Of late, period or martial chivalry movies either look aesthetically beautiful like Zhang Yimou’s trilogy of Hero, House of Flying Daggers and Curse of the Golden Flower, or opt for the grittier, more down to earth look with plenty of dirt and grime like Battle of Wits.

Director Peter Chan’s The Warlords follows the latter with its strained colors and muck on everyone’s face, in parallel of the grey that befalls everyone in this tale of a trio’s struggles with the system, and amongst themselves. Chan’s film fuses hardcore battle action sequences with character driven drama with stellar leads of Andy Lau, Jet Li and Takeshi Kaneshiro.

The US$40 million project began shooting in early December 2006 in Beijing and wrapped in March the following year. Many of the outdoor scenes were shot in Beijing, Shanghai and the town of Hengdian in Zhejiang province. China’s state-run China Film Group and Hong Kong’s Media Asia provided the financial backing.

Post for the project was entrusted to The Post Bangkok, one of Thailand’s premier post facilities and one of few facilities in Asia which can deliver a feature film project from color correction and editing to VFX and digital mastering; with output on the industry standard Arrilaser. With recent upgrades, the facility has evolved into a world-class service provider providing finishing in both PAL and NTSC.

The Post Bangkok is outfitted with an impressive array of equipment including offline editing suites like the Avid Media Composer and Final Cut Pro 4 HD uncompressed systems; Online suites like Inferno 6.x Onyx2 HD/ Sd and Flame 9.x Octane 2 HD/SD; an ARRI Laser; and CG tools like Maya 7.0, Discreet Lustre and Incinerator, as well as the Sledge Hammer Network attached storage (10TB).

“It’s absolutely vital to keep up with the trends. We invest in new technology in response to client demands and needs or when we sense that the launching of a new generation of production tool is worth pursuing,” explained

Richard Downing of The Post Bangkok. “More importantly, the people helming these technological marvels are some of the best from all around the world with exceptional talents and skills.”

TPB earned its spurs as one of the first post house in the region to embrace Digital Intermediate (DI) technology with the addition of Spirit 4K Datacine with Da Vinci 2K Plus; a Spirit 2K Datacine with da Vinci 2K Plus HD; and the Lustre data grading system. This was one of the key factors that helped it land The Warlords contract.

Even before the film went into production, DOP Arthur Wong came a calling with some very well-prepared test material which The Post Bangkok put through its pipeline. The resulting prints were viewed in Hong Kong. “We soon learned that we had impressed enough to land the whole DI,” said Downing.

TPB was given charge of all the film-to-digital-to-film aspects of the movie. Dailies were graded and transferred to HDCAM at 24fps for capture into Final Cut Pro and delivered to the editors as files. DI scanning was in fullaperture 2K on the Spirit, except for a single shot that was done at 4K.

Over a period of more than a year, the entire inventory of applications was called into play for The Warlords. These included HDCAM VTR, Spirit 2K Classic telecine, Spirit 4K datacine and Bones, Final Cut Pro, Autodesk Lustre Incinerator, Autodesk Flame and Inferno, Max-T Sledgehammer, ARRI Laser and D5 VTR.

Assembly and colour grading was done on the Lustre Incinerator with final renders being printed by the ARRI Laser. These renders also served as the basis for a bespoke HD version with slight grading adjustments to account for the different colour-space.

In addition, TPB handled approximately 10 minutes of retouching chores – mainly removing evidence of modern life, as the story is set in the 19th century, and some harness removal.

Post went smoothly but was not without its challenges, the first of which cropped up before any film was shot and that was to figure out the best way to feed dailies to the editors, considering that Final Cut Pro was the chosen editing program.

“While I fully recognize that the creative possibilities afforded by FCP make it very compelling for editors, the fact is that in some respects it really isn’t particularly grown-up offline system. It’s actually an online system,” explained Downing.

“Our final preferred choice (actually the least of several evils, to be honest) was to scan with a mild amount of grain reduction turned on at the Spirit. This was our considered opinion after grading and print tests. Unfortunately for the plan, the VFX (from non-grain-reduced scans done months earlier) was already so advanced that a re-scan would blow the deadline out of the water because of the re-rendering. So we were trapped.

“The majority of VFX were battle scene shots and it was those very scenes that were causing concern. I felt we couldn’t mix grain-reduced and non-grainreduced footage in the same scene. Our print tests had covered this exact scenario and everybody commented on the increased grittiness of some shots (which just happened to be the VFX shots).

As a result of this I concocted an outrageous procedure which involved breaking the image up into bite-sized chunks so the VFX shots could be fed through a regular video noise reducer. After re-construction the result was very impressive but I never actually considered using the procedure for the film because I reasoned that under delivery pressure I couldn’t afford the time - I was right as it turned out!

“In the end, the solution was achieved in the grading suite itself by utilizing every tool available to create the desired atmosphere without too much unwanted effects - some creative directions were even pursued as a result of our initially technicallyfocussed attempts to coax a relatively high-grain film stock into looks it was probably not designed for.”

Downing was careful to avoid 24/25 frame-rate conversions and kept a tight rein on such conversions. However, when absolutely necessary, TPB settled on a procedure using HDCAM as an intermediate that ultimately resulted in DV Quicktime files containing graded rushes at 24fps and 720x576 4:3 with embedded timecode and burntin displays (camera-roll, lab-roll, keycode and 24fps timecode). In this way the offline process was maintained at 24fps throughout the process.

As the edit evolved, TPB faced the normal challenge of incorporating the editorial changes into its Lustre timelines. Where necessary, editorial retimes were individually assessed and where it warranted motionestimation processing, the re-time was done in one of either Flame or Inferno systems.

“It’s never easy and I’m still not satisfied with the current state of play in this area. This was exacerbated by the need for approval by authorities in China and a resultant re-edit which strained the delivery schedule to breaking point,” said Downing,

Primary output was 10-bit log DPX files for ARRI printing with the HD video master derived from the same files, subject to some slight re-grading for HD colour-space.

While The Warlords could have easily been yet another period action movie, Chan’s vision for the battles in this film are a departure from usual graceful and exciting martial arts warfare in many films before it.

The violence is unrelenting and Chan’s camera charts the battlefield action with the quick, jittery manner befitting such chaotic scenarios. He bathes the film in earthy browns and grays that lend grittiness to the dusty, war-torn landscape during the Qing Dynasty and the Taiping rebellion in the 19th century.

Many who have seen the finished film have commented on the opening hour in particular which is dominated by a very reduced colour treatment that leaves a lasting impression. It appears deliberately strained of colour with predominantly sepia hues.

In the vernacular of the production, this came to be known as the “half-copper” look, Downing reveals that it was in the director’s and DOP’s minds right from the first test started by the choice of film stock which was Kodak 5279 500T for much of the film including all battleground scenes. However, the final look seen in the film is much less “coppery” than originally tested.

“We did encounter a specific difficulty with the actual colour and texture Arthur Wong (DOP), director Peter Chan and colourist Nick Barton were applying to most of the first hour. The intent was for a very gritty and reduced look. If these scenes are not easy to look at then the production succeeded because occasionally this was the specific intent,” Downing said.

However, this look had to be scaled down when early response from China to the trailer indicated that the film’s investors were not comfortable with the earthy result.

“We put a fair bit of effort into ameliorating the harsh grain that resulted from the relatively high contrast treatment. The “half-copper” is on the early village scenes and all the battlepreparation and actual battle scenes,” Downing added.

“As we progress through the story (and away from battles) the natural colour starts to emerge. In many later scenes, especially those set in the Forbidden City, the full glory of the film (Kodak 5274 200T for much of this) is allowed to come through.”

With the culmination of this project, The Post Bangkok proved itself as one of few facilities in Asia that can claim to provide state-of-the-art equipment and services that are fit for posting world-class film and television projects.

According to Downing, the project illustrated TPB’s ability to execute difficult and challenging assignments under budget and deadline pressures.

“Over the years, we’ve worked hard to build ourselves into a position where clients know that we can be trusted to execute their projects. The result of these years of ongoing building is a team of top professionals from many nations and complementary modern equipment to allow them full expression of their respective talents.”

More importantly the project showed the rising importance of DI grading in modern filmmaking because at all times the director used colour treatment to drive the story in one way or another.

“It’s hard to see how some of this could have been done within the limits of a traditional laboratory colour timing process. This story-driven approach to the look of the film was interesting for me to observe because in the advertising arena (which has had 20-plus years of experience in advanced colour grading) the focus is squarely on the imagery,” Downing said.

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