Picture Shop Colorist Elodie Ichter handles color for Outfest’s 2021 Outset Fellows In recent years, Outfest has become a major driving force of creating change and championing LGBTQIA+ storytellers in the industry. For their OutSet program, Outfest selects a group of diverse 16-24 year-old emerging filmmakers to embark on a 6-month film lab that culminates in a final thesis short film project that screens at the Outfest Los Angeles LGBTQ Film Festival. Picture Shop partnered with Outfest to provide color finishing post-production, with Colorist Elodie Ichter delivering color on all 6 of the program’s short films. Ichter also ran a virtual class with the Fellows prior to production on their shorts to talk with them about what color finishing could bring to their stories.“I got to know a little bit about them and their stories. We discussed the creative process of color grading and everything that it can bring to their movies,” says Ichter. “Every short ended up being different and interesting and lovely to work on. It’s quite rewarding to work with these young filmmakers.”One of the shorts, “I Wish I Never Fucking Met You,” takes place over one night in Los Angeles, where two young men reconnect outside of a liquor store. They go back to the car and talk. At first they reminisce, then dive deeper into how each of them perceived their past on-and-off relationship. They soon realize they both remember things differently. Directed by Jacob Charton and shot by Jordan Sakai, the film explores Charton's perspective on complicated queer relationships, both the joy and pain. His goal was to ultimately show how universal and relatable they can be.
I Wish I Never Fucking Met You“Prior to this film I had never worked with a professional colorist. It was an eye opening experience. I had made a lookbook with references to capture how I wanted the film to feel and Elodie perfectly captured it. It was a pleasure collaborating with Elodie, especially for the final scene in our film where we created the perfect dreamy atmosphere,” notes Charton. “I'm also so grateful for the other OutSet Fellows; without them, I don't think I would've made this film, their support and love means everything.”
I Wish I Never Fucking Met You“Jacob (Charton) and I had a conversation prior to the session to talk about the look of the film. He shared with me references and his idea of the look. To understand the look it is good to know what the movie is about. It is about love, breakup, violence, romance and struggle.. among other subjects. I used a film emulation LUT as a starting point to helps giving texture to the footage. Part of the color finishing process, for me, was to get a nice tone curve, as the film takes place at night and I wanted to make sure I will get all the information I needed while keeping a filmic look. I played with the duality of brightness and darkness. In a same way for color, I was playing with the fine line of the feeling of color and the saturation. The movie has strong primary colors from the outset. I had them as rich as possible without making them saturated colors. I wanted the movie to be colorful and soft,” describes Ichter.
I Wish I Never Fucking Met YouIchter worked with Charton, along with the other Fellows, out of Picture Shop’s Sunset Gower Studios location in Hollywood.The other Fellows thesis shorts are “Happy Birthday, You Made It” directed by Yuelei Song and shot by Mike Maliwanag; “Is This the One?” directed by Stephanie Mata and shot by Hassan Abdul-Wahid; and “Luv, Me” directed by Yen Dinh and Nicolas Jara and shotby Alex Ajayi.For more information about Outfest’s OutSet program please visit: https://www.outfest.org/outset/