Journal

Thursday, December 12, 2002
Good morning. Spent yesterday afternoon and evening at Cinesite, just off Dean Street in London's Soho, and will spend this morning there as well, mostly film grading, and last night I was figuring out all the titles and things that need to go on the screen, picking a font, and so on.

Film grading (which sounds boring and incomprehensible, but turns out not to be either) consists of me and John Pardue (my Director of Photography) sitting next to several people who know what they're doing at a huge console of the kind that you pilot big starships with in movies while, scene by scene, my film appears on a screen, and John says "Can we make it a bit warmer? It's evening, yeah, up the yellows," and I say "That painting looks a bit washed out from the lights, can we block it and make it more intense?" and "now, his reply was filmed several hours later and we need to get the light to match that sunlight," and "well, her skin is actually green in the painting, but if you push it into grey it will remind us of what we've just seen more" and so on, while a man who knows what he's doing nods and grins and twiddles glowing red circular mouse-balls and flicks settings, and suddenly it all looks perfect.

Lots of really good suggestions coming in from people with ideas about what to do with the film.