2018

Anote’s Ark VR

Stitching, Masking, Color Grading, Online, Titles,
Format: 6K Equirectangular Stereoscopic (6144 x 6144)
VR 360 Video: 9 minutes
Producer: EyeSteelFilm, Matthieu Ritz
Festivals : HotDocs, EarthX, DocLands

I used Mistika VR to stitch the Mattieu’s footage from the Kandao Obsidian 6-lens VR camera. My background in stereography was helpful in achieving a comfortable stereo-grade for the project. 3D 360!

Anote’s Ark

Color Grading, Online, Titles, Packaging
Format: HD 1080
Feature Documentary: 76 minutes
Producer: EyeSteelFilm
Festivals : Sundance, HotDocs

Anote’s Ark humanizes climate change by following two characters who will lose their country (Kiribati) as a result of the rising sea levels. This film was shot over many years, with a variety of different cameras. The technical challenges of this film included managing large amounts of stabilization, matching camera styles and integrating an array of archives from high quality 16mm scans to low-quality flood footage from a cell phone.

2017

Offerings : Leonard Cohen exhibition at the MAC

Color Grading
Format: 5x screens, synchronized multi-screen projection (60′ x 9′ projection)
Documentary art exhibit:  35 minutes
Producer: Philtre Films – Kara Blake
Projection at the MAC Montreal (Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal)

Multi-screen art documentary exploring the life and art of Leonard Cohen. Kara did a masterful job editing this multi-screen piece in After Effects. The images flow across the 5 screens in many different screen combinations (Different image on each screen, large image across 3 center screens,  wide-image across all 5 screen, etc.) This is a pleasure to watch, but hell to conform in DaVinci Resolve! After a few conform tests, we opted to do the color grading directly in After Effects using the integrated Lumetri module. The process was more time-consuming that grading in Resolve, but we could ensure that the complex edit stayed perfectly locked. The new video-scopes in Lumetri were essential for color grading in After Effects.

TOKYO IDOLS

Online / Color Grading / Title animations and design / Packaging
Format: HD 1080
Feature Documentary: 86 minutes
Producer: EyeSteelFilm / Brakeless Films
Broadcaster: BBC, WDR, Arte, DR, SuperChannel
Festival : Sundance, HotDocs

An exploration of the Japanese “Idol” phenomenon and the underground cultures it has inspired. One particular challenge of this film was to unify the look of scenes that were intercut with 10 different cameras, shooting different frame rates. Often a mix of 29.97i, 25p and 25i footage was intercut in the same scene. This made the conform and online process especially challenging. In terms of color, this film was a real treat, Kyoko asked me to push the color in a way that would echo the sensory-overload of downtown Tokyo. I’m especially proud of the animated titles and subtitle in the film that give Tokyo Idols a bright and playful look.

RUMBLE: The Indians who Rocked the World

Color Grading / Animation
Format: HD 1080
Feature Documentary: 103 minutes
Producer: Rezolution Films
Broadcaster: CBC, ARTV, ARTE, HBO Canada, Movie Channel.
Festivals: Sundance Film Festival – Winner Special Jury Prize,
HotDocs Festival – Winner Best Canadian Documentary, HotDocs Audience Award

The amazing untold story of how Native Americans influenced American music especially the Blues, Jazz and Rock ‘n Roll. I worked in collaboration with Tony Manolikakis at Rev 13 Films to do the post-production finishing. Rev 13 was responsible for the conform, online and some color and I was responsible for color, some 15 animations and archival treatment. Because both Rev13 and Studio Hanneman were using DaVinci Resolve as a finishing and color software we were able to work collaboratively.  It was a technically challenging film on a very tight Sundance delivery schedule – and we made it happen!

MANIC

Online / Color Grading/ Packaging
Format: HD 1080
Feature Documentary: 87 minutes
Producer: EyeSteelFilm
Broadcaster: SuperChannel
Festival: HotDocs Festival, Winner “Pay it forward” Prize

One of the key artistic challenges on this film was to integrate many different types of home-movie archival footage raging from Super-8 to VHS and HD. The bulk of the interviews for the film were shot over a 4-year span and included Canon 5D MKII and Sony EX3 footage. The director, Karina, wanted to frame the narrative of her brother in blue/green light and her sister in pink/orange light. In terms of color, this was a fun project to apply different color style/moods to different characters.

MOVE

Color Grading
Format: UHD/4K 3840×2160
Dance film: 4 minutes
Producer: Sandy Silva
Festival: San Francisco Dance Film Festival

PILGRIMAGE

Color Grading
Format: HD 1080
Dance film: 10 minutes
Producer: Sandy Silva
Festival: Bucharest International Dance Festival, Aesthetica Short Film Festival, Krakow Film Festival,

JUGAAD

Online / Color Grading/ Packaging
Format: HD 1080
Feature Documentary: 75 minutes
Producer: Susannah Heath-Eves
Broadcaster: CBC Documentary
Festival: Lunenberg Doc Fest

A wonderful trip through Mumbai as we follow colourful characters in their daily adventures. This film was a real treat to color grade, India has such a rich and unique color palette.

AMOUR ET ARGENT FONT BON MÉNAGE

Online / Color Grading / Packaging
Format: HD 1080
Feature Documentary: 45 minutes
Producer: Sophie Bisonnette, Relais Femmes, Autorité de Marchés Financiers

A documentary video to be used as a teaching resource to inform Quebec couples of the legal and financial distinctions between common-law unions and marriages.

2015-2016

ONLINE EDITOR at POST-MODERNE

Online editing, finishing, credits and subtitles
with occasional color work and VFX.

It was an enriching experience to work on so many good projects
alongside a team of talented colorists and post-production technicians.

2014

CHAMELEON

Online / Color Grading
Format: HD 1080
Feature Documentary: 78 minutes
Producer: EyeSteelFilm
Broadcaster: The Movie Network, Movie Central, in competition at IDFA Festival

This film follows Ghanaian investigative reporter Anas Aremeyaw Anas as he goes undercover to set up covert investigations and report on crime. The challenge of this film was to blur and reframe the main character’s face in a way that didn’t detract from the story. The blur styles were adapted to each scene and were then tracked and animated so that they didn’t interfere with other elements in the scene. The main concern when reframing was to maximize image quality. The main technique was using resize keyframes in a way that complemented the hand-held camera movements along with Resolve’s resizing capabilities.

JUANICAS

Online / Color Grading
Format: HD 1080
Feature Documentary: 77 minutes
Producer: EyeSteelFilm
Broadcaster: Festival Distribution

Shot over the course of 10 years, Juanicas is a powerful film that portrays the impact mental illness has on a family. The main challenge of this project was to conform many different formats and frame rates into DaVinci Resolve. The formats on this project included Super 8, DV 4:3, DV Anamorphic, DV Cinema-style (29.97 shot as 24), DVCPRO HD (960×720), HDVi60 (1440×1080), 1080p2398 footage and 1080i60 animations. The film was given a unified “untreated” look while adding just enough “denoize” so that the grain in the low-light footage was not distracting.

Online / Color Grading
Format: HD 1080
Feature Documentary
Producer: Rotating Planet
Broadcaster: Documentary Channel (CBC)

This was the first documentary I finished that was primarily shot using the Sony F55 camera. During the color grading process, I was impressed by who much detail I could pull from the highlights. I could also boost the shadows substantially without creating too much noise. I only used my trusty Neat Video Denoiser a couple of times on the entire edit!

Online-Editor / Color Grading
Format: HD 1080
Feature Documentary
Producer: Artesian Films
Broadcaster: Documentary Channel (CBC), ARTV (SRC), SuperChannel, Theatrical

Finished using AVID Symphony and DaVinci Resolve, this documentary was shot over several years with a variety of different camera formats and archival footage. The initial conform went very well, AVID really shines with these types of large, complex, multi-format projects.
The main focus of this documentary is music in the Jewish diaspora. I would always find myself whistling the tunes from the doc days after having worked on it!