February 26, 2016

Technicolor Provides Dailies For Spy Film Grimsby

Technicolor London’s dailies team keeps up with Sacha Baron Cohen’s comic genius on-set.

After runaway success with characters Ali G, Borat, and Bruno, Oscar-nominee and Golden Globe-winner Sacha Baron Cohen returns as the dimwitted Nobby Butcher in Grimsby. Grimsby sets out to create a world of spies as real and believable as any action-espionage franchise. In short, it could not be just a spy movie spoof. “We wanted to create a real action movie, with the stakes, the great stunts, and the jeopardy of a real action movie – and then throw an idiotic character in the middle of that, and see how that character changes the course of the movie,” says Baron Cohen. With that in mind, the filmmakers approached Louis Leterrier, one of the most in-demand action movie directors (Now You See Me, The Transporter), to take the helm.

The London dailies team joined the Grimsby crew on-set for the six-week shoot that mostly took place around the Epping Forest area in Essex. Technicolor Operations Manager, Chema Gomez, devised the dailies workflow, while Tom Dixon and John Flynn operated Technicolor’s mobile dailies solution on a daily basis. Gomez explained that, “Grimsby really tested our system to its limits as numerous cameras were rolling non-stop on set. This meant that the dailies team was processing up to 12 hours of material every day, forcing us to add an extra LTO back-up system to help us keep up with production's Codex magazines rotation. A real challenge, but a satisfying one."

In approaching his direction of Grimsby, Louis Leterrier’s focus was to keep pushing the extremes – the comedy, the locations, the design, and the cinematography – to give the audience an almost overwhelming experience. “In France they call me ‘Mr. Plus’ because I push, push, and push until we get the best, the most extreme, the most dynamic version of a scene,” says Leterrier.

Grimsby is scheduled for release on February 24th, 2016, in the UK and March 11th, 2016, in the United States where it will be released under the name The Brothers Grimsby.