Featured Project: The Black Phone 2
Continuing the collaboration that began with director Scott Derrickson’s 2012 film Sinister – Cinelicious again provides high resolution, “scan-once” HDR Super 8mm & 16mm film scanning for Blumhouse / Universal horror franchise The Black Phone starring Ethan Hawk as The Grabber. Cinelicious worked with DP Pär Ekberg on technical aspects of pre-production camera testing & employed new ultra high resolution digitation techniques to support the creative DI color work of Joseph Bicknell at CO3 NY. The Super 8mm was used to create an unsettling feeling to Gwynne’s psychic dream sequences. Approximately one third of the film was shot on Super 8mm and 16mm.
Featured Project: The Gorge
Skydance and Crooked Highway collaborate on genre-mixing thriller The Gorge for Apple TV. Cinelicious was called on to create a beat-up, archival, 16mm film print that the main characters (played by Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy) discover in a long-forgotten WWII-era laboratory. The print needed to feel like it was distressed and age-appropriate for the story. The physical film reel was used as a prop on set and actually projected while filming the scene, providing a key plot point to unlock the mysteries of The Gorge. See short sample clip (no spoilers).
Featured Restoration: Following (1999)
Christopher Nolan needed flawless 4K scans of the original B/W A-B negative of his first feature Following for a high-profile restoration and Criterion release. But every major post house he tried delivered scans with blurred frames around the splices—until Lee Kline (technical director at Criterion) asked us to take a shot. We love a good technical challenge, and this one paid off: we solved the issue, landed the project, and earned Nolan’s praise—“Cinelicious provided the best 4K 16mm film scans I’ve ever seen.” Thanks, Chris—for the kind words and for always championing the art of shooting on film.
Featured Restoration: Belladonna of Sadness (1973)
Produced by the godfather of Japanese anime & manga, Osamu Tezuka (METROPOLIS, ASTRO BOY) and directed by his long time collaborator Eiichi Yamamoto, BELLADONNA is a mad, swirling, psychedelic lightshow of medieval tarot-card imagery with horned demons and haunted forests. Cinelicious remastered the film entirely in-house from the original 35mm negative to rave reviews:“Belladonna of Sadness is, on a purely aesthetic level, almost unbelievably beautiful… Cinelicious did a fantastic job with the restoration – it looks far better than any version out there.” Anime News Network. Check out the trailer put out by Cinelicious Pics.
What’s Fresh: Remote Color Grading for Wynn Las Vegas
Cinelicious has recently launched our Remote Color Grading services allowing clients to experience final color sessions from anywhere in the world. Wynn Las Vegas has an extremely talented in-house production team. From camera & cinematography to vfx and editorial they produce much of their promotional materials entirely in-house. One area that they needed help with was final color so when a producer from Wynn called saying they needed help on a golf spot we were a perfect fit.
