The colour of magic

Academy Award-winning visual effects studio Framestore reunited with StudioCanal and producers Rosie Alison and Rob Silva on Paddington’s next big adventure. Paddington in Peru, directed by Dougal Wilson, is a family-friendly feature that sees Paddington and the Brown family journey to Peru, to visit Aunt Lucy in the Home for Retired Bears.  Animation director Pablo Grillo returned for the third film, leading over 100 animators to rebuild the bear in 4K, collaborating closely with VFX supervisor Alexis Wajsbrot. 

Framestore’s London, Montréal, and Mumbai studios crafted vast Amazon rainforest scenes, enhancing Andy Kelly’s intricate sets. Using location plates from Peru and Colombia, artists transformed Watford’s BerryBushes Farm into a dense rainforest. Previs, techvis, and the proprietary FarsightGo technology streamlined the shoot for efficiency. 

 “As usual, weather variables are always a challenge, but we got help from VFX,” says colourist, Jean-Clément Soret. “We used Baselight and a sheer number of external mattes provided by Framestore to intervene on different layers of the image.” 

Framestore crafted grand, green environments for Jon M. Chu’s star-studded Wicked, lensed by Alice Brooks ASC. The film explores the origin story of the witches of Oz, showcasing the studio’s expertise in creating epic, sprawling fantasy realms. 

Framestore’s artists, led by VFX supervisor Jonathan Fawkner, worked with production designer Nathan Crowley to enhance sets for the film. They expanded Munchkinland with millions of tulips, extended Shiz University, and heightened the Emerald City’s skyscrapers, adding visual magic to nearly every scene. 

Framestore brought Oz’s musical menagerie to life, creating Doctor Dillamond (voiced by Peter Dinklage), a CG goat that has to walk, talk, and sing, as well as a host of other fantastic creatures across Shiz’s faculty. The creative studio’s involvement began in pre-production, where Framestore Pre-Production Services (FPS), pre-visualised key sequences throughout the film, helping to set the pace and timing, and establish camera angles. Most notably for iconic song “Defying Gravity”, pre-visualisation supervisor Chris McDonald and the FPS team mapped out the flow of the musical number, and choreographed the characters’ movements through the Emerald City setting. They laid the groundwork for principal photography, after which the FPS team enacted a reprise in the form of post-visualisation, led by post-visualisation supervisor Maike Feine. This process provides early-stage animation on top of the plate footage, allowing Chu to lock down his final edit of the scene before handing over to Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) for the song’s final VFX. 

JUST ADD COLOUR 

Senior colourist Jill Bogdanowicz of Framestore sister company Company 3 Los Angeles played a crucial role in Wicked. Given the magical nature of the film, it’s no surprise that nearly every shot incorporates VFX elements, with some scenes being entirely CG. Most of the VFX work was handled by ILM and Framestore, along with several other companies, including Framestore (mentioned above). Bogdanowicz used her colour grading tools to finesse these effects, collaborating closely with VFX supervisor Pablo Hellman and Brooks. This collaboration allowed them to fine-tune the details while viewing the imagery on a big screen, providing essential context for their work. 

“You really get to know these characters,” she says. “You see their relationship develop throughout the movie and I related to a lot of things that happen from a female perspective and I think there will be a lot of women and girls who feel the same way.”  

THE LAST LAUGH 

Bogdanowicz and Company 3 Los Angeles also worked on Joker: Folie à Deux, reuniting with cinematographer Lawrence Sher ASC and director Todd Philips. She created a single show LUT for consistency, similar to the first film’s dark, gritty aesthetic. It evokes late ’70s/early ’80s film stocks, with a subtle cyan tint in the shadows. Folie à Deux required a new LUT to support Sher in maintaining a similar aesthetic. With Fleck and Harley Quinn (Lady Gaga) in full musical segments, the LUT needed to embrace richer, more saturated colours. Bogdanowicz and Company 3’s colour science team enhanced the LUT to showcase the vibrant colours from Sher’s lighting and design. 

LOOKING GOOD 

Picture post-production company Dirty Looks completed the grade, with colourist Claire Winter, on Timestalker, the new time-travelling comedy from writer/director Alice Lowe, shot by Ryan Eddleston. 

The film, produced by Western Edge Pictures, follows hapless heroine Agnes through time as she repeatedly falls for the wrong guy, dies a grim death and gets reincarnated a century later.   

 “Alice and Ryan wanted the painterly qualities of films like Barry Lyndon, but were keen to play with the vibrant hyperreal colours in the scenes which gives Timestalker its signature look,” says Winter. “It was wonderful working with the bright pinks and purples that Ryan had lit the scenes with, as well as that gorgeous soft look to the lenses. Grain and texture tools were used throughout, but we treated each era slightly differently in the grade to keep the contrast between them.” 

CRIME SCENES 

Netflix’s The Union reinvents the classic spy thriller with a gritty edge. Starring Mark Wahlberg and Halle Berry, the film promises high-octane action and gripping performances. Cinesite, as the lead VFX vendor, crafted 330 stunning shots under director Julian Farino, with production supervision by Adam Rowland and oversight by Max Dennison. 

“While The Union is primarily known for its fast action and live stunts, there are many invisible visual effects which contributed to the film’s overall impact,” Dennison said. “These effects are often subtle but essential in grounding the shots in the real world, and creating a believable and thrilling experience.”   

ITV’s crime drama The Tower has returned for its third series, The Tower 3: Gallowstree Lane. 

The plot follows police efforts to take down a south London drug kingpin, which escalates after a teen is killed on Gallowstree Lane. This four-part drama is produced by Mammoth Screen and Windhover Films, in association with ITV Studios. 

Michelle Cort, colourist at Outpost Facilities, says the company’s VFX department was tasked with building a multi-screen CCTV wall.” Our VFX team, led by Rob Jamieson, combined the whole world of The Tower‘s locations and characters so they were interacting in time with their separate scenes,” she says. “I then honed the CCTV look created in the grade for previous episodes, controlling the intensity to fit the drama.” 

Cort collaborated with DP Tasha Back and director René van Pannevis to craft the look of the series. They built Back’s preferred onset LUT for use in an ACES workflow, maintaining the shooting style of low exposure and contrast from previous series. 

“Tasha’s onset creativity really came to life in the grade, we enhanced her skilfully placed lighting to shape the low light scenes, such as the Perseus Offices, using Davinci Resolve’s HDR tools within the SDR workflow to intricately tweak the exposure and finer details in these shadowy locations,” adds Cort. 

GREECE IS THE WORD 

In Olivia Attwood’s Bad Boyfriends, produced by Optomen Television for ITV2, eight bad boyfriends are flown to a Greek island for a bromance series. They are shocked when Olivia reveals the true purpose: to reform them into better partners, with help from their undercover girlfriends. Andrew Cloke, ENVY senior colourist, aimed to capture the beauty of the Greek island, doing justice to its stunning locations. 

“My goal was to reflect the island’s charm and enhance the visual appeal of the series,” he says. Cloke developed two distinct looks for the key settings: the villa and the Bro Zone. “For the villa, we aimed for a crisp, lush appearance, with a colour palette subtly inspired by the Barbie film, incorporating pinks, blues, and whites,” he continues. “In contrast, we gave the Bro Zone a grimy, gritty feel, using browns, yellows, and oranges to create a darker, more rugged atmosphere.”  

Alexander J. Farrell makes a striking directorial debut with The Beast Within, a horror-thriller about an isolated girl uncovering unsettling mysteries. Co-written with Greer Ellison, the film features cinematography by Daniel Katz. Produced by Merlin Merton, Alex Chang, and Sebastian Street, with associate producer Kristina Tywoniuk.  

OnSight completed picture post for this project, with Andy Lee and Max Horton grading, Andrew Fisun and Adam Sample on online, and Andrew on the conform, overseen by senior post producer Joana Coelho. 

“Daniel Katz did a great job of utilising the Sony Venice’s ability to work in low light conditions using minimal lighting to great effect, capturing the textures and mood for the film,” says Lee. “In the grade we worked further to enhance the colour and texture, as well as manage the grain to create atmospheres that suited the film’s complex colour palette.” 

SETTING THE TONE 

Harbor has been leading three major productions, including Sweet Pea, a six-part dark comedy drama for Sky Atlantic, produced by See-Saw and Sky Studios. The series follows Rhiannon, who, after escaping a troubled childhood, faces the unravelling of her seemingly peaceful life after a chance encounter. Cinematography was by Nick Morris. 

“We started look development weeks before shooting, combining Nick’s visual references into a bold yet authentic grade,” says colourist Toby Tomkins. “The HDR hero grade has a slightly off-kilter feel that complements the macabre comedy. New Baselight V6 tools also enhanced my workflow.” 

Harbor was instrumental in shaping Netflix’s KAOS, a British dark comedy that intertwines Greek and Roman mythology. “A key challenge was distinguishing the three main worlds—Mount Olympus, Earth, and the Underworld—so the audience could stay oriented,” recalls colourist Alex Gascoigne. “At times we crosscut between worlds within scenes, so we had to ensure the different looks would cut together seamlessly.” 

Harbor also handled the post-production for Joan, a gripping six-part crime drama for ITV. Starring Sophie Turner as the infamous Joan Hannington, known as “the Godmother” of the British criminal underworld.  

Colourist Jateen Patel had previously worked with director Richard Laxton, but Joan marked his first collaboration with DP Pedro Cardilo. “It was easy to sync with both of them on the look, so the LUT build was straightforward,” Patel explains. “We went for a soft-contrast ’80s look, maintaining depth in the lower mids, keeping blacks higher than usual, and setting highlights down.” 

LET’S GET DIGITAL 

Digital Orchard is experiencing increased demand as productions restart, offering services ranging from onset DIT and video to dailies lab and film scanning. 

For Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Richard Newton served as DIT, praising DP Haris Zambarloukos BSC GSC for his exceptional work. Kat Newton managed data, while Jo Barker was the dailies colourist. Szymon Wryzykowski worked as a splinter unit DIT, supported by dailies cover DITs Núria Pérez, Dean Otusanya-Wood, Jake Williams, and Orchard Crew’s Mark Kozlowski. The second unit data needs were handled by Ben Chaude-Woodman, Andre Sapori, and Aeneas Macdonald, with workflow consultation from CEO Callum Just. 

In Heartstopper series three, Newton again served as DIT, supported by Joanna Rann, Nora Pribek, and DO friend Atalay Ulusoy at Digital Orchard HQ. For We Live in Time, Ria Brown was the video operator, with Valeria Chirica as her trainee, who noted, “Working with a female HOD has built my confidence.” 

Digital Orchard also provided crew for Disclaimer*, with video operator James Edgcombe and data manager Sophie Dymond. Iain Thomson was DIT for The Diplomat series two, while Edgcombe was video operator with trainee Chirica in Bad Sisters series two. 

The scan team recently scanned Bird, Harvest, Catching Dust, Origin (all 16mm), and Diciannove and the new Street Trash film (both 35mm). All on their Scanity HDR in 4K, with Origin in 2K. 

Digital Orchard also provided crew for the UK shoot of Disclaimer*, with video operator James Edgcombe (Jul–Oct 2022) and data manager Sophie Dymond (Jan–Feb 2023). Dailies cover was Richard Newton (DIT), with Daniel Saffer, Kat Newton, and Aeneas Macdonald (data managers) and Orchard Crew’s DIT Keir Garnet-Lawson. 

Iain Thomson was DIT for The Diplomat series two, with data manager Aeneas Macdonald and Orchard Crew’s video operator James Wade. In Bad Sisters series two, Edgcombe was again video operator with trainee Chirica. For second unit, Leya Ward was video operator, with Mat Lester covering main unit (dailies).