I still watch the Ramses series, directed by Michiel van Erp, now and then. Such a great project. So I was more than psyched when I was asked to colorgrade his first feature project. And even more so because one of my favo DP’s was shooting it, Jasper Wolf. This film was done in 2018 and was one of the first features with the deep ‘joppo’-look. Pretty steep blacks when you look at it with an 2021 eye 😉
During COVID lockdown, Erik graded this feature at the Grot. Remotely with director and DP at home. This is the follow-up of the short ‘Kraaiennest’ which was like a ‘pre-study’ of director Flynn von Kleist. Tim Kerbosch shot it very beautifully with the arri alexa and Erik made the colors pop just right! Lots of media-attention on this one.
Now playing on Amazon Prime, The East (De Oost). This epic feature was done by the same team as Wolf. Directed by Jim Taihuttu and filmed on Arri Alexa by Lennart Verstegen. It took me about 3 to 4 weeks to get all 1500 shots to look like its been printed on film. And what a ride it was! DP Lennart is living in the Polish coutryside where he placed an antenna on his old roof to get a max. 15Mbit internet-connection. Our remote grading speed is still very clear at 8Mbit, so Lennart connected his laptop to his fairly ok TV-set, we did some calibration-tests and off we went!
Really thanx for having me on board on this one.
Yes! The first feature by Shady! Honored to be a part of this one. These guys man… so funny and born actors!
An hilarious Dutch comedy, filmed by Stephan Polman.
Jim Taihuttu of Habbekrats made this very credible-le (how to spell this, Head Ape?) crime flick. Finally a credible one from the lowlands and Jim is just the perfect man to pull it off! Lennart Verstegen shot this feature (in full colour!). The two of us did quite an intense camera and lens test. In total we went through 300 clip samples in order to find out how we could push the ‘natural grain’ of the camera in the best possible manner. We tested with the Alexa, the Sony F3 and the canon C300. Lens wise: Cook S3, Superspeeds and Ultraprimes. The C300 failed on all fronts whereas in daylight the F3 was able to keep up with the Alexa. This because all images had to be made into black and white, mind you. Budgetary the F3 allowed the crew 10 extra days of shooting compared to the Alexa so the choice was easily made. Ultraprime was the lens of choice which enabled us to have some more leverage during the grading process in terms of sharp- and cleanness.
I actually finished grading this feature within a couple of days (credits to DOP Jasper Wolf). So we had some days left and Director Mees Peijnenburg and Jasper and I decided to grade an extra grade on top of the existing grade. This resulted in a nice deep look both in color as in contrast.
Sam de Jong’s first feature. Shot by Paul Uzgur during the summer of 2014 in Amsterdam’s northern district. The borough where they shot was to be demolished completely so they took some more liberty than normally would be the case, I think. For instance, they painted all front doors blue, making me a happy camper. I wanted all walls in that particular street to have the maximum sandstone look so I could push the hot summer feel – kind of a Marseille vibe – , this in stark contrast to the more usual, depressive look of Amsterdam-Noord. And these blue doors made for a nice contrast with those walls. Or, in other words, ‘complementary’ in case you want to impress the high brow crowd. Haha.
As well as DOP Robbie van Brussel as Pupkin Film told me there was a special project coming up directed by Daan Bakker. So i though ‘yeah yeah oh well we’ll see… ‘ And then i saw the offline edit and they were right. This story about totally adolescent akwardness within a body of 30-something turned out, told in 5 segments and one is even weirder than the other. Too much to explain, you really have to see this one.
Well, this is actually a music video, but it is done is such a nice way that for me it will always be more of a short movie. DOP Paul Ozgür is still complaining about filming this piece with a RED Scarlet, but i think he did a wonderful job and i managed to make it more filmic that you would ever expected from a Scarlet. Directed by Emmanuel Adjei.
Yes! Steffen & Flip’s fourth feature film! Super nice having those guys in De Grot for four months to do the edit. And this time I also did the grading. This time around they had something different in mind. Something deeper, more extreme, fucking up the picture. All in all less ‘Dutch’. Haha.
Joris Kerbosch selected the dodgiest lenses. I made a sketchy cinematic on-set-LUT and kept on stressing that they should shoot under exposed. During the grading sessions we were playing Dutch Golden Oldies and stretched the whole affair to the max. Really, really happy with how it turned out.
This was my first RomCom. Shot by Jasper Wolf on Arri Raw in which I finished the whole feature. I already had done ‘Fingers’ with Jasper and director Michiel ten Horn so I was psyched to now collaborate with them on ‘the long version’. This feature film has won about all Golden Calves imaginable.
Once in a while I direct a short myself. My last ‘major’ commission was from the Zeeuws Museum. (Which you can see by going to the Contact segment on my homepage. In the bottom right you’ll see a cute little coffin and when you click on that you’ll get redirected to my previous site. Go to ‘Zelf Gemaakt’ (Self Made) and click on ‘Museumstuk’ in the bottom right. Grip was done by Cees Aloserij Sr. – may he rest in peace. He once showed me a book full of stills from corporate films he had done and some work he did for NOLET’S GIN by Pieter-Rim de Kroon. Coincidentally a couple of years later I started working for Pieter-Rim as a grader on his documentaries. He’s this genius kinda guy who really pushes boundaries just as long until he’s satisfied. And I love that. This short he directed is a tap dance movie that takes place in the inside of an old film camera. As the whole thing was storyboarded from the beginning ‘all’ I had to do was the editing. All in FCP7 with a little over 90 video layers. Just as much until we were happy. Haha. And everything was shot on 35mm which is a jolly affair at all times. Above you can watch a segment of the 10 minutes short.
Brilliant Short! by Noel Loozen with Tim Kerbosch behind the camera. Executed in dumbo-stylo, perfectly aligned with Noel’s householdtouch. We also made it look very sandy. Kinda Belgian but then somewhat friendlier. Unfortunately this teaser contains just two shots. Here (link) you can watch the whole thing.