Skip Kimball, senior colorist at Company 3 (www.company3.com), has handled the color grading for every episode of Duffer Brothers' (Matt and Ross) hugely popular Netflix series Stranger Things. This fifth and final season came with a few changes for the colorist, including new cinematographers — Caleb Heymmann and Brett Jutkiewicz — and the requirement of a theatrical presentations. Episode 1 and the cold open of Episode 2 premiered theatrically in London and Hollywood prior to the season dropping on Netflix. The two-hour series finale, "Chapter Eight: The Rightside Up," was also scheduled to run theatrically in select theaters on New Year's Eve and New Year’s Day, but due to demand, that number increased to over 500.
The Duffer Brothers, Kimball reports, continue to collaborate closely on every facet of the series and are very involved in color, although their process is to leave Kimball to do his work and then review it, rather than sitting in the whole time, which he says, represents a sense of trust they've developed with him over the nearly decade-long production of the series and the shorthand they share that quickly cues him into what they're expecting to see. Here, Kimball shares details on his grading process.
Tell us about some of the new aspects for this season?
“There are different storylines, different periods and different worlds. People can watch the show for details, but from my perspective, it involved preparing six different show LUTs to be used to help visually define each of these environments.”
When the show started, there was a lot of talk about its resemblance to films like Poltergeist and other '80s horror films. Is that part of the aesthetic?
“There's the time period of 1986 and '87. But we travel back in time in the '50s and the Duffer Brothers wanted a different look for that. Instead of calling it the ‘Fifties Look,’ we call it the ‘Creel House.’ When you know that you're in the Creel house environment, you see it right away. It's not like, ‘Where am I?’ For this particular place, they started off wanting more of a Technicolor look. It looked good, but it felt a little extreme considering that we spend a lot of time there. Then I came up with this more pastel approach and they fell in love with it.
“Then there's another world that they call ‘The Abyss.’ And that's a completely different LUT. I don't always use so many different show LUTs, but there really had to be all these different LUTs in this case because there is so much to the grade that it would take forever to adjust all the knobs in our sessions shot-by-shot.”
Are these LUTs applied in dailies for the Duffer Brothers and the editors to see?
“No. Company 3 in Atlanta does the dailies. Dailies colorist Nicholas Winkelmann just bakes in a LUT to normalize the imagery to Rec. 709 and works on the scenes in (DaVinci) Resolve get them to a good place for the editorial process.
“Then, for the final grade, after episodes are edited, instead of Rec. 709, I add a LUT to take everything into P3 space with a PQ curve, since we're grading in Dolby Vision for HDR, and I add the LUTs that we built for storylines. Then, all the grading I do after that is happening underneath these LUTs.”
Aside from applying the LUTs, what's the first step in your final color workflow?
“My first step is to take the camera raw into Resolve and sometimes adjust the metadata that was set on the camera.”
Is that because even the best conversion could conceivably limit your control over the image or jeopardize the result?
“Absolutely! I get to see, exactly how it was shot — the ISO, the color temperature. If they tweaked any other settings in the camera, I could see that it and then refine that if I need to. I think [the raw] is the cleanest and closest to working with the ‘negative.’ That's always my first step, unless the shot is going to go through a lot of VFX work, in which case I output to Linear EXR.”
What camera were they using?
“The majority of the show is Arri Alexa LF, but there are a handful of shots that are Red [various versions of the sensor] and very high-speed shots on Phantom high-speed cameras.
“For this season, they also shot some Super 8 for a flashback. That was shot combining real Super 8 reversal and Alexa and some Red material. I matched the Alexa and Red shots to the Super 8, which worked out very nicely.”
Were you involved in the initial decision to shoot digitally?
“Yes. The brothers originally were very interested in shooting on film and weren't sure we could get the look they wanted if it was shot digitally. They created some tests of Red- and film-originated material, and sent them to me. I showed them a number of split-screen tests where I put Red material that I made look like film on one side and the actual film test on the other. This was ten years ago and they were convinced. Then they switched from Red to using mostly Alexa LF around Season 4.”
Do you use the same techniques for that filmic look today?
“There's much more that we can do in Resolve today. This is the first year I've been using [Resolve’s film look toolkit] to add and alter grain and halation to the images. It makes that part of the work quicker and easier, and it gives you more control, especially halation.”
Were there any unusual color grading challenge specific to this season?
“Yes. In Georgia, they can no longer use fog machines on-set with minors. This show is based a lot on a certain look that involves atmosphere and fog, so there were scenes coming in from editorial that were just too clean. They like atmosphere in a room to give it an interesting depth. They don't like that crisp kind of feel you can get when you don't have fog or smoke. I came up with a way to simulate the look they used the fog machines for, only in Resolve. There are scenes in the show that cut back and forth between shots where they used real fog machines and shots where they didn't. I got them to match with the fog, which adds depth to a room.”
Fog and smoke can be very hard to make look realistic. What's the principle behind what you're doing?
“Definitely heavy use of the AI Depth Map and Magic Mask 2. Those have saved us. And I use those in combination with Light Rays and Glow — part of the built-in effects in library in Resolve. And a lot of Power Windows.
“There's a scene where I used some stills from the first Poltergeist to study that vibe and it looks really good. You could cut it back and forth with that scene and one of our scenes.”
How do tools like Magic Mask 2, AI Depth Map and Power Windows play into creating the fog effect?
“Because you want you want the fog to go be behind the character sometimes. It's atmosphere and there's a difference between how much fog is in-between the lens and your subject or your subject and the background. You have to roto certain things in the foreground to get more atmosphere in the background because you don't want to fog over an actor who's the subject of the shot.”
Some colorists have found Magic Mask a bit frustrating. Do you like Magic Mask 2 better?
“It's a huge improvement, but you still have to be really careful because if you make any sizing adjustment after the fact, it drops your Magic Mask off and you and you have to render. So, I've set up my machine and [finishing editor] Ray Ruotolo's machine so that if there's an error on the mask during a render, it gives you an error message. Ray can then tell me there was a problem and I can go in and retrack it. That ensures that if there is a problem, the shot won't get rendered out.”
This show has moments where viewers are on the edge of their seat. Do you get personal satisfaction in playing a role in that?
“Oh, absolutely! I mean, you know, it gives you goosebumps and a queasy stomach to know that you're the last creative person to touch it, because if you screw up - the whole show - you're screwed. So, [you’ve] got to make sure that everything you do is the best it could be.”
Have you been able to see the show projected in a theater?
“Yes. I got to go to the premiere at the Chinese (theater). It was great. They laughed in the right spots and they clapped in the right spots. It's what I expected and it was just a really good feeling. I wish I could see all of them with an audience!”