The series 'Smiley' (Netflix), post-produced by Antaviana with Mistika

One of the 50 best Netflix series of the moment according to The New York Times, the Spanish 'Smiley', has been post-produced by the team of Antaviana VFX & Postproduction using Mistika Boutique and Mistika Ultima, the color correction, finishing and shaping tools Sgo.

Smiley is the story of two men and their friends dealing with their problems and insecurities while searching for love. Being a Christmas romantic comedy, the main idea was to achieve a colorful and cheerful appearance, thus dominating red and warm tones.

The look of the series oscillates between the television and film worlds, so the Antaviana team focused on finding a balance when treating color. The image is digital, but through color correction it is brought closer to the color palette of a film. This has been achieved thanks to tonal division, warm and muted white point, color separation and subtractive saturation.

In order to preserve the maximum image quality and subsequent adaptation to different display devices, the color pipeline was treated in ACEScct for HDR in Dolby Vision. A LUT was created in ACEScct that served as an LMT for the project and was adapted to Rec709 for on-set viewing at the time of filming.

In addition, some CDLs were prepared with offset and saturation variations in such a way that the directors of photography Pol Orpinell and Hermes Marco could Quickly preview different looks. This helped simplify and streamline decision-making during filming, as well as maintain the integrity of the color pipeline when it came to in-room grading.

Main forming motor

Christopher Bolaños, Digital Intermediate y Finishing Artist en Antaviana VFX & Postproduction, comenta que “Mistika es nuestro motor principal de conformado, color y finishing, y cuenta con unas herramientas que hacen que la administración de color con ACES sea muy flexible”.

Marti Somoza He worked on the final color of the production with the help of director of photography Pol Orpinell. So that the colorist could fully focus on this task, the Antaviana team supported the creative process by simplifying each timeline in Mistika as much as possible.

In order for Somoza to gradually become familiar with the Mistika Ultima color tools, the Display Filters for both the ODT P3D65 1000 nits and the LMT. This tool was essential in the process, since it allows very quick changes to SDR and HDR display ODTs, as well as applying modifications to the video output independently of the render or the user interface.

According to Somoza, “working at ACES was a great advantage, because in addition to being familiar with this color management system, the balance in ACEScc/cct was much simpler than in other color spaces.” This allowed exposure and balance adjustments to be made very precisely and effectively using the Offset tool.

For the final details, band settings, qualifiers and masks were mainly used. “Using masks in Mistika is incredibly easy and fast, because you can draw directly on top of an image, and work with the inside and outside of the mask without having to create new vectors,” he comments.

Color uniformity

The team used Mistika as the main tool for the entire design process. color correction, but how Smiley It has numerous transitions between planes, it was also used as VFX module.

“Always working within the same Mistika environment, we were able to carry out the different transitions, which often involved rotoscoping and compositing between numerous layers,” explains Bolaños. By not having to apply the color of each plane independently, it was possible to lighten the work of the VFX department and facilitate the grading process.

Among the main challenges to overcome were the tight shooting and post-production times, and the existence of various editing, HDR, VFX and graphics equipment. This made the project complex, but despite this it has been able to be carried out effectively thanks to Antaviana's post-production infrastructure, which has various specialized rooms and departments.

Bernat Aragonés, director de post-producción en Antaviana, señala que “usar Mistika como herramienta principal y ACES como sistema de administración de color nos permitió asegurar que hubiera una uniformidad de color, ya no solo entre departamentos, sino entre los diferentes procesos de post-producción”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITOLgFvSi0g