• Color Grading & Restoration
  • Blog
  • ABOUT
  • Contact
Menu

Zachary Halberd

  • Color Grading & Restoration
  • Blog
  • ABOUT
  • Contact

Lenny Cooke - A VFX Experiment in Time Travel

July 21, 2022

I was hired by AST Studios and once again had the opportunity to collaborate with VFX artist and VFX supervisor Adam Teninbaum for Bennie and Josh Sadie’s documentary Lenny Cooke. The director duo wanted to place the contemporary Lenny Cooke into a segment of miniDV archival in a scene in which he is having a conversation with his younger self. We shot the sequence of Lenny on a chroma green stage in Brooklyn and I used over sixty thousand watts of lighting to simulate the hard sun and a further ten thousand watts of light color corrected to 9000 kelvin to simulate the blue spill of the sky. Although we used a RED camera to capture Lenny in detail, the image was decimated to marry it with the miniDV archival.

← Skillshare Course - 3,968 Students and Counting!

Latest Posts

Featured
DOC_WORKFLOW_20240428.png
May 12, 2024
Documentary Finishing Workflow Demystified
May 12, 2024
Read more →
May 12, 2024
Using AI Models to Colorize Monochromatic Archival
September 30, 2022
Using AI Models to Colorize Monochromatic Archival
September 30, 2022
Read more →
September 30, 2022
Archival Restoration - Experimenting with Python Using VapourSynth + Resolve
October 25, 2021
Archival Restoration - Experimenting with Python Using VapourSynth + Resolve
October 25, 2021

Take a peak under the hood of my process to restore a heavily compressed archival film using the open source Python script-based image processing tool Vapoursynth.

Read more →
October 25, 2021
Qualitative Camera Test v2 - Summer 2021
October 25, 2021
Qualitative Camera Test v2 - Summer 2021
October 25, 2021

I convinced ten cinematographers to bring their cinema cameras to a qualitative camera test. Here are the results.

Read more →
October 25, 2021
axel-vazquez-nph6DcLTckI-unsplash.jpg
July 3, 2021
Premiere to Resolve and Back Again - A Remote Workflow Guide
July 3, 2021

For the love of God, please stop using shuttle drives. Just use the Resolve media manager to shrink ray your Premiere timeline down to a tiny portable file and send to your colorist!!! In this article, I show you how!

Read more →
July 3, 2021
VapourSynth Installation for Python 3.6.8
June 14, 2021
VapourSynth Installation for Python 3.6.8
June 14, 2021

My ongoing experiments with incorporating the Python-based image processing software, VapourSynth, into my color management and restoration pipeline has resulted in compiling a stable package which Windows users may use for further experimentation.

Read more →
June 14, 2021
Deconvolutional Upscaling for Legacy Media
February 9, 2021
Deconvolutional Upscaling for Legacy Media
February 9, 2021

MCM Creative in NYC reached out to Magic Lantern and asked if it was possible to clean up and upscale his feature doc Shelter Island prior to an Amazon streaming distribution sale. Unfortunately, the original media was no longer available and the master had already gone through various unknown encodes.

Read more →
February 9, 2021
Superior Deinterlacing and Upscaling With Machine Learning
February 2, 2021
Superior Deinterlacing and Upscaling With Machine Learning
February 2, 2021

Typically, filmmakers use the deinterlacing tool provided for free within their NLE or Davinci Resolve. This article will demonstrate why this approach can be destructive to the image and will offer a better alternative.

Read more →
February 2, 2021
Rendering With JPEG Compression(ism)
January 28, 2021
Rendering With JPEG Compression(ism)
January 28, 2021

A collection of photos taken with a cell phone at full magnification yields interesting results. Although the discrete cosine transform compression still has a significant effect in the image, by magnifying the image in camera prior to the encode, these images take on a hybrid of pixilation and compression decimation. There is also a slight halation ghosting around the higher contrast edges which get encoded into a pleasant glow.

Read more →
January 28, 2021
Color and the Physiological Response - A Colorist's Exploration
January 28, 2021
Color and the Physiological Response - A Colorist's Exploration
January 28, 2021

Colors, generally speaking, are instinctively associated with emotions. Working as a colorist and having to manipulate color everyday – I feel that most directors and cinematographers intuitively ask for specific colors to enhance specific emotions on special scenes without even realizing it. Here is a little help on how to actually use color in film making to activate – or not – a physical reaction in your audience.

Read more →
January 28, 2021