It was a chilly winters eve when Tomi and Tuomo embarked on a train from Helsinki to St. Petersburg. A few days earlier we had received a distress call from Mrs. Kirsi Tykkyläinen, our international special operations manager, informing of a situation requiring quick response and immediate decision making.

At the destination we were warmly welcomed by Mr. Andrey Siegle of Proline Film Studios and introduced to one of the greatest storytellers of our time: director legend Alexander Sokurov. Typical to masters of their art, he calmly contemplated his latest film in progress, “Faust”. He wanted to find a creative partner to provide the visual effects solutions to complete key parts of the film.

Mr. Sokurov presented us the painting “Battle of Alexander” by Albrecht Altdorfer (1480-1538), to be used as a guide. Before the premiere we can only share this painting and hope that we managed to capture some of it’s timeless composition in our CGI adaptation.

Image

Three time Academy Award nominee, cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel (Amelie, A Very Long Engagement, Harry Potter and The Half-blood Prince), took his camera from the woods and medieval towns of Czech Republic to the volcanic glaciers of Iceland. Complex moving mirrors, rare lenses custom built for Mr. Sokurov and a tight shooting schedule created numerous challenges. As much as the resulting images haunt and charm, they challenge us to think. Their creation in itself was a deeply philosophical study in the art of storytelling.

Colour

To help us explore what moods of colour and light could exist in the world of Faust we were introduced to Mr. Peter Doyle (Lord of the Rings 1-3, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, King Kong, Golden Compass, Harry Potter 1-6). The one digital colourist in the world able to deliver clean and uncompromised quality to world class cinematographers, was flown into Helsinki to supervise the grading process, assisted by our Pentti Keskimäki.

Setup

This is no ordinary film. And the post as well is far from ordinary, even though we have finished more than 100 feature-length full-service Digital Intermediates. Gearing up to meet the professional expectations down to the last detail was our goal.

We were lucky enough to be the first and only company in Europe to receive the latest generation Christie DCI-projector, now installed in a custom built new grading theatre. An all-out upgrade to our Baselight colour grading system with the fastest possible single node hardware followed.

Finally a comprehensive color calibration took place, involving Truelight profiles for an end-to-end Fuji pipeline. Kari Manns from Finn-Lab provided precision prints to Filmlight engineers in London. Once green-lighted, all the preparations had to be completed in less than 8 weeks.

Buying tools is easy. Making them function together can be tricky. Delivering to both technical and creative expectations at the high-end is the only real question – a question that needs to be answered every single day.

Meeting with Faust, some questions could remain forever.
(To be continued…)