries for allowing me to share my experience in becoming Sherwood’s, and eventually SkySoft’s, in-house color grader.
I came on board with the production in early 2019, and I met with director Monroe Hayden and talked about what the show could look like. “I want it to be saturated and graphic, and if we can pull it off, I’d like dusk scenes. I want the colors to pop and be more vibrant than we’ve ever done before,” she said. The main reason for this is quite impressive. Monroe has watched over two decades of post-apocalyptic films and noticed that they all use the same bleached, de-saturated, and green look. She knew she didn't want to make yet another film like that, so we had to find a way to make it saturated and rich. The only problem was I had minimal experience. But with great patience, she sat down with me once a week and taught me how to do it so that when the day came where they’d be sending me footage, I’d know exactly what to do.
Gritty Image
Her first lesson was a month’s worth of films and shows she assigned me to watch just to get some grounding on the type of genre we were a part of. I was very conscious of making sure there was some sort of "grit" to the images to portray that humanity is failing as a species, industrial machines are old and smoggy, and there is no filter system to provide clean air or water. We, that is to say Monroe and I, didn't want to make an overly plastic or fake-looking saturated image. There needed to be some sort of rawness in the look as well. In general, one of the aspects of the look was to apply a lot of sharpness. We liked how it often brought out some grit in the image. Each shot was sharpened independently, and often we focused on certain parts of the frame more than others to help draw attention to specific areas.
Janelle Garcia as Raven from Sherwood © SkySoft Entertainment
We also kept the green mid-tones that most apocalyptic visuals tend to have, not only because it makes things look gritty, grungy, and dirty, but also because this was a Robin Hood story. The green would ultimately help sell the uncleanliness of the Wastelands while also offering a themed hue to reflect our hero’s color palette.
Since the show mostly takes place in the desert and canyons, we knew it could get visually boring very quickly, which is another reason for going with a rich, colorful palette. Watching three hours of de-saturated desert tones would be dull. Once there was a rough cut of each episode, we looked at the scenes and worked out how we could break up the visuals to create some variety in looks and differentiate the landscapes and story points.
Basic Balance
With most of the shots, we did a basic balance using printer lights first, and then we jumped into video-style grading tools after that. I always worked under the LUT but used traditional video tools such as lift, gamma, and gain. I also used some soft keys to add contrast to certain parts of the image which helped retain detail in the extremes. These were all things I had no idea about prior to 2019, so if I could learn all of this in a year, then you can too, with the proper direction and help, of course.
Subject-Targeting
Every shot in the film has been worked quite hard in the grade. Monroe is big on what she’s phrased as “subject-targeting"; the audience should not have to search the frame to know what's important in the image. We would shape each shot in order to guide your eye to the critical story points in any given frame. We used standard techniques like vignettes or shading down parts of the frame to draw your eye to what's important, very similar to how she created Fox. The overall experience should be smooth, and even though levels may be changing across cuts, the idea is that you shouldn't notice it.
For each look in the film, I made sure there was a connection between them. Whether it was a contrast level or a saturation level, the scenes needed to flow. Whenever I'd work on a scene, I'd always go back and watch the scenes with audio to make sure I wasn't missing anything important and that it flowed across the cut. Some scenes may have been more saturated than others, and the warmer mid-tones would be more prominent or the cooler tones would take over. Monroe made it very clear that the use of colors would help tell the time of day and signify that not all scenes are directly after the other; some take place the next morning, some later that day, or some at dusk. The thought behind it is that light and colors change throughout the day in real life, and it’s important to reflect these subtleties in film, even if it goes unnoticed.
Samuel Tabiendo as Havoc from Sherwood © SkySoft Entertainment
Color As A Tool For Storytelling
The dusk scenes are 70% blue and 20% cyan, so it obviously affects the skin tones as well. I kept 10% of the original color in the scenes, and occasionally we pushed a color for story reasons, like the blacks in the dusk scene in Episode 1. They were pushed more to keep Havoc in the shadows so that we don’t really get a clear visual of what he looks like. Monroe wanted to make sure all her villains’ faces would remain hidden in the first episode they’re introduced to provide a hint of mystery and fear. The thought behind it is humans tend to be most afraid of what they can’t see, so the less we show you, the more mystery the character has. This ultimately adds discomfort because if you can’t see who’s committing these horrible acts, it could essentially be anyone lurking in the shadows or hiding behind a mask. If you pay attention, there is no clear shot of a villain’s face in Episode 1, the pilot.
Monroe Hayden as Natasha from Sherwood © SkySoft Entertainment
This is also why we highlighted certain parts of the frame or objects within the frame such as The Sheriff’s eyes, the morning following Havoc’s dusk scene. Originally, her eyes were shadowed due to the mask and the light source coming from behind her. However, even though that added a sense of discomfort, when we highlighted her eyes so you can see them clearly, that changed the mood from uncomfortable to frightening because now you can see there is someone inside the mask who is feeling something, even though you can’t see the rest of her face. Hiding the villain from the viewer so that they don’t yet know who they’re afraid of is terrifying on its own, but when the villain is in broad daylight and you can see more of her, that terror is amplified.
The use of both bright and dark colors is a technique used to help tell the story and push the characters into their roles. For example, the heroes are revealed quickly or require no reveal at all, symbolizing that anyone can be a hero and is capable of doing the right thing. On the other hand, the villains are revealed slowly and are often either hiding or lurking nearby, denoting that those who do evil things know exactly what they’re doing and are deliberately hiding their identities. You never know who has ill intentions until they’ve already hurt you.
Day-For-Dusk (D4N)
One of the toughest parts of Sherwood for me was working out the right look for the Day-For-Dusk (D4D). Monroe has worked on a technique of shooting two stops overexposed on the day shoot very much the same as D4N (Day-For-Night). The theory behind this is quite simple: with an overexposed image (without clipping highlights), we can expose the shot back down in the color suite, then grade the image to create the Dusk look. We can then selectively bring out any detail from the shadows that we wish with virtually no noise. This enabled me to create very graphic contrasty images with detail exactly where I wanted it and a fall off into shadows where I didn't want it. Almost every D4D shot was basically roto'd.
Samuel Tabiendo as Havoc from Sherwood © SkySoft Entertainment
This technique was previously tested in Fox’s final season when Fox fought Anu for the first time. The only difference is that they graded the image to create a bluish-grey look and the sky was replaced.
Interior Car Shots
One of the other trickier elements of the show was grading the interior car shots. As you can imagine, when shooting in the bright desert sun, if you expose the dark interior of the car, then the background outside the window is severely overexposed. This eyesore had not gone unnoticed in season 3 of Fox and the second season of 365. Monroe wanted to make sure that it wouldn’t happen again or that it would be fixed to bring less attention to the overexposure.
Janelle Garcia as Raven from Sherwood © SkySoft Entertainment
We wanted to always retain detail and saturation both inside the car and outside the car. This meant a lot of keying and detailed shape work to keep both sides of the exposure looking rich and saturated, although for some shots, keeping those spots a little brighter added more contrast to the image in the car to prevent it from looking matted and flat. Other times, I balanced the overexposed areas by overexposing something in the car or in the foreground to make it less noticeable. Sometimes that technique was faster. For the most part, I approached shapes in two ways. The first was to use very soft shapes as a way to shade and shape the image. The second was to do very precise shapes, which usually required a lot of tracking and roto'ing, such as eyeballs.
VFX
The grading stacks are quite large on this show and are bigger than any show SkySoft has released before it. Monroe also trained me to keep every change in its own layer so I can control it separately and disable it if necessary.
In conjunction, she also had me work very closely with the VFX team on this show. There are actually a lot of VFX shots in the show, from basic sky replacements to highly detailed composited backgrounds, gun shot fire, blood, and explosions, which ultimately require CG smoke and dust/debris particles. I color graded every layer.
Golden Reflectors and Yellow Hues
No, no one in the show was spray tanned. Jacob Maciel was dusted in bronzer but that’s as close to a tan as the cast got. A concern of Monroe’s was that the actors would look too pale since the show was filmed during the winter rather than the summer like the hues would suggest. This was done because of heat factors that would occur during the summer or even spring seasons in South California.
Monroe Hayden as Natasha from Sherwood © SkySoft Entertainment
To achieve this look, during principal photography gold reflectors were used to shine upwards below the actors, particularly the show’s leading ladies. This was used for a number of reasons other than to make them look tanned and the environment hot.
From left to right: Monroe Hayden as Natasha and Janelle Garcia as Raven from Sherwood © SkySoft Entertainment
Because they filmed during peak daylight hours, the sun was directly above them, which means that a lot of their shadows would be below them and wouldn’t showcase their features in the best way. To get a sense of this, try turning on a light that hangs from the ceiling and look in the mirror. You may find that your bags are more enhanced and your nose looks different. This is due to the shadows that are produced by the light source being above you. To balance that out, a light source must also come from below, which is where the reflectors come in. The reflectors do precisely what their name suggests: reflecting light. With a gold reflector, the light that bounces off it is yellow, which makes the subject appear more golden or, in this case, bronzed.
Janelle Garcia as Raven from Sherwood © SkySoft Entertainment
However, that’s not the only thing that we did. While in post, I focused the colors again in the warmer hues, particularly the yellows. This is what makes the mountains of sand pop. When I did that, the actors also got more golden.
Despite the camera tricks and color grading techniques that helped make the actors look great onscreen, I would also like to note that they are very good looking in real life as well. So their appearance can’t be credited to us alone.
In conclusion, this experience has changed my whole outlook on film. It’s easy when you’re starting out to believe that all you need to do is grab a camera and start shooting and things will look great, but in actuality, that’s just the first step in a journey of over a thousand. Allowing time for post-production to fully get to work on your footage does help the overall project, and I am very glad that someone who started in-front of the camera like Monroe understands that. Colors mean something on film and although they can be used in several different ways to help tell a story, understanding the use of them certainly elevates a project. Sherwood will always hold a place in my heart, and every time I see a frame from the show, I remember the patience required to get there. Through working on Sherwood, I was able to land some pretty snazzy color grading jobs while also becoming SkySoft’s in-house color grader. I was given time to refine my craft to color this project. I was determined, but most of all, I was invested in proving that a little time and a lot of patience can have its rewards.
NOTE: Due to Covid-19, the production and release of Sherwood has been delayed until further notice. Thank you for your patience and understanding!
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