Celebrating the stunning artistry of Wake Up Dead Man’s scenic painter, Steve Mitchell and his entire team. They hand painted and lovingly crafted backings for many of our on-stage sets in Leavesden Studios, including the church and rectory sets which had two-layer backing that allowed us to light the trees and sky separately from each other: gaffer David Smith and I were able to “paint with light,” as they say, to create our own small-“i”- impressionistic, evocative versions of various times of day and weather out the windows, infusing the interiors with the feel of the outer world. Mr Mitchell’s beautiful skies were rich, textured, and had realistic perspective, but were pointedly left neutral gray instead of given realistic color so they could take on the various colors that we used for different scenes: deep blue for night, steely blue for dusk, clean white for sunny daytime, coolish neutral for overcast day, and vibrant reds and blues for the stylized unrealistic flashbacks. Thank you, Steve Mitchell and team for your beautiful work -- seeing artistry like yours is why I love working in cinema. #NerdyFilmTechStuff

Fellow film tech nerds, I've done a bit of a redesign to my website. New look but same content and navigation: and the entire #nerdyfilmtechstuff repository is still there but in a much more readable format now -- a lot of stuff on there is as relevant as ever if it's not new, so have a refresher or check out something on there that you haven't before.

#WakeUpDeadMan Behind-the-scenes fun! #NerdyFilmTechStuff For the night exteriors at the crypt, our brilliant gaffer Dave Smith lined the entire ravine with various lighting units: A bank of Nanluxs on a construction crane at the end (behind Samson’s house) as a back light. A row of AquaBats on telehandlers along one side as sidelights. And, along the other side of the valley, a huge row of ECL Panels to backlight the atmosphere and give us silhouetted trees against an eerie blue sky when shooting directly towards the crypt. Plus, of course, the flood light gag he rigged to exaggerate the motion-sensing security light that, when it comes on, tears through the night with blinding brightness. I called it his art installation. Love you, Mr Smith!

‘Wake Up Dead Man’ is out now! Streaming on Netflix and screening in select theaters. Rian has made one hell of a heavenly movie here! He’s outdone himself yet again and I’ve never been prouder of getting to contribute to something. Thank you, Rian, for bringing me along again!

#WakeUpDeadMan Behind-the-scenes fun! #NerdyFilmTechStuff Waiting for the light: shooting at dusk! WUDM has some fun “dusk-for-dusk” and “dusk-for-night” shots. While it was still light out, we’d get all the lights set up for a twilight or night shot and then wait for the end of daylight and just the right amount of light in the sky to shoot in the perfect time window. While shooting, I’d continuously adjust the lens aperture and use our custom light control software to simultaneously adjust the lighting ratios/levels to fit with the natural light as it changed quickly.

#WakeUpDeadMan Behind-the-scenes fun! #NerdyFilmTechStuff Some people call them “god rays,” I call them “Dave Smith rays.” But same difference. Dave Smith was our intrepid gaffer -- head of the lighting department -- on WUDM. He and his brilliant team rigged the holy heck out of this incredibly beautiful church set created by Prodcution Designer Rick Heinrichs and his amazing art department on Leavesden Studios’ C Stage. 'Wake Up Dead Man' is out now in theaters!

#WakeUpDeadMan Behind-the-scenes fun! #NerdyFilmTechStuff The shot in the concert hall that looks out from the stage to the house: that wasn’t shot at a real concert hall; it’s just a big cut-out on a stage at Leavesden Studios, London! This bit of cinema artistry came together thanks to an interdepartmental effort: Gaffer Dave Smith and his lighting team worked closely with Rick Heinrichs’ art department (special shout out to Supervising Art Director Dean Clegg and Senior Art Director Simon Elsley) to bring this magic to the screen. Wake Up Dead Man is in theaters now!

I got to work with my dear friend @riancjohnson again! He’s made a powerful, hilarious, heart-felt, beautiful, timely, soaring, whip-smart rollercoaster of a film. It’s out today in select theaters and it’s really made to be enjoyed on a big screen with a big audience with friends and family, so if you’re interested in seeing it, please go while it’s still in cinemas.

A tradition continues: composer and cinematographer dueling phone photos at the world premiere of a Rian Johnson film at Toronto International Film Festival.

Fellow film tech nerds, today I’m finally sharing my own personal halation and grain tools publicly. I’ve partnered with Cullen Kelly and Dr. Mitch Bogdanowicz who are releasing a new Resolve plugin called Genesis that includes newly optimized implementations of my grain and halation algorithms bundled along with their own photochemical color rendering tools! The plugin offers powerful and highly customizable image authoring for filmmakers to evoke photochemical textures and color renditions in a digital ecosystem. Details here: https://procolor.ist/yedlin In the spirit of empowering filmmakers to take authorship of their own images, Genesis is pointedly not just for colorists but for DPs too: on the website, you’ll see a quick video Cullen made showing you how to use Genesis as a DP even if you’ve never opened Resolve. To celebrate the launch, Genesis is heavily discounted this week and filmmakers who buy a pro license by Friday will also get access to a special masterclass with me, Cullen, and Dr. Bogdanowicz  — see the website for details. (If you have questions, please reach out to [email protected] — I won’t be answering Genesis related inquiries through my own site.)

Fellow film tech nerds, folks have long asked if I’d package some of my custom image pipeline tools for release. I was never able to do so myself but have partnered with some amazing collaborators to bundle some of my stuff with theirs. More to come on 8/18.

Fellow film tech nerds, I had the incredible honor and pleasure to be invited back to the Team Deakins podcast. This time we discussed maintaining image authorship through the post pipeline and how colorspaces work.