Post-production uncovered: Molinare on Sexy Beast (Paramount+)

Molinare senior colourist Ross Baker has revealed the work that went into grading Paramount+ series Sexy Beast.

Released earlier this year, the series is a prequel to the 2000 film of the same name, which starred Ray Winstone. The show looks at the relationship between Gal Dove and Don Logan, as they become involved in London’s criminal world in the 1990s.

It was produced by AC Chapter One and Anonymous Content in association with PTIS, the international studio division of Paramount Global. Michael Caleo, Nicole Clemens, Antony Smith, Michael Scheel, JC Acosta, Alastair Galbraith and David Caffrey are executive producers, along with David Scinto and Louis Mellis, the writers of the original film.

Baker explained: “I worked on Sexy Beast for Paramount+ alongside DoPs Birgit Dierken, Ralph Kaechele, and Mattias Nyberg, and series producers James Levison and Matt Barber. The brief was to create distinct worlds for the characters while maintaining a uniform style.

“For the day exteriors, we aimed for a mundane, uninspiring look for Dom’s life, using soft contrast and muted tones. Birgit wanted the day interiors to have a slight contrast, making them warmer to reflect the idea that British homes add colour to an otherwise dull outside world.

“As we delved into the night life and the criminal world, we increased the contrast and richness of the colours. We wanted the scenes with significant red elements to have deep, foreboding burgundy textures, symbolising power and wealth.

“A key scene in the story is the casino, which we treated with a smoky, grimy texture but with vivid colours, balancing contrast and colour density.”

As for the key challenges, he added: “One big challenge was episode four, which was set in Spain. They had such poor weather on the shoot so we had to work hard to contrast it heavily with Dom’s experience in England. The goal was to make Spain look stunning and sun-kissed during the day and a jewelled-like starry night sky that would make Dom feel bewitched by his surroundings.

“Production considered bringing in a VFX team to enhance the skies and inject some sun into the scenes, but first they asked me to mock up a few ideas to discuss with the VFX team. After a few tests they were very pleased with what I achieved with the compositing tool in Baselight – taking skies from other parts of the series or stock elements.

“I combined this with other Baselight tools – using ‘Boost’ tools to enhance contrast and saturation as starting points in my primary layer, before adding a slight warm hazy effect and then my balance layer followed. I applied the hazy layer by setting the blending option to screen with some diffusion and adjusted the opacity to control the volume of the effect. I also used a combination of the DKey tool with shapes to add shadows – helping to sell the strong sunny vibes.”