The space terror of 'Alien: Romulus' multiplies its impact with DaVinci Resolve Studio

Colorist Mitch Paulson decided to use DaVinci Resolve Studio software from Blackmagic Design to work on the color of 'Alien: Romulus', the latest installment of the Ridley Scott saga, this time directed by Fede Álvarez ('Don't Breathe', 'Infernal Possession').

In Alien: Romulus, a group of special young conquerors They come face to face with the “scariest life form in the universe” in the depths of an abandoned space station. Directed by Álvarez, Galo Olivares (Gretel and Hansen, Roma) was responsible for the photograph, while Mitch Paulson, then at Company 3 and currently part of Picture Shop, did the grading.

Paulson had already worked with both Álvarez and Olivares separately in different movies and was excited to collaborate with both talents on Alien: Romulus. The initial conversations helped define the project visual style, which sought to recreate the first films of the saga: “Fede wanted to take screenshots of our film, hang them on the wall with photographs of Alien y Aliens and combine aesthetics. We looked at a lot of footage from both movies to get color references. Additionally, we added a specific graininess to make it even closer to the look,” he explains.

Paulson works with a system simply from the beginning of the grading process and avoids overcomplicating the nodal structure"I usually start by doing chromatic corrections to offset colors and get a generally balanced shot. I apply some curves to help me get to the contrast level I want, and then use Power Windows and overlays as appropriate." For the film, Paulson not only focused on color, but added various minor visual effects in grading, enhancing the shots with DaVinci Resolve Studio tools: "There were countless minor aspects of the visual effects that we resolved during color correction. One of the main scenes was the one in which the main character, Rain, goes to the bottom of the ship, at the end of the movie. I used the flicker effect to create lighting changes as he walks and looks for the "Offspring.""

For Paulson, the best thing about grading a film like Alien: Romulus is knowing that your work has the capacity to affect the environment of the film as well as other elements of the filming process. A good example of this is his favorite scene, in which Rain's ex-boyfriend Tyler and his sister, Kay, encounter a Xenomorph that hasn't yet hatched: "Galo wanted to keep it dark and scary, but still allow you to visualize the important elements. We created the environment with windows and balanced the moving lights in the tunnel. Then, when the Xenomorph attacks Tyler, we tried to make the visual effects look even more bloodthirsty."

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