Encore Hollywood Posts "Horrifying" Campaign

[Stryker]

Encore Hollywood Posts “Horrifying” Campaign for Universal Studios
Colorist Arnold Ramm Sets the Look with Spook-tacular Results

HOLLYWOOD—Encore Hollywood helped to set the tone for a ghoulish birthday party in providing post production services for a campaign promoting Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios theme parks in Florida and California. Arnold Ramm created an unusually creepy look for the 4-spot package, conceived by Los Angeles agency davidandgoliath, in which a quartet of creepsters celebrates the parks’ 16th annual event.

Ramm used a Spirit Datacine and a Da Vinci 2K color corrector to give film captured by Director Dean Karr and Cinematographer Checco Varese the look of an old-fashioned horror film. “We drained all of the color out of the film to create what I call a ‘moss and rust’ look,” Ramm recalled. “The blacks were crushed and the shadows had a greenish tint. We then slowly dialed some of the color back in, letting it mix over the rusty background layer.”

The spot features the same cast of characters that has appeared in Horror Night spots in previous years, including a fiendish grandmother and a foul-looking mortician. In one of the current spots, the grizzly group sits down for birthday cake alongside a glass-topped casket in which someone has been buried alive.

Ramm used two telecine passes and eight power windows to make certain details in the scene stand out. “We brightened some areas and darkened others,” noted Ramm. “We used a separate window on the live victim in the coffin so that you can see the sweat on his face.”

Encore Hollywood is located at 6344 Fountain Avenue, Hollywood, California 90028. For more information, call (323) 466-7663 or visit www.encorehollywood.com.