The color of Hard Candy

Being a big ol' geek, I was immediately intrigued by the presence, right up there in the opening titles, of a screen credit for the "digital colorist" on Hard Candy, one Jean-Clement Soret. Fortunately, I get paid to be a big ol' geek -- so I got Soret on the phone and asked him to describe the digital-intermediate process. The resulting interview, which discusses a post-production workflow, is mainly of interest if you happen to be contemplating a DI on a project you're working on. But I got Soret to talk a little about Danny Boyle's upcoming science-fiction film, Sunshine, which already has an interesting Web site.

The flashy credit boils down to Soret having worked successfully with director David Slade on commercials and music videos and therefore willingly taking on Hard Candy's DI for a much smaller fee than the work would normally demand. It's both a thank-you for that and an indicator of how important Slade thought the digital grading process was to the film's impact. I expect to see more of this kind of recognition in the future, as the colorist becomes a higher-profile collaborator with the director and/or cinematographer on any given shoot -- I'm not sure whether I'd really look forward to the era of the celebrity colorist, but I also don't expect it to go quite that far. (I'm mixed, by the way, on the merits of Hard Candy itself -- but more on that later in the week.)