Coloring Monsters of Man

How long does it take to grade a whole film? What are the steps? 

In this article, I explain the end-to-end process of grading a sci-fi thriller indie film, working with the director to deliver his vision for his self-funded film. I describe how a colorist would complete such a project, from quoting a fee, to copying and trimming to agreeing the Look, to the tech grade, through to the final grade, review, and premiere. 

Monsters of Man was written, directed, produced and edited by Mark Toia and is available on streaming services now. It quickly went to sixth in the US for action/adventure. You can watch the trailer here.

Mark Toia is one of the world’s top commercial Director/DPs. He knows exactly what he wants, understands the post process and often grades his own work. So what would be different about the post process for his debut feature ‘Monsters of Man’ which was all shot on location in Cambodia, New York and Toronto?

I have been working with Mark for nearly 20 years. During the many hours grading his commercials, we’ve often discussed his desire to make a feature film. This blog covers the two year period after the completion of the edit to the premier screening in December 2020.

“How do you fancy helping me with the movie?” were Mark’s first words to me just before he had a locked cut. After I agreed, his second words were “I’ve got 20 hard drives with our R3Ds that need conforming first!” 

We negotiated on a flat rate for the movie that roughly worked out at 12 days. That included conform, tech grade for VFX, and a final grade, but no deliverables.  

CONFORM AND TRIM - 3 DAYS

Locations NYC and Vancouver

Monsters of Man was filmed run and gun style with 3 Red Dragons and 1 Helium, using Rokinon and Canon zooms.

I purchased a two-disk eSATA drive dock and proceeded to copy and trim the RED R3Ds with 24 frame handles for every shot in the movie. This took longer than I first imagined: 3 days. I kept looking over my shoulder for an assistant! Once I had all the trimmed media on my storage, I conformed with the new R3D media and the 20 HDDs went back in the box. Mark edits with FCPX, and the XMLs for each reel conformed pretty well. Reference movies from FCPX with burnt-in timecode, clip name, and original camera code, proved invaluable for the shots that were missing or wrong.

My main grading machine at the time was the MacPro Trash Can, EIZO 3146 4K monitor with a G-Tech 8TB external drive and Advanced Resolve panels.

THE LOOK DISCUSSION

We used Star Wars Rouge One as an early reference. We watched the movie and grabbed stills. We then watched the Monsters of Man rough cut with some temp grades from FCPX. This was followed by a one-day session in my grading suite in Brisbane where we played with the RED R3D files and created a look for all the key scenes in the movie. It would eventually change a little, but it stayed pretty true to our original intention. We discussed using ACES or a Resolve Color Managed workflow but the thoughts were we wanted to use the same workflow as Mark’s numerous TVCs, all very visual. What we did do was use the new RED IPP2 color science with a soft roll off applied for the highlights to de-bayer the RED files.

The first time we see a Robot.

THE TECH GRADE  - 7 DAYS

The following seven days involved me matching each camera and adding around 70% of the Look to each shoot. The matching was tricky as each camera was slightly different in Color temp and exposure. It was nothing that couldn’t be retrieved since we were grading the RAW R3Ds. All robot scenes were filmed with men in blue suits, which would eventually be replaced with the CGI robots. 

RED files graded for the VFX pass with Men in Blue suits

I was sending tests to lead compositor Raoul Teague who stressed the importance of a very close match for all the ‘blue men’ shots. He didn’t want to be chasing my grade when compositing the robots across multiple cameras. 

We tested DPX, EXR and ProRes4444, but because so many VFX shots were going to be worked on remotely using Frame io for transfer and approval, ProRes422HQ at UHD proved to be the best quality/smaller file size solution. 

I then sat back and waited. Mark would send through rough Robot comps from time to time for me to tech check on the Eizo monitor. I was blown away by the quality of the early test renders. I would also share via Frame io our ‘Look’ applied to the newly composited clips all viewed on the iPad Pro.

Top = Red Default.

Middle = Camera Metadata a semi day for night look

Bottom = The final Day for night grade

THE FINAL GRADE - 5 DAYS

The final grade was easier than I had originally envisaged – probably because we had put the hard yards into the tech grade. I received seven reels of ProResHQ and broke those up with an EDL supplied from FCPX. These new reels – which included all the VFX shots – now sat above my original r3d grade, so on the rare occasions where I needed to revert back to the r3ds I could easily promote that clip to the visible track and grade that. That was obviously only an option for the new ProResHQ VFX shots.

This was the case for the whole day-for-night scene at the end of reel 3, where one of the doctors gets lost and is pursued by a robot. (No spoilers)

The cave scene in reel 6 was a challenge for the team who had only just received the world’s third Red Helium – the second going to David Fincher no less!  Shooting in a cave lit by torches would have been a struggle for the Dragons, so the team reverted to a single camera shoot with the Helium for most of this scene. I didn’t use any Noise Reduction during the final grade as we liked the organic look of the RED noise in that scene.

The chase scene around the back streets and markets of Phnom Penh was one of the scarcest scenes I have ever worked on. A fine balance between darkness and tension was needed here and I was very pleased by the final look of this scene.

It was intercut with a night scene on the Brooklyn Bridge. The original color temperature was a little green and noisy here, so it needed a temperature shift and a touch of NR so that it intercut better with the Cambodia day shots.

Very soft Power Windows were used throughout, but never intrusively. I had mattes available for the Robots but didn’t need them – this was a tribute to how well the CGI was integrated into the plates. Mark and I played with adding digital grain. In the end we both felt that it didn't add any value to the movie, so left it clean. The only noise added was to the Robot shots to match the plates.

THE FINAL REVIEW - 1 DAY

The review was a pretty straight forward process. We spent a day tweaking. Mark won most of the grade battles, but I got a few of my ideas over the line which was pleasing. The great thing about discussing the ‘look’ at the start of the process was that everybody got locked in to the central concept, so late surprises were limited. Overall, it took a little longer than I anticipated, but the extra work was really worth it.

THE RED-CARPET PREMIERE

I must admit I was a little nervous heading to the premiere – on an iMAX screen no less! After all, I had graded the movie in Rec 709 on a 32” monitor. I needn’t have worried because Mark had done a great job with the DCP conversion and the movie looked very true to what we had seen all along.

Brisbane premiere screening

Monsters of Man is available worldwide watch it here

You can read about the unusual post-film fundraising effort here, read an interview from Mark on the cameras here or watch him talk about Frame io here.

Behind the scenes Movie 

Watch Mark and Warren talk about the film and answer questions at our Colorist Mixer.