GOOD OMENS | DRAMA
The desire was to give Good Omens a timeless and courageous feel
of our Good Omens series, we further explore the grade and visual effects used to enhance and complement Finney’s shots. Finney set the tone from the very beginning, with a title sequence that is fantastically whimsical and does a great job of embodying the dark, fanciful and irreverent tone of Good Omens . Throughout the series, there is environmental foreshadowing, which is emphasised by the different colours and auras unique to individual characters’ dispositions, and post-production house, Soho-based Molinare, was tasked with continuing the tone and look that Finney had set up. Molinare was a perceptive choice, since a lot of Good Omens was shot around the streets of Soho. Definition recently visited Molinare, and upon entering its noiseless, yet unusually ambient theatres – referred to as “dark rooms” by colourists chatting in the hallway – we saw the suite used by Gareth Spensley for the grade. Spensley is one of the most sought-after colourists in the industry, having previously worked on some of the highest-rated drama productions in the UK, including Doctor Who and Killing Eve . Spensley took direction from Finney for the grade, as he explains: “Finney used a lot of technical film references, and he wanted me to incorporate the specific look of film stocks and processing techniques, as well as the look of classic adventure movies, crossed with more British adventure references. The desire was to give the series a timeless, courageous feel. Finney wanted it to feel like it was bedded into nostalgia, so the audience would feel comfortable with the quite fantastical biblical storyline.” The complexities of the show’s various elements – which often involved going
back in time to different eras – required careful attention and understanding. “The show had some multifarious flashback scenes, and under Gaiman’s direction, Finney wanted to create distinctive looks as we jumped through the different time periods,” says Spensley. He adds: “This was a gift and a joy to grade as a colourist. I think we covered every trick in the toolbox: period film print LUTs, complex colour crosstalk layers and classic ideas such as heavy desaturation as we zipped from the Garden of Eden to Noah’s Ark, and from ancient Rome to Blitz-era London.” The grade was done on FilmLight’s Baselight v5 and grading sessions took place with the Sony X300 as reference monitor and Panasonic OLED as client monitor. Molinare’s Theatre 1 was the backdrop for the final check and – with its many seats, a Barco DP90 DCI projector and an eight-metre wide screen – it enabled all relevant picture post-production teams to attend final check. Because of the multiple colour space deliverables, both HDR and SDR in UHD and HD, Spensley used the Baselight’s T-Log colour space and TCam display rendering transforms. “They offered the greatest flexibility to support the different looks Finney wanted to create,” he explains. “I was able to manage LUTs from our library, modern LMTs and the latest input colour spaces for the various shooting formats, all within one timeline.” CROWLEY’S CAR Demon Crowley’s 1920s Bentley is one of the most iconic elements of Good Omens . The car is clearly important to him – an extension of himself in a way – and by
L et’s be real, you probably watched it all in one sitting. So you know what we mean when we say Good Omens is a somewhat kitsch yet highly addictive production, flitting between a litany of pleasantly cliched English aesthetics, from the comic characteristics of PG Wodehouse to the unconventional, but now familiar style of Harry Potter. It’s clear a lot of love has gone into ensuring the show has a sense of nostalgia and reverence for fans, all the while capturing the hearts of those who haven’t yet read the 1990 novel by Neil Gaiman and Sir Terry Pratchett, from which the television series was adapted. When we spoke to DOP Gavin Finney in the last issue of Definition (June 2019), we learned his visual decisions were influenced largely by the characters and their dynamics. Remember, we’re talking about a series that encapsulates biblical Armageddon and is largely concerned with the war between good and evil – perhaps the strongest of archetypes. In part two
ABOVE RIGHT The Antichrist, an 11-year-old boy named Adam, and his three comrades
JULY 20 1 9 | DEF I N I T ION 33
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