Wise Men Look To The Light

Well here it is, the epic vision of our original idea stripped down to its bare bones. At first it was done so grudgingly, then after some soul-searching, willingly. This particular production has been a beast-of-burden to remember. Mostly because of the scale and approval process involved. What you see above is not what we originally designed, and that’s OK, our original idea didn’t fit the mold of Mormon Messages. Patrick and I tend to layer things a bit too deep. The film has been stripped of all the narrative elements we originally weaved into the story.Thank goodness Patrick and I designed the piece so that it could be stripped of the narrative and stand as a simple documentary film. We also designed it so that if the interviews did not turn out we could have pieced the narrative elements into a story with scripted narration. But after all was said and done, and with Christmas around the corner, we defaulted to cut out the elements we knew would hinder the piece from being approved. Therefore, all of the narrative was taken out in the name of simplicity. It is now more Christ-powered and less Christmas-centered.

Although I really liked the more complex, layered version, ultimately we had to cut out our beloved B-roll. I like both versions, and will shortly post a link to a password protected site for a select few (those involved and close friends) to view the epic version we originally set out to do. So stay tuned.

The Technical

Let me tell you, color grading is a tedious process, however, it is the best bang-for-your buck investment you can make in your film. Next to sound, it’s vital.  It’s what separates the men from the boys. I have really delved into the technical and creative aspects of color correction the last few years. Patrick and I are sticklers for composition, color, mood, and feeling each shot engenders, therefore Color Grading has become a skill and process we have added to our post-production repertoire.

We purposely shot the narrative portion of this film very flat, images possessing little contrast between the darks and mids. This was in order to extract as much information as possible from the Canon 5D Mark II images so that we could have latitude during the color correction process. It was great to be able to pull information from the blacks that the Canon 5D will typically crush in neutral settings. Below is a screen-shot of one of the color graded shots.

Modern Wise Men