DEFINITION December 2019

DRAMA | H I S DARK MATER I ALS

“I discovered when I was working on the project how much excitement and expectation surrounds it,” says Jean-Clément Soret, Technicolor’s senior digital supervising colourist. Soret was responsible for helping the various directors and cinematographers on the project to maintain a consistent look throughout the series and was brought on early to consult on the colour palette. “There was no pilot for this series, so episode 1 defined the leading look for the whole of the first season,” says Soret, who worked closely with cinematographer Justin Brown and director Tom Hooper on the first two episodes. “We had early discussions on how to replicate 35mm colour space, and we had the Technicolor colour science team involved in creating look up tables and emulations of print looks with material provided by Justin that were shot on film and digital. “When we did the test with Justin on 35mm, we tried to decipher how it would look compared to digital. The decision was made to add a bit of subtle film grain throughout the episode. As a colourist, you play with sharpness, softness, defocus whether on the whole image, whether on some parts of the image, and it’s really playing with textures and that’s part of colour grading. “In colour grading, there is always lots of yourself you put into the work. It’s your own taste, techniques, your own recipes.” GRADING THE MULTIVERSE ABOVE As there was no pilot for His Dark Materials Jean-Clément made sure the look was established in Episode 1

We tried to be clever with the animals we chose, so they always gave us a range of emotion

agreed straight away that the daemons should look and act like real animals. It would have been a deal-breaker for me if she had wanted to cartoonify the daemons or warp their faces with the actors’.” The children’s daemons change form frequently, but this would be difficult to portray in the show without confusing the viewer. Dodgson says: “In the first book, Pan takes about 35 different animal forms. We gave him eight in the series. Not because of budget, but because we wanted the audience to fall in love with the character and become familiar with how he behaves in different circumstances. You can’t do that if Pan is always different. You need a baseline so you can develop and understand the character, and I didn’t feel that – with 35 different characters across eight hours of TV – I would be able to make a consistent, recognisable, understandable and loved performance.” Pan changes form to reflect Lyra’s feelings and her situation. When she’s sleeping, he’s the comforting stoat. When she’s feeling adventurous, he’s the curious pine marten. However, this changes when Lyra’s adventure takes her north and Pan takes the form of an arctic animal instead. Dodgson adds: “We tried to be clever with the animals we chose, so they always gave us a range of emotion and performance based on their characteristics.” Pan isn’t the only human’s daemon that got a meticulous casting. This was done for all the daemons, and Dodgson looked at hundreds and hundreds of photographs of different animals to define their disposition

production designer] created an incredible set for the Retiring Room. It had a beautiful vaulted ceiling and dark mahogany walls.” He continues: “And so, we had this dark interior, what was supposed to be daylight on the outside and some windows. Tom also likes to let his actors rehearse and then almost inhabit the space and go where they want to go – so it was quite a tricky scene for me to light. I couldn’t just place marks. The lighting almost needed to be 360, because we shot the whole scene in one go. I think it looks great, though. It’s just how I imagined that scene when I was reading the book as a kid.” A GIRL’S BEST FRIEND Dodgson’s decision to join the TV show hung on whether Jane Tranter, who works at Bad Wolf productions in Cardiff, shared his vision for the daemons. Luckily, she did. He explains: “When you create creatures that speak, there are a few immediate questions you have to ask yourself. The first is, how human do you make them; should their expressions and gestures be human? The second is, do you make them cartoony or realistic? We both

IMAGES Shots of Lyra, played by Dafne Keen, and her daemon, Pan

20 DEF I N I T ION

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