The Briefing Room

DI Colorist Siggy Ferstl of Company 3 (formerly Riot) recently performed final color grading for Hotel for Dogs, the new comedy adventure from Nickelodeon Movies and DreamWorks Pictures. Ferstl collaborated with Director of Photography Michael Grady in developing a unique look to enhance the fun and charm of the tale of two kids who transform an abandoned hotel into a magical home for canines.

Ferstl, whose past credits include Live Free or Die Hard and Underworld: Evolution, was involved in the project from its earliest stages. His initial role was to supervise dailies processing and the application of a first pass color grade. That gave the film’s production team a remarkably close representation of how the film would ultimately look.

“Dailies can strongly influence how people view the film, so it is important to lock in a look early on,” Ferstl observes. “It is also helpful to me to be involved in shaping the look, even before it goes to editorial, because it results in better consistency and it lets me know what’s in store.”

The film was shot entirely on 35mm film. Final grading was performed in a DI theatre equipped with the latest version of Da Vinci’s Resolve color grading system. Having worked through the dailies together, Ferstl and Grady were able to proceed through the final grading process with relative ease as many of the creative decisions had already been made.

The look developed by Grady and Ferstl is designed to both complement the story and distinguish Hotel for Dogs from other family films. “Michael lit it with a lot of highlights and gold gels, so it is very, very vibrant,” notes Ferstl. “He wanted it to be bright and colorful but to avoid the overly flat look that a lot of kids movies have today. He wanted to make sure the images had some nice contrast.”

Part of the challenge for Ferstl and Grady was dealing with the film’s large and varied cast of four-legged stars. “We wanted to be able to see the expressions on the dogs’ faces and that was sometimes difficult as a few of the dogs were black,” Ferstl recalls. “We spent a lot of time bringing out the details in their eyes.”

The film’s hero dog, Friday, is white and so presented a challenge of the opposite extreme. “He was very difficult to light, especially when he was standing next to a black dog,” Ferstl says. “We often had to isolate and grade him separately to make him look great.”

Hotel for Dogs was Ferstl’s first opportunity to grade a family comedy and he found that the experience allowed him to apply his creative skills in new ways. “It was a very enjoyable project,” he concludes. “We all had a really good time.”

For more information, contact Jackie Lee, Vice President Feature Sales, Ascent Media Feature Services, (310) 255-6634, jackielee@company3.com.

About Ascent Media Group

Santa Monica, California-based Ascent Media Group, LLC is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ascent Media Corporation (Nasdaq: ASCMA), which provides creative and technical services to the media and entertainment industries. Through more than 40 facilities in regions of Southern California, New York, Atlanta, London and Singapore, Ascent Media provides effective solutions for the creation, management and distribution of content to major motion picture studios, independent producers, broadcast networks, cable channels, advertising agencies and other companies that produce, own and/or distribute entertainment, news, sports, corporate, educational, industrial and advertising content.

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