DaVinci Resolve, chosen for grading of 'Reality' (HBO Max)

The grading of the docudrama 'Reality' from HBO Films (HBO Max) was executed by Marcy Robinson (Nice Shoes) using DaVinci Resolve Studio software Blackmagic Design.

World premiere in Berlin International Film Festival this year, Reality tells the true story of the FBI-led interrogation of Reality Winner (Sydney Sweeney), a former member of the United States Air Force and translator at the NSA who becomes an informant. Tina Satter directs this project that adapts the transcription of the real interrogation represented in the play Is this a Room, which results in a visceral tape that reproduces verbatim dialogues from the audio recordings recorded during the interrogation.

To better understand this work from a visual point of view, Paul Yee, director of photography Reality, delves into its visual particularities: "It takes place in a house, mostly in a single, rather bare room, over the course of a few hours. We wanted to limit the visual stimulus at the beginning of the film, so that any movement of the camera or characters or changes in lighting were perceived as deliberate and with a particular purpose. As the story progresses, the visual language slowly transforms from procedural and objective to subjective and visceral."

The color in Reality

The limitation in scenarios and situations of Reality gave rise to a detailed grading who sought to distance the characters in a certain way from the austerity of the room and add outstanding details through color, sometimes subtly and other times more obviously. Furthermore, a fundamental part of working with DaVinci Resolve Studio The focus was on achieving consistency between all the images, as Robinson explains: "Even though the film takes place primarily in a single room, there were a lot of obstacles in terms of continuity that kept us on our toes. The room was quite bare and had fluorescent lighting. We wanted these aspects to feel authentic in their harshness but at the same time visually appealing, so we had to strike a delicate balance throughout the grading process. The goal was to achieve a pleasing normality, but the space itself was not nothing pretty, so that was part of the challenge.”

Beyond the color, there was an important work of work for those scenes that included visual effects: "Paul came up with some incredible effects, and we had to match them in grading. In Resolve, we used some OpenFX glow and diorama effects quite often. Additionally, I used the masking tools to control and balance the fluorescent and window lights."

“Reality It is an extraordinary film and a project that I greatly appreciate. I truly loved working with Tina and Paul. They have enormous talent and are fantastic collaborators,” concludes Robinson.