Tim Miller’s box office hit Deadpool is a dark comic and graphic take
on the superhero movie and was finished by Tim Stipan on Baselight at Deluxe’s
EFILM in Hollywood.
“Working on such a complex, effects-heavy project often requires various external
matte sequences in addition to multiple image tracks. Multiply that by the large
number of VFX vendors, and it meant we had a lot of different layers and mattes,’
said colourist Tim Stipan.
While the effects were vital to the story, Deadpool is a live action
movie and a key part of Stipan’s job was to work with DOP Ken Seng to design the
overall look.
During Deadpool’s production in Vancouver, they ran camera and lens
tests together then devised a set of reference looks on-set, much of which could be
created in camera to build a natural look. They also tested different film grains
extensively that were used for some of the versions of the movie, with the
exception of HDR, IMAX and Dolby Vision.
“We were going for a gritty look. We didn’t want a very saturated, bright, warm
superhero movie. We wanted it to feel much darker, colder,’ Stipan explained. “The
director, Tim Miller, is also an animator and VFX artist and was orchestrating the
movie visually and worked closely with us on the colour process.’
Part of the grading challenge was to match live footage consistently across the
scenes. Much of the film was shot in Vancouver largely on ARRI Alexa cameras. One
key sequence, a battle on a bridge, took 12 days to shoot, during which time the
Vancouver weather went through its full repertoire.
Stipan used Baselight to isolate Deadpool’s suit, and give the main
character a dark, modern touch – in keeping with the film’s theme and influenced by
the comic book. The director also wanted a particular vibrancy and substance for
the CGI character Colossus, so Stipan had mattes that allowed him to create the
right look for his clothes and body using multiple alpha channels.
One particular Baselight feature that Stipan found invaluable on this project was the
ability to see and compare multiple versions. “I could put Baselight in stereo mode
and see the cinema version and the HDR version at the same time – one eye on the
projector and the other on the monitor. This was really useful and helped to make
sure I was matching what I did for cinema across all the deliverables,’ said Stipan.
The movie was delivered in a number of formats, and while most of the VFX was in
2K the movie was finished in 4K, not least because of the need for an IMAX version.
While all the core grading was done on the FOX lot, for some of the deliverables
Stipan moved across town to Company 3. “They have a theatre with a Dolby
projector, so we went over there for a couple of days to do the Dolby Vision
version. Everything else was done at EFILM.’
“It was a challenge to finish the movie in time because there was so much VFX
work,’ Stipan concluded. “But the director was really impressed with the way
Baselight helped to bring it all together and indeed with what we could do with the
system itself.’
Deadpool is currently showing in theatres worldwide.
