Paramount Pictures and MTV Entertainment Studios released Jackass: Best and Last on June 26th, marking the final feature in the extreme-stunt documentary franchise. Johnny Knoxville and the gang return to perform all-new stunts, while also looking back at greatest hits and laughs from the past 25 years.
Jeff Tremaine directed the feature and once again turned to Burbank, CA’s FotoKem (https://fotokem.com) for post services, including the final color grade. For senior colorist Alastor Arnold, the project continued a long-running collaborative partnership with the filmmaker that dates back to 2006 and the franchise’s second release. Arnold, who was about to celebrate his 30th anniversary with FotoKem when Post caught up with him, just before the film’s release, has worked on all the Jackass films since, as well as some of the director’s narrative projects.
The new film, says Arnold, was the most complex to date, as it makes use of more than 30 video formats, including newly-shot material and footage that dates back to the show’s beginnings.
“They are very complicated projects, actually, even though they are kind of a little loose,” says Arnold of the Jackass films. “This one is special because this is a hybrid film, where they're revisiting material that was never seen. Some material that people were (cut) out of that they're putting back in, or they're showing some new stuff from previous bits.”
And while there is some work to create a consistency among the formats, Arnold says he tries to stay true to the original image.
“There's footage that's like 30 years old,” he shares. “We had material that even predated DV! There was one bit in the opening…I don't remember what camera it was shot on, but it might have been Hi-8 or something like that? It's like every camera that's ever been made, Jackass has shot something on it.”
The post timeframe for Jackass: Best and Last was relatively quick, with all of the color grading taking place in 2026 and only wrapping up a few weeks before the film’s June release.
“This one was particularly fast,” notes the colorist. “They started shooting pretty soon after they announced the movie…It's pretty rare for me to finish a movie with less than two or three months before the release date. And I think this one, we wrapped a theatrical (version) maybe about a month before the release, so it was very fast.”
Arnold says the look for Jackass releases can range from saturated to slightly flat.
“Jeff (Tremaine) tends to like something pretty punchy,” he relates. “I think (producer) Spike Jonze , (prefers it) a little softer…It's not too stylized. I do all kinds of work with Jeff, and I think they're all different head spaces. But Jackass, specifically, is reasonably polished for what it is. I think you also have to be careful not to over polish things too, because what happens is, it's like a cognitive disconnect. When things are too polished and too perfect, it might not feel real anymore. It might start feeling like a movie, so you're always trying to find the balancing act of keeping things feeling real, but still making them fun, because
Jackass is fun. It’s pretty pop-y generally.”
FotoKem is home to several grading theaters, all of which feature Blackmagic Design’s DaVinci Resolve as their color correction system.
“I'm a huge Resolve fan,” Arnold states. “I've been using it since I think Version 4 or 5…There are so many things in Resolve that I use on every (film). These projects kick your butt as a colorist because they're so raw. It's not like a like a typical movie, where everything is controlled.”
He points to Resolve’s magic mask and depth map tools as being extremely useful in his workflow.
“It basically alleviates the need to do very fine roto work,” he says of magic mask. “That and depth map, those two tools I think are two of the most profound tools that have been introduced for Resolve in the last 10 years. I'm not joking.”
Depth map, he notes, allows him to color correct in 3D space.
“You're actually building a Z-depth map of a shot and you're color correcting in 3D. That really can change your mindset of how you're going to approach a grade and how you would approach your work. Just being able to control the background a little bit more to pull the image apart, to stretch it, is a great example of the depth map.”
Magic mask he describes as a point & click rotoscoping tool.
“I can just point & click on someone's body, and I’ve got a matte for the whole person. You could never do that kind of roto work by hand. That level of roto would have taken a VFX artist a serious amount of time.”
Arnold’s work on the Oscar-winning feature Anora has led to an increase in demand for his grading skills. With Jackass wrapped up, he’s already booked well into next year with work that includes a Paramount feature, an Apple TV series and more indie projects.
“I'm starting to do more episodic work now too,” he shares, “so it's pretty diverse. I do a pretty wide variety of projects.”