DaVinci Resolve selected for grading of ‘Reality’ (HBO Max)

Color grading for HBO Films (HBO Max) docudrama ‘Reality’ was executed by Marcy Robinson (Nice Shoes) using Blackmagic Design DaVinci Resolve Studio software.

World premiering at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival, Reality tells the true story of the FBI-led interrogation of Reality Winner (Sydney Sweeney), a former U.S. Air Force member and translator at the NSA who becomes an informant. Tina Satter directs this project that adapts the transcript of the actual interrogation depicted in the play Is this a Room, resulting in a visceral tape that reproduces verbatim dialogue from the audio recordings recorded during the interrogation.

To better understand this work from a visual point of view, Paul Yee, Reality’s director of photography, delves into its visual particularities: “It takes place in one house, mostly in one bare room, over the course of a few hours. We wanted to limit the visual stimulus at the start of the movie so that any camera or character movement or lighting cue would feel deliberate and purposeful. As ‘Reality’s’ story unfolds, the visual language slowly shifts from procedural and objective to subjective and visceral.”

Color in Reality

The limited settings and situations In Reality prompted meticulous color grading that sought to remove the characters somewhat from the austerity of the room and add details highlighted by color, sometimes subtly and sometimes more overtly. In addition, a key part of working with Da Vinci Resolve Studio was focused on achieving consistency between all the images, as Robinson explains, “Even though the film takes place mainly in this one room, there were a lot of subtle continuity concerns to keep us on our toes. The room was quite bare and lit with fluorescent lights. We wanted that to feel authentic in its harshness but also visually appealing, so we walked a fine line with that throughout the grade. We wanted the room to have a beautiful normalcy, but the space itself wasn’t very pretty, so that was part of the challenge.”

Beyond color, there was a significant amount of work to do on those scenes that included visual effects: “Paul achieved some amazing in camera effects, and we had to match some of those in the grade. In terms of Resolve, we used some OFX glow and tilt shift tools quite heavily at times. I also often used keying tools to keep windows and fluorescent lights in check and balanced.”

“Reality is an outstanding film and a project that feels very dear to me. I really loved working with Tina and Paul. They are ridiculously talented and such fantastic collaborators,” concluded Robinson.