Eric Escobar has been a filmmaker since 1993, when he began making documentaries for the African-American Studies Department
of University of California at Berkeley. His first film, Night Light, was featured at the 2003 Sundance Festival.
Building on this success, Eric decided to put his skills to work for a different cause. Both of his parents are Vietnam Veterans, and
his father is a terminally ill combat veteran, suffering the effects of Agent Orange poisoning. One Weekend a Month is an anti-war
short film. Actress Renee O’Connor (Xena: Warrior Princess) plays the role of Meg McDermott, a single mother of two in Oakland.
Meg’s National Guard unit is about to be deployed to Iraq. With no one to care for her kids, Meg is forced to make a very difficult
decision. The film’s original soundtrack is by Emily Saliers, of the legendary folk-rock duo, The Indigo Girls. Move your mouse
over the picture to see the pre-eLin image.
Challenge
“Working with an independent film budget, I started researching ways to professionally colour correct One Weekend a Month even
before I began production. I needed a tool that would not cost a fortune and allow me to eventually film-out to 35 mm—this was a
very important point: if I had simply gone back to HD, I would have wasted the processor cycles working in Linear Space", said
Eric.
" My first preference was to colour correct the project in After Effects. However, due to the lack of floating-point color support
needed for my HD project that did not seem possible. I was desperate to find a way to give my film the look that I wanted and avoid
paying upwards of $300 per hour for a Da Vinci colourist".
Solution
"Once I discovered eLin, my production pipeline changed. I finally had a workaround to the lack of floating point support in After
Effects. I chose to shoot One Weekend a Month in high def on a Panasonic Varicam (720p). I shot footage with a limited latitude of
only four or five f-stops to avoid overexposure or underexposure. I did this knowing that I would be able to take that footage into
After Effects and use eLin to create a look that was impossible to achieve in-camera with regards to latitude—as opposed to just
trying to create a more “contrasted” look. I wanted to push the whites into levels only reproducible on film".
"I got very involved in the colour correction process – working on the short for weeks. Whenever I came across an image in post
that was too flat, I simply created an adjustment layer and applied a soft blur to it or added a shadow that looked truly organic and
natural. eLin was also great for blowing out the whites, crushing the blacks, and adding a deep rich color to the entire film. With
eLin, the typical harshness of a digital edge and clipped white values are a thing of the past".
"eLin was great for giving my film a blown out look. In post, I was able to use the After Effects colour correction tools – masking,
vignetting, softening, and blurring – with which I was comfortable, knowing I would be able to do a non-destructive colour
correction. eLin let me colour correct using a tool that I love, but added a level of colour precision that did not previously exist. This
solved an oversight that After Effects has, being able to work in the colour space of film, which was critical for my desired look".
About eLin
eLin is an exciting new system for High Dynamic Range compositing in After Effects. Developed by The Orphanage and used on
several feature films, including Hellboy, Jeepers Creepers 2 and The Day After Tomorrow,
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