Press Release from Nice Shoes
Building upon a longstanding relationship with Hello! Director Alex Moors, Nice Shoes recently handled all color grading and VFX on Jennifer Lopez's latest video, Good Hit. VFX Artist Rich Schreck led the beauty retouching team, while Colorist Gene Curley handled color grading.
The video is an alternately sultry and playful single starring Lopez and a cast of dancers strutting about a school building. Lopez leads her entourage through a series of bold dances, including an extended routine in which they're brandishing wireless hairdryers while bouncing on and off of stepstools, blowing their hair into amazing high-swirling poofs.
Moors shot the footage in one location with two sets but sought a consistent look throughout, allowing Nice Shoes to apply the look of one shot to the rest, adjusting contrast to match. They also readjusted windows based upon how she moved through each shot.
Good Hit follows a series of collaborations between Nice Shoes and Moors, including the short film Cherry Bloom and the Dreams music video for the group TV On The Radio, which Gene Curley color graded. With the synergy already in place, it was a close collaboration, with Moors working with Curley to optimize the color-grading process.
"Alex originally wanted kind of a Hi-Con feel, with deep dark blacks and slightly blown-out highlights," Curly noted. "So we let the chroma bloom a bit since the sets and wardrobe were so colorful, and raised the highlights on her skin to give it more of the Hi Con feel. Moors has a tremendous sense of how to plan production for efficient post - we knocked the color grading out in five or six hours, because everything had been set up so perfectly."
In the VFX realm, Schreck smoothed out the overall footage. "Because JLo was in such great shape, her ribs and collarbone became accentuated when the light passed across, so we softened that some," he said. "Otherwise, it was mostly a matter of evening out and softening skin tones. The biggest challenge, really, was having consistency among six artists while turning out 80 shots in three days."
Credits:
Production Company: Hello!
Editor/Director: Alex Moors
Executive Producer: Sheira Rees-Davies
Producer: Paul Laurens
Color Grading: Nice Shoes
Colorist: Gene Curley
VFX: Nice Shoes
Conform/Beauty Retouching: John Shea
Beauty Retouching: Rich Schreck, Jason Farber
Producer: Haydee Cepin
About Nice Shoes:
NYC-based Nice Shoes is a full service, artist-driven design, animation, visual effects and color grading studio specializing in high-end commercials, web content, film, TV and music videos. Since its inception in 1996, the studio has prided itself on consistently reinvesting in its talent, technical backbone, and client experience to set the standard of excellence both creatively and technically. Key company principals include: CEO/Partner Dominic Pandolfino, Head of Production Mike Donovan, CDs Brian Bowman and Aron Baxter, Colorists/Partners Chris Ryan and Lez Rudge, Senior Producers Pat Portela and Christos Mountzouros, VFX Artist/Partner Rich Schreck, and CIO Bob Keske.
For more information please visit www.niceshoes.com [1].
Links:
[1] http://www.niceshoes.com