I had put a lot of thought into the look I wanted to achieve, and even before we arrived on the set, we did some critical work to achieve a clean image. A few days before the shoot, we brought all of the shoot monitors into the edit suite and calibrated everything as closely as we could. Here is a photo of that process. Then, our camera rig consisted of an Panasonic HPX500 – this is a 2/3 inch camera that I have spent a lot of time tweaking and setting up looks for. On the front of it, we used a Letus 35 adaptor with Canon zoom and prime lenses and a Chrosziel matte box. The lighting is a mix of soft window daylight, HMI, and tungsten lighting.

What this meant for post-production was that the color, contrast, brightness and overall look were achieved on the set. There was no correction done in post, except on the shot in the kitchen. This is big when you have a short deadline and need to edit, not spend time fixing exposure and color issues. I am coming to the place (perhaps it is back to the place) that we should create the look in-camera on the set whenever possible and change “fix it in post” to “enhance it in post”.