‘The girl of communion’: an ethalonage at the service of terror

Jorge Ortz Yuss (Deluxe), Colorist of ‘The Girl of Communion‘, recounts the keys to the color treatment of Víctor García's new raid in terror, which lands in theaters throughout Spain on February 10.

Return to House on Haunted Hill (2007), Hellraiser: Revelations (2011) o Gallows Hills (2013) already allowed to obviously intuit the preferences of Victor Garcia for the most visceral terror. After a brief step by the thriller with An Affair to Die For (2019), the filmmaker returns with The girl from communion, a return to the most terrifying side of cinema with a different visual approach to the rest of his filmography.

Set in an indeterminate town of the 80s, The girl from communion Tell the story of young people who, after partying, find a doll dressed in a communion suit. From there, without entering spoilers, a series of situations that openly drink from terror will occur eighties teenager Without giving up, yes, without giving up the identity signs of the Spain of that decade.

From the visual point of view, Garcia, with the support of the director of photography José Luis Bernal, they designed a staging that moves away from gender standards: the aggressive supersaturation Of the most common films of the genre, it is replaced by a Natural, elegant scene, who drinks references such as The Llorona, La Moscow, The Ward or Insidious.

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From photography to postproduction

The technical team of The girl from communion worked from Early phases of production to ensure that the filmed material corresponded as much as possible to the result they had imagined in their Preliminary studies; the one who had managed to capture in the Technical tests.

In this phase, Bernal worked closely with costumes and talent To try to define the look Final of the movie. With experience in numerous tapes such as The HAIRY and experience in serials like Hierro and Rapa, the director of photography leaned on the camera Sony Venice and a wide set of optics, including several options vintage, in order to grant an extra film fidelity to the film; the imperfection, like so many times, it is put at the service of the film experience.

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The feeling of photochemical

Once the filming is finished, Jorge Ortiz Use, from Deluxe, he took over the ethalonage of the film for two months. Taking all the references of the film and with the support of Bernal, he defined the Aesthetic line Of the different sequences, these will be in days, nights, interior or exterior. Despite their differences, common elements survived: "We said to create an aesthetic with images with little color, so that many of the details would be intuited without disappearing at all. Even so, red remained as a predominant color throughout the film."

In parallel, Ortiz, Bernal and Garcia notoriously bet on the integration of grain In all scenes, in order to integrate the eighties aesthetics of the tape with the Visual fidelity which the digital contributes: "We have tried to simulate the photochemical emulsion transferred to the digital archive. Digital supports, in the end, allow us to add more or less definition to the scene, and more or less grain, which brings a certain warmth, a more cinematic touch."

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The challenges of The girl from communion

The girl from communion It was ethical using DaVinci Resolve Studio, multidisciplinary software of Blackmagic Design. Ortiz, who has been working with this tool since 2010, was able to make the most of the key functions of the software, which became essential for The girl from communion.

Among them, the use of tools such as Magic Mask, masks that are automatically applied to a person or element that are detected automatically or semi -automatically by the software: "As we work with a unattached look, we ran the risk of the natural tones of the actors from the actors.

The versatility of the tool materializes with several aspects: either providing warmth to the Expressions of the protagonists, or granting darkness to the most “supernatural” plane of the tape, so that the mystery would be able to accompany the ribbon antagonist.

Another key solution for Ortiz was Color Warp, with which the colorist was able to select colors or specific tones and modify them according to the scene itself: “If there was a color that had been a bit dissonant inside the aesthetics, we used the tool to take it to the look of the sequence ”.

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The well of The girl from communion

Night scenes largely mark the development of The girl from communion. They brought with them important challenges, such as the treatment of scenes with smoke, which had to be addressed so that this element continued to help maintain the tension without being in a visual foreground.

Another of the most critical parts of the film was the treatment of the area of ​​the pozo, in which the aquatic medium added an added difficulty: "Everything had to be very dark, but you had to play with the dark so that the viewer would not cost much to guess what he was seeing. We resort to the chiaroscuro to be able to maintain all the tension and intrigue, but at the same time give those clues."

"We end up always playing to the limit with darkness," says Ortiz, looking back.

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Davinci Resolve, key to the project

In all work and review processes undertaken to bring to fruition The girl from communion, Ortiz thanks having worked with the solution of Blackmagic Design: "I am delighted. There are other softwares, but none approaches the speed that patches and improvements make." Ortiz also highlights the constant updates To which the tool is subjected: "Every time the materials are loaded before, tracheos and stabilizations work better ... I love it as a work tool."

For this project, Ortiz worked with the control panel DaVinci Resolve Advanced Panel, with which he usually works on large film and advertising projects: "I have worked many times with the Mini, but I always try to ask for the Advanced Panel because you have access to everything. At the level of curtains or speed of buttons to access each action of the mapped software, it is a joy."

The girl from communion It went through different phases before having its definitive version for cinemas. To the first color treatment by Ortiz with the support of Bernal, passes with his own Victor Garcia and by the production team, among which was Edmon Roch of the producer Ikiru Films. Now, at the gates of its premiere, the public and criticism will judge whether the ambitious objectives of color and postproduction have been achieved.

A report by Sergio Julián Gómez

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