“All American Bikini Car Wash” (2015-2016) brings to mind muscle cars of the super-rich and sexy bombshells straight off the Vegas Strip. And the movie doesn’t disappoint. It’s the archetypical sex comedy – think car-wash sequences shot live in the bright lights of Las Vegas, very high-end cars – Lotus, Lamborghini, muscle cars – and amazingly gorgeous women with very soapy sponges. But even the most beautiful sets, props, and people need the best tools to achieve high-quality results.
“Just out on DVD, the movie is already a hot summer seller,” said Nimrod Zalmanowitz at Vortex DI, who had duel roles as producer and colorist for the project. Zalmanowitz recently discussed the shoot, color grading and finishing for “All American Bikini Car Wash.”
We were working within a very tight budget but still wanted the quality of the big-screen look. So, we used a combination of the Red Epic and Scarlet cameras for the shoot and ASSIMILATE’s SCRATCH toolset and workflow for the DI/post-production.
Back at the studio in Los Angeles, all the RED media was ingested into our SCRATCH systems. Because the RED Epic shoots in HDR and SCRATCH has HDR tools, we were able to achieve the color depth, saturation, and luminosity I envisioned from the data. And being able to do the post in real time, we were able to quickly do a lot of experimentation to achieve different saturation levels and restoring HDR detail by adding layers. The final look of the movie is ideal for this fun-and-naughty entertainment genre.
The finishing tools are outstanding. Besides cleaning up artifacts, we were able to work in multiple windows to enhance the facial features, such as highlighting the eyes and correcting skin tones affected by the bright lights; or to ‘polish’ the cars to push the viewer’s eyes in a particular direction; as well as to maintain continuity of the color hues throughout the movie. We also did a lot of rotoscoping, qualifying and compositing of imagery, which is easy to do in SCRATCH.
“We have many theatrical DI clients, and provide post services for hundreds of indie films throughout the year,” said Zalmanowitz. “As a colorist and producer, I see SCRATCH and RED as a very powerful combination that allows me to achieve the vision of our clients, no matter how small or large their budget. All movies deserve a colorist’s best efforts, and we can add a lot of creative energy and achieve tremendous results with SCRATCH.”
