Jerome Thelia was post-production supervisor and colorist on Josh Sternfeld's second feature film, Meskada, premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City in April 2010.
Tribeca screening information here.
Official website and trailer: www.meskada.com
After seeing Josh Sternfeld's first film, Winter Solstice (2004) and reading his script for Meskada Jerome was a fan. "He directs and writes with such remarkable subtlety and restraint. I was full of admiration for Winter Solstice and the Meskada script. The fact that I was brought in so early on allowed me to really think about the material ahead of time, imagine what it could look like and plan a post pipeline that would work as efficiently as possible given our budget. When I got the first dailies I felt like I already had a good idea what Josh and Danny (Danny Sariano, DP) were going for. It's great going into a project with a lot of admiration for the director."
The Story:
The small, affluent town of Hilliard is rocked to its core following the brutal murder of a young boy. Heading the investigation, local detective Noah Cordin (Nick Stahl, In the Bedroom) follows a lead that takes him back to his hometown on the other side of Meskada County, Caswell, a town forced to the brink of destitution in the wake of the recession. As his investigation picks up intensity, Cordin is torn between old loyalties and new responsibilities, and the victim's grieving mother launches a battle of will and vengeance with the citizens of Caswell. The ensuing rift between these two vastly different communities in troubled rural America soon opens wide, igniting a full-on class war….
The cast includes Nick Stahl (Thin Red Line, Sin City), Rachel Nichols (Star Trek, Charlie Wilson's War), Jonathan Tucker (The Virgin Suicides, Sleepers), Kellan Lutz (Twilight), Norman Reedus (The Conspirator) and Grace Gummer, daughter of Meryl Streep in her feature film debut,
Josh, Jerome and cinematographer Danny Sariano talked early on about the potential difficulties in shooting a complex dramatic script with many night scenes in a very short amount of time (4 weeks).
Before shooting began, Danny and Jerome shot low-light tests to see just how far they could push the Red before noise and color were really compromised. Night in particular can be challenge for both colorist and cinematographer, particularly when both want to achieve a naturalistic look that still supports drama - on a budget. Where an incredibly lean production schedule forced hastily lit scenes we attempted to bring in a cinematic sexiness to the picture adding blurs and painting in shadows and light in post.
"Phyllis Housen (editor) was such a joy to work with. She brought in tension in all the right places and a really visual style that pushed the color work in places I wouldn't have thought of going otherwise. There are a couple of dissolves with such attention to composition and timing they seem planned in advance, but that's one of the things a great editor can bring to a film."
"Like in music, it's always tempting to rock out in color work. You maximize dynamic range, make faces pop, push saturation, bend skin tones into their most pleasing hues, and often interplay cool shadows against warm highlights - this is the equivalent of three chord rock: it's a solid formula, there are infinite variations, all pleasing and if it's done well it works every time. This is what drives a lot of commercial work and definitely has it's place. It can be a lot harder to play slow and soft with lots of dynamics - pull back and focus on subtle but often very complex visual cues that support the arc of a scene. This is what we attempted to do on Meskada, on a limited schedule and budget. Our Assimilate Scratch system allowed us not only to turn around Red dailies really quickly during the shoot, so production was able to react and adapt, but we were laying the ground work for a look in the final color grade at the same time."
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