interview and copy written for HPA
The traditional approach to filming chimpanzees in the rainforest is to use a relatively large camera and a very long lens, but Oscar-winning director James Reed (My Octopus Teacher) wanted to try something different.
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Reed and director of photography Ben Sadd wanted to make a truly character-driven series and so needed to be able to track the chimps continuously and to immerse the viewer in the details of their lives.
They also wanted a cinematic look mastered in High Dynamic Range and turned to Blair Wallace, Head of Grading at Evolutions, the respected Bristol, UK post facility. The Evolutions Bristol team provided all picture finishing for the series, winning Wallace the HPA Award for Outstanding Color Grading – Documentary.
“It was an exciting project and a pleasure working again with James who is a special storyteller,” says Wallace, who has worked with Reed on projects including Jago: A Life Underwater. “There’s scope for creativity in the grade when I work with James, but there’s also so much work the Bristol Evolutions team provide, ‘under the hood’, before we explore the films visual potential further.”
Shot over 18 months in the forests of Ngogo, Uganda, Chimp Empire is a KEO Films and Underdog Films production which follows the fortunes of the largest group of chimpanzees ever discovered. The four-part series, narrated by Academy Award Winner Mahershala Ali, explores the chimp’s complex society and how their ambition and that of neighboring rivals threaten to destabilise their empire.
“The Ngogo forest can be dark at times, the light spilling through the tree canopy can be dappled, bright and difficult to control both whist shooting and then in post,” Wallace describes. “The ‘subjects’ themselves will not wait for any sort of set up or to be lit! And when they move, they move very fast.”
That means Wallace’s first job in post was to access and ‘unite’ the footage. He was involved in early camera tests and with the help of the Finishing and Mastering Team that supports the grading suites at Evos Bristol chose a selection of processes including noise reduction and texture refining tools. A principal job on every Natural History project is to consider the texture differences between cameras.
“It’s common to have a dozen different formats to blend together,” says Wallace whose other credits include Queens (Disney+/NatGeo), the recent Emmy Winning Animals Up Close with Bertie Gregory (Wildstar Films/Disney+/NatGeo) and Earth from Space (BBC Studios NHU).
“Wildlife docs can be shot on everything from a GoPro to an 8K RED Digital Cinema camera. We almost have to switch our color perspective off with some of the shots to smooth the links between formats.”
“After the first technical pass I’ll grade exposure, contrast, white balance and color to further match the rushes and provide an even playing field to then manipulate further in the direction of the story and look.”
For Chimp Empire Wallace created a series of show LUTs by blending the look generators and style grades in Baselight and tested them over the rushes before fine tuning the look.
“Because there was a risk of the forest environment becoming ‘samey’ throughout the series James wanted me to avoid a generic look. We achieved this by injecting some other color palettes into the grade to reflect the mood of the scenes and the narrative of the story.”
In Natural History filmmaking quality over content is often a discussion during the finishing of process. “We’ll even consider shot changes in the color suite such as bringing out material that the director didn’t think they could use at all from a technical point of view,” Wallace says. “We can do so much nowadays in the grading suite to bring problematic material to life. James is intimate with every second of his rushes and is able to revisit footage he though unusable or suggest alternate shots which might work from a different visual perspective.”
The ‘cast’ of chimps were carefully selected during filming and it was vital that the viewer saw who was in frame however fleetingly during important moments of the story.
“Often the light coming from above meant special attention was taken to create post fill light for the chimp’s faces,” Wallace says. “We needed to see their eyes, understand their personalities and how they are communicating.”
He used defocus, multiple tracked shapes for faces and relighting techniques to draw the audience’s eye to the part of the frame intended by Reed.
The colorist was also contacted on several occasions by Sadd whilst on location in Uganda to discuss scenarios playing out in front of him.
“Ben discussed ideas as how best to capture in ‘current’ conditions and what would suit further manipulation once in post.”
Wallace says his long history of working on reality shows, drama documentary and factual entertainment like Top Gear prepared him for working with diverse camera formats and styles of shooting common to Natural History projects.
The biggest change over the last few years has been the gradual adoption of HDR mastering.
“That’s a move closer to opening a window and seeing the world closer to how we see it as far as light and contrast are concerned,” he says. “All our high-end projects are mastered, first, in HDR.”
RAW footage is favorable in that regard, he says. “The bigger the CCD and file format the better we can expect the translation of clean wide color and dynamic range images. However, it’s not always possible in production and we know that camera teams can’t always send large files from the field so, as a post house, we are realistic and aware of the differences in received rushes from the shoots.”
The series was mastered in UHD HDR Dolby Vision with an ACES color pipeline working with IDT and meta adjustments to native where appropriate, followed by an SDR Trim.
“Some briefs want big saturated colors whereas others want more of a cinematic feel. In Chimp Empire we were doing a lot of reshaping and post lighting to form the images and direct the audience’s eye. We used defocused matts, tracking of individuals and tampering down aggressive highlights to lean into a more cinematic feel. Other projects want the image to be sharp edge to edge with strong, vibrant primary colors.”
Wallace is currently working on a docuseries with Reed about a Dallas company using gene-editing technology to bring back extinct species including the woolly mammoth, the Tasmanian tiger and the dodo bird.
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