POST- PRODUCTION | THE PROTÉGÉ
Colourist Vanessa Taylor on how she balanced the unlikely foliage in new action film, The Protégé SHADES OF GREEN D irected by Martin Campbell, The Protégé tells the story of Anna (Maggie Q) and Rembrandt (Michael Keaton), elite assassins who share WORDS CHELSEA FEARNLEY / P I CTURES NU BOYANA
to old collaborators. DOP David Tattersall joins the director for a third time after working on Vertical Limit (2000) and The Foreigner (2017), while editor Angela M Catanzaro returns for her latest project with Campbell. She also edited Reckless (2013), Warriors (2014) and two unaired television pilots. With Catanzaro and Tattersall on board, we can expect similar pacing and visuals to those we saw in The Foreigner . But the film’s story takes an unusual turn and moves the assassins out of a typical city backdrop and into a natural envrionment. Filming took place in Bulgaria, where set designers had to recreate the vibrancy of a Vietnamese forest by dressing the treeline with tropical plants. However, Tattersall also relied on the skills of the grading team to match the foliage and merge the greens of two different forests. Pulled together by producer Paula Crickard, the grading team included colourist Vanessa Taylor. “Tropical foliage is a bright yellow- green, whereas European foliage is darker and more blue-green, so I used hue, saturation and brightness controls to nudge the shades closer together,” says Taylor.
a mysterious past. When Anna’s mentor, Moody (Samuel L Jackson), is murdered, she and Rembrandt form an uneasy alliance to track down his killer in Vietnam. Campbell is well-known among fans of the action genre, as well as for his loyalty
24 DEF I N I T ION | JULY 202 1
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