Creating a film look for Y2K

Directed and co-written by Kyle Mooney, the feature film Y2K blends horror and humor to deliver a fresh yet nostalgic take on the teen comedy genre. Set against the backdrop of New Year’s Eve 1999 — when the world waited to see whether the stroke of midnight might trigger a cataclysmic meltdown of all computer-driven systems — the movie follows a group of teens navigating personal drama, comedic mishaps and ultimately an apocalypse.

Mooney and cinematographer Bill Pope sought to create a period-specific visual style that pays homage to teen comedies of the late ’90s and early aughts while employing modern-day tools, including Panavised Sony Venice 2 cameras and Panavision VA large-format spherical primes supplied by Panavision New York. The look was finalized in the color grade, performed at Light Iron Los Angeles by senior colorist Charles Bunnag, who worked closely with Pope, Mooney, co-writer Evan Winter and co-producer Steven Fine. In the following interview, Pope and Bunnag discuss their creative process and technical approaches to emulating an analog film look in a digital workflow.

Panavision: How did each of you become involved in Y2K?

Bill Pope: I had worked with Kyle Mooney on Zoolander 2 when I helped out on principal photography, and again on Seinfeld’s Unfrosted. He struck me as an incredibly committed and hilariously surprising comic actor. We connected and talked on those films, and when he and Evan Winter started looking for a cinematographer for Y2K, somehow my name came up.

Charles Bunnag: The project came to Light Iron through relationships our team had with post producer Steve Fine and Bill. I had worked with Bill previously as an additional colorist on Men in Black 3 and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. I was excited to reconnect with him and be part of Y2K, especially when I heard that Bill and Kyle were aiming for a period-specific look.

Pope: Light Iron works closely with Panavision and spoke to us very early about being our post solution.  We started working on a LUT as we were checking out gear.

Bill, how did you and Kyle talk about the visual style you envisioned for the movie?

Pope: Our touchstone was Dazed and Confused. Not just the content of the film, but the way [director] Richard Linklater and [cinematographer] Lee Daniel blocked out scenes with multiple actors coming from multiple directions was thrilling. It’s seemingly casual blocking, but on closer viewing, it’s not so easily done. And we wanted Y2K to feel like it was shot on film, with grain rolling around and the color space of that film.

There were other references, too, like Breaking Away, which had great biking scenes and a laid-back approach. We wanted a feeling of lightness and an invisible camera for the first part of the film, so we also studied Superbad. Kyle and Evan are also enamored with more mannered films, like Evil Dead, so those came into play in the second half of the film, after midnight on Y2K.

How did you communicate those intentions to Charles to ensure he was seeing the movie in the same way? 

Pope: Like everyone: references, feel, discussion. It’s like being at a wine tasting, but without the wine.

Bunnag: I did not expect to hear Bill say ‘I want this to look like Superbad,’ but that was a particularly helpful reference. He described wanting the movie to feel like a raunchy late-’90s teen comedy — something that feels like it was shot in 1999. We focused on creating a film emulation to get the desired look, incorporating warmer midtones, subtle halation and grain, and a slight edge blur to soften any super-sharp digital edges and give a more filmic look.

Bill, what did you see in the VA prime lenses that made them the right match for this story? 

Pope: The VA primes have a great, light distortion that felt ‘period’ to us. They’re softer toward the edges. They felt ‘filmish.’

Charles, can you share a bit more about your approach to emulating the look of film?

Bunnag: Bill and I talked about some specifics regarding certain film stocks, but we pretty quickly agreed that it was more important to capture our memory of what film looked like rather than exact technical details. I built a custom node tree in DaVinci Resolve’s timeline color track to emulate the characteristics of film stock, adding warmth to the white point and pushing reds in the midtones. Grain and halation were layered in, and I used an edge-detect matte to apply a subtle blur to sharp edges. This removed any crispness from the images that resulted from shooting with modern digital cameras and kept the feel of the movie more in keeping with film.