[0:06]Hi everyone and welcome to a nice podcast. I'm here today with Matt Wallach from Company 3. If you don't know Matt, he's created very big features like No Time to Die, Saltburn, Don't Look Up and many, many others. And Matt, maybe you want to introduce yourself with some more interesting. Yeah, sure. Hi, hi everybody. Uh, thank you for having me Nico. It's great to be here and talk shop and and geek out about all things film and and and uh, color related. You know, it's been a fun ride through this industry getting here and and you know, a total dream come true honestly to, you know, be in a position of working on too many projects that are shot on film when, you know, I entered the industry at a time when film was on the decline and I never thought that I would, you know, get much past loading cameras here and there on a couple of commercials. So it's great to be here professionally and chatting with you right now. Yeah, that's awesome. And you already mentioned it, we will talk a lot about film today, actual celluloid, because for example, Saltburn, I think it's your most recent project, was also shot on film. And it just looks stunning, it's it's so amazing and the first question maybe is how you approach film in 2025 as you said. It was on the decline, I don't know, maybe 20 years ago or something like that and I feel now it's a real hype again, luckily, because I personally love it. And how you feel about it and how you approach projects that are shot on film? Yeah, I mean I'm, I'm so thrilled that it is finding a place that's more more than niche now in the industry and it is is a sought after format. You know, I I think the first time I, outside of film school and shooting on 16 millimeter, was, you know, my my and and then still photography, was my first exposure to celluloid. And then my final year in film school was, we're getting rid of the film cameras, everyone has to shoot on these Panasonic DV cams and it was miserable and I hated it. And you know, the Red had just exploded on the scene and the Alexa was right around the corner, so it was an adjustment. But, you know, having uh, background in still photography also and still photography had already been transitioning to digital, it made it easier to pick up and, uh, yeah, it just seemed like film was pretty dead, save for a couple features here and there. So I think the first project that I, feature film that I, I touched film on in dailies was, was Hail Caesar with Roger Deakins. And that was my first, that was my first time grading grading film in dailies. And I was terrified because I hadn't really, outside of, you know, scanning still photography, hadn't really dealt with film in, uh, motion picture standpoint yet and, uh, you know, from a as the colorist. So, we came right off of Sicario, which was my first job with Roger and, you know, really learned how he worked and how he saw things and was used to his precision. And footage would come in from set and it was so close to perfect, barely needed to touch anything on color. You know, we'd have we'd have CDLs from the DIT that were offsetting, you know, a little bit of green introduced by an ND 1, 2 or something. And otherwise the image was nearly nearly perfect out of camera. So going from that into film was, yeah, it was was uh a real exercise and then having a lot more room to kind of have to interpret and figure out what this was intended to look like. I got less nervous about it after we shot some tests and I realized, oh, you know, we're scanning it. You know, we had we were, you know, scanning it on Arri Scanners, at the time this was before Scanity. And once it's scanned, it was just like digital. It's, you know, it's Cini on log but it's just like digital, it's just, you know, it just needs some more balancing. It's, you know, not what you see is what you get. So so learning to grade film under Roger's footage was instrumental to me and just, you know, very quickly figuring out how to get it where it needed to be. You know, and he would take stills on set with his with his digital Leica and send me stills at the end of every day that he had, you know, tweaked a little bit and said this is, you know, ideally what this should look. Let's get it there. And so having that point of reference was great because then I had some reference stills to to match towards and that that got me comfortable a lot quicker with dealing with everything film. You know, using different filtration, you know, whether or not they were using a an ND 85 to offset, you know, tungsten to daylight and all of the other things you have to keep in mind when you're shooting a film. But it really was uh kind of a boot camp in grading film working on Hail Caesar and that was the first of of many projects after that, which was a really wonderful surprise to have. Yeah, I can imagine. I think working with such big names or the best of the best in our industry, definitely teaches you a lot. And I think if you're already saying that the image is so perfect coming directly from set, that's something that must be really challenging to not mess anything up.
[5:59]I think you're definitely under pressure when working on such. Oh, absolutely. And you know, the pressure was there, everything was processed normal on Hail Caesar, there was no pushing or pulling and and, you know, go from being used to shooting at 800 ASA down to, you know, sometimes 50, 200, 250, 500, you know, whatever whatever stock he was using at the time, just, you know, everybody was learning and and adapting and and, you know, I mean for, you know, for me it was a, it was a first time for Roger, I'm sure it was like riding a bike for the first time after not riding a bike for a couple years, like you, you figure it out, but, you know, and everything looked incredible from the onset, but I just remember, you know, him being, you know, joking around and being like slightly concerned at the start just being like, we're using so many more lights than we had to use on, you know, the Alexa and and just just, you know, adapting back to it, but, you know, I I think it's still it's such a beautiful looking film and it was such a a great one to be a part of and and and really kind of home and learn how to work with celluloid on.
