International. The DaVinci Resolve Studio program was used to film Paramount's biographical drama about Elton John's early achievements, produced by Marv Films and Rocket Pictures, under the direction of Dexter Fletcher.
With George Richmond (BSC) as cinematographer, Rocketman's work dynamics on set were developed and managed by Joshua Callis-Smith of Onset Tech. Goldcrest Post was responsible for the digital intermediate and final version. Colorist Rob Pizzey took care of the final color adjustments, in order to deliver the film in Dolby Vision HDR format for homes and theaters, as well as in Rec. 709 SDR, while Daniel Tomlinson completed mastering.
Pizzey and Richmond began the pre-production stage by defining the main conversion table (LUT) and testing different targets and exposure levels with the elements designed for the film. "Next, three versions of the LUT were generated varying the exhibition, with the purpose of defining the basic aspect of the feature film, and I helped create a subtle chromatic arc for the copycats, in order to highlight the changing narrative," Callis-Smith revealed.
On the other hand, he added: "The laboratory where the copies were processed resorted to a Blackmagic eGPU unit for the first time, which allowed to achieve a higher speed when using an iMac 5K equipment through the Thunderbolt 3 connection, even when encoding in H.264 format."
Once production was complete, Richmond and Pizzey selected 350 screenshots from the film, intending to create a chromatic bible for final adjustments. They then spent two days choosing distinct appearances in each scene, before a two-week unsupervised color grading process, during which Rob adapted the style to the aesthetic defined above, making subtle additional cuts and adding sequences with visual effects as needed.
"My goal was to maintain the dim appearance we got with the old goals, making sure I didn't overdo it at the lower end of the corner. In one scene, we wanted everything to look dull, except for Elton and Reggie. However, there was a lot of color in the respective copycats. The houses were made of red brick, in the gardens green prevailed, and the dancers had colorful costumes. In order to achieve the desired style, we asked the visual effects team to create masks to help us ensure that the colors were not passed on to the other characters that were part of the dance routine," rob said.
