DRAMA | THE EDDY
ABOVE A behind-the-scenes shot of André Holland as Elliot Udo, with DOP Julien Poupard
film and better than other digital cinema cameras for what we wanted to achieve.” Poupard adds that the Red Helium was chosen primarily because he could crop the Super 35 8K sensor to match that of Super 16, but still record at 4K resolution. “Shooting with a sensor the same size as Super 16, rather than cropping in post, gave us exactly the same angle of view and the same depth-of-field.” To maintain visual consistency, they retained the same set of Zeiss Classic T2.1 glass used in the first episodes. Gautier’s gaffer, Eric Baraillon, also worked with Poupard and Spencer throughout their shoot. The show went through an ACES colour pipeline, aided by Gautier’s long-time colourist, Isabelle Julien. Colour scientist Florine Bel also provided Julien support for episodes 3 and 4. “ACES is a huge colour space, so we had to create a special LUT,” explains Poupard. “We shot Redcode Raw and made tests to find the right shade of each blue and red. If we had too much colour in the frame we had to shut down, say, the blue and the
This presented the filmmakers with an interesting challenge, Poupard says. “Damien, Eric and I discussed how we could best translate the aesthetic to digital and concluded that we shouldn’t try to match it exactly. The aim was to find a close match of the colour, contrast and lighting, while at the same time leaving room to interpret our episodes differently.” Narratively, this made sense, since each of the episodes focuses on a different character’s story. Aesthetically, too, it is in keeping with the goal of retaining idiosyncrasies in the raw footage, rather than seeking total control over the image. “For me, it was important not to do the same thing all the time,” Poupard says. “Not to exactly match Éric’s work and not to establish too rigorous a formula.” RED HELIUM Gautier explains they felt the Red Helium 8K sensor was the best option for carrying over the film look, and the best digital system for transitioning the workflow. “Red offered a texture that was not too far from
THE EDDY WAS RELEASED WORLDWIDE ON NETFLIX ON 8 MAY one be greenlit – take on the baton and experiment further. “I’d like to see an evolution in stylistic differences in mood and lighting that we began with this series, but taken further,” he insists. “Nothing should stand still.” Constant evolution – just like the best free jazz. green. It was very complex.” The deliverable to Netflix had an aspect ratio of 1.85 and was in both HDR and SDR. “We shot for HDR delivery but didn’t have HDR monitoring on-set,” says Poupard. “In the final grade, we graded in HDR before Isabelle made the conversion for SDR.” Having set the template for the series, Gautier is keen that a second series – should
The aimwas to find a close match of the colour, contrast and lighting, while leaving room to interpret our episodes differently
20 DEF I N I T ION | JUNE 2020
Powered by FlippingBook