Paramount Pictures’ Smurfs is an animated feature driven by the voice talents of several well-known performers, including John Goodman, Rihanna, James Corden, Nick Offerman, Daniel Levy, Sandra Oh, Octavia Spencer, Hannah Waddingham, Billie Lourd and Kurt Russell. The film centers around Papa Smurf (Goodman), who’s been mysteriously taken by evil wizards Razamel and Gargamel. Smurfette (Rihanna) leads the tiny blue creatures on a mission into the real world to save him. The film was directed by Chris Miller and underwent color grading at Picture Shop.
Senior colorist Mitch Paulson (pictured), who has a background in animation, handled the grade. In addition to credits that include Blade Runner 2049, Skyfall and Sicario, Paulson has also collaborated to a number of animated projects, including Transformers One,
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem and
Star Wars: The Clone Wars.
Animated project, he shares, require their own level of color correction, not unlike live-action productions.
“It’s more than people would expect it to be,” he notes of animation and the need for a color grade. “Because it is generated in a computer, you would think it would be perfectly matched and exactly how they want it. That’s never the case. We were pushing it pretty hard on some of these movies.”
In the case of Smurfs, the feature was graded in Picture Shop’s large theater, which is equipped with a Barco projector.
“We did our hero grade on the Barco Light-steering HDR projector, which is brand new,” he reveals. “[The filmmakers] had never even seen the movie in HDR. When they were making it, it was all SDR. So from day one, it’s figuring out how the HDR look is going to be for the rest of the movie, because it’s going to finish in Dolby Vision for home video. That’s going to be where it lives forever. We decided to do it on the Barco so we can get it closer to what it’s going to end up living as...The blue of the Smurfs needed to be ‘that blue,’ but as far as the overall look, it was a little discovery in the beginning.”
According to Paulson, the grade can do more than just boost color — it can also unify elements that have been handled by artists across the production.
“They have so many people working on it,” he says of the film. “You may get different compositors and different lighters, and just all these little things that when you put it all together, can make a shot very different.”
Paulson uses Blackmagic Design’s DaVinci Resolve for grading. The Barco projector is relatively new, replacing a Sony monitor.
“Just a year or two ago, I was doing everything on a Sony X300 monitor, because they wanted to see it as bright as possible. But now with the Barco projector, we can get it relatively close to that same brightness and see it on a giant screen, which is even better for the filmmakers.”
He’s currently using Resolve 19, and says he’s a fan of its power windows and 3D keyer.
“That’s kind of my go-to,” he says of the tools. “[What’s] very interesting with the animated movies though is, we get delivered thousands of mattes to break down the whole image. Every little part you can think of, I get a matte for. Because Resolve is all node-based, it’s a lot easier to set up all the mattes. Now that they have the preview too, it’s great to see what’s in each channel. So (I’m) using that on every shot of these animated movies.”
His first color pass usually spans between 80 and 100 hours. He’ll then spend a few days working on various deliverables.
“There are some scenes in the movie that get very colorful,” he shares. “So, it’s just wrangling that in. You want to make it colorful, but you also don’t want to just clip it out and go too crazy with it. It was finding that balance. There’s really cool stuff with magic — I don’t want to give away any of the movie — but it’s some cool effects and stuff that they do in the movie, and especially doing it in HDR, we were able to push those even more. It’s pretty cool.”
His feature work will continue in the months ahead with work on Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 and
The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants, both of which are set for release this year.