Barend Onneweer
cell: + 31624226412
barend@raamw3rk.net

INSTANT DREAMS

FEATURE DOCUMENTARY / TITLE DESIGN, COLOURGRADING & VISUAL EFFECTS

Instant Dreams is a feature documentary by Willem Baptist (who I collaborated with on many of his previous films, like Wild boar and I’m Never Afraid!) about the fascination and love for Polaroids. When Polaroid announced the end of instant film in 2008, the last still working factory was bought by a small group of enthusiasts.

Among them is the retired scientist Stephen Herchen who previously collaborated with the inventor of Polaroid and is still trying to unravel the secret of the lost chemical formula.

Instant Dreams was lensed by Gregor Meerman, using his Arri Alexa to shoot absolutely stunning material. I've received a lot of compliments on the look of Instant Dreams, but really Gregor deserves most the credit.

Some additional material was shot using a drone, some GH4 on a gimbal and some Black Magic Pocket Cinema camera - which needed to be seamlessly matched with the Arri Alexa material. And there was a substantial amount of archive footages - some of it scanned from the original 16mm negatives, but other elements were pulled directly off Youtube. So a lot of additional work was done restoring the material to hold up in cinematic projection.

DADDY AND THE WARLORD

FEATURE DOCUMENTARY / COLOURGRADING

Daddy & the Warlord is a film by Shamira Raphaela and Clarice Gargard about Clarice's search to who her father really is. It also is a story of war, rebellion and faded ideals in a time of war. If Clarice's father really is that great as she always thought he was, how is it he worked for three corrupted governement leaders and warlord Charles Taylor? Did he just not want to abandon his country or was it just about the money he earned while he was working for Charles Taylor? Or was it the status he had built, the power that came with it?

This was my third collaboration with Shamira Raphaëla. For this project she and cinematographer Jefrim Rothuizen came up with a very distinct visual approach, shooting with coloured LED panels. Before the actual shoot in Liberia we did some grading tests to see how we could push a bold colour palette while maintaining image quality and some flexibility in postproduction.

IDENTICALS BRAND NEW-U

FEATURE FILM / VISUAL EFFECTS & COLOURGRADING

Brand New-U (U.S.A. title: "Identicals") follows SLATER as he is forced to move through a series of parallel lives. He becomes more and more obsessed as he tries to find the lover he lost, but what he must find in the end is himself.

Brand New-U takes elements of science-fiction movies and thrillers, strips them down, and re-mixes them into a looping dream-logic to create a contemporary allegory of our search for identity and human connection in our rootless, media-saturated worlds.

After our collaboration on Shock Head Soul, director Simon Pummell reunited the core team to work on his first fiction feature film, set in three different worlds that all needed a different visual esthetic. In the end we worked on over 500 vfx shots, ranging from subtle paint work to full digital cityscapes and sci-fi machinery.

Brand New-U premiered in competition at the Edinburg International Film festival in june 2015, and has been picked up for North American distribution by Sam Goldwyn Films. And in Japan by New-Select.

Identicals website

NINNOC

DOCUMENTARY SHORT / COLOURGRADING

Why do you have to do what everyone else does and why does everyone have to look the same? Ninnoc struggles when she is in a group. She doesn’t just want to adapt to the others, but she’s also afraid of being excluded. Can you deviate in a group? Or will you then end up alone?

In the documentary Ninnoc you crawl in Ninnoc’s head. And find her in an empty school. Can she escape from the group or does she always carry it with her? What part of herself does Ninnoc show and what does she keep hidden?

When director Niki, cinematographer Jefrim and I spoke about the film we immediately agreed that even though the subject and images can easily become dark and haunting, we really wanted the look to also have a soft and romantic side. So even though the lighting is sometimes dramatic we created a more pastel airy look that brings out the softer side of Ninnoc.

In addition to colour, I created some visual effects and did some small retouching.

PORTEMONNEE REVERSE ft. IDALY & WILLEM

MUSIC VIDEO / COLOURGRADING

For a while Victor had been wanting to do an outrageous hip-hop music video - and when he got the chance he took it. An exercise in 'over the topness', from bodybuilders to bubble-butt dancers, a white horse painted to look like a zebra, motorbikes making donuts...

We pushed the colours to the point of breaking and then I couldn't help myself and pulled back a tiny little bit...

WILD BOAR WILD ZWIJN

SHORT DOCUMENTARY/ COLOURGRADING

In nature only one rule counts; eat or be eaten. WILD BOAR is a poetic, and visually arresting documentary about the curious relationship between man and the rise of the wild boar. The film tells a story about confusion, despair and opportunity amidst the invasion of unruly creatures that won’t abide by manmade rules and laws. From the dark woods where it originates, this almost uncontrollably dangerous creature goes deeper and deeper into our villages and cities but at the same time tickles our imagination and inspires us. WILD BOAR is an exploration of a society conflicted with nature and a reflection of the curiosity of human nature itself. Will we eat them or will they eventually devour us?

Always treading the division between documentary and fiction, Willem Baptist had the magic realism of 'Twin Peaks' in mind while shooting this documentary. The images are very evocative and for the grading we chose to go with bold gestures. The film was shot on a Canon C300 by Dirk-Jan Kerkkamp.

Like many of Willem's films this film went on to screen at many filmfestivals around the world and was shortlist nominated for a Golden Calf at the Netherlands Film Festival.

Produced by Zuidenwind Film

www.wildzwijn-film.nl

THE NOSE

FEATURE DOCUMENTARY/ COLOURGRADING

A documentary by Paul Rigter, about Alessandro Gualtieri, a man who developed his own independent scent in the commercial violence of the perfume industry. By remaining faithful to his own willfulness he has managed to conquer the world of perfume. He calls himself The Nose.

The film was shot beautifully by Gregg Telussa on a Canon 5D MkII. I denoised all the material prior to colourgrading and applied some mild sharpening. The crew followed Alessandro all over the world and we developed distinct looks for the different locations.

Hugo Goudswaard shot additional macro footage to visualize the various scents in a poetic way.

http://www.thenosefilm.com

KLM BEYOND THE HORIZON

WEB PROMO COLOURGRADING

Amsterdam based production company DPPLR created a teaser promoting the launch of KLM Aviation's first mobile game, AVIATION EMPIRE (iOS/Android). The one minute movie shares the story of KLM’s pioneering role over the past hundred years: whether it’s travelling to exotic destinations or developing an intricate mobile game, KLM has always looked beyond the horizon. The film was shot on location in the Netherlands, Oman and South-Korea.

This was right after the release of the Sony F55, and the first time I worked on Sony 4k RAW files. The files are huge, but the dynamic range was really impressive. With so many different locations and moods it was fun to play with different palettes while still preserving a unified character to the images.

SPECIMENS SLIDE

SHORT FILM/ VISUAL EFFECTS & COLOURGRADING

Specimens Slide is the third short film by artist Christiaan Bastiaan, and the second one I've worked on. It is part of a trilogy with “Club Mama Gemütlich” (2009) and “Al Alamayn” (2011). “Specimens Slide” was recorded in August 2012 in the Van Doesburg House in Paris with a cast including (recently deceased) Jeroen Willems, Maria Kraakman, Hanna Schygulla, Yoshi Oida, and Danaë Moons.

THE 12th OF NEVER

SHORT FILM / COLOURGRADING

Stan and Robyn return home from an evening out. They came from a party where Robyn was flaunting her affair with a writer more successful than Stan. At home, Robyn continues to chip away at her husband's self-esteem. Stan's been taking this abuse for years. His only escape is a world of fantasy. He writes stories where he is the one inflicting the pain and going off with other women. But when the line between reality and fantasy starts to fade, it becomes harder to figure out who the real monster is. 12th of Never tells the story of two people unable to walk away from a love that died years ago.

I colourgraded this short film, directed by Fadi Hindash and shot by Daan Nieuwenhuizen on Canon 5D MkII. At this point I have extensive experience with denoising and preprocessing the 5D material to improve the base image quality before colourgrading the image. This film is another example that shows that if you stay within the limitations of the 5D MkII's capabilities (controlled lighting, limited contrast, no complex wide shots of high-frequency detail) it's possible to get really stunning images out of this camera.

DEVASTATED BY LOVE

FEATURE FILM / VISUAL EFFECTS & COLOURGRADING

Struggling with a writerblock Arie finds his muse in Sonja, a beautiful red haired cable car driver. When her line is cancelled, he roams the streets for her, waits endlessly outside her favourite shoe-shop and even crashes the cable car company staff party. He spots every cable car in the city, hoping Sonja is the driver… but all in vain. When Arie finds out that Sonja is dating another man, he doesn’t let this “Fatty with his magic violin” spoil his dreams of Sonja. Lost in a romantic daydream, his life is slowly going to the dogs.

I provided visual effects and colourgrading for the directing debut of Ari Deelder.

WAITING FOR P.O BOX

SHORT FILM / COLOURGRADING, TITLE DESIGN

Bassam Chekhes directed, shot and edited 'Waiting for P.O Box' (Falastein, Sandouk Al Intezar Lil Burtuqal) himself, in Jordan where the film takes place. It's a surreal story dealing with bureaucracy and disconnect. After the rough version was selected for the prestigious Short Film Palm d'Or competition in Cannes we worked hard to finish the film for theatrical release in time for the festival.



SHOCK HEAD SOUL

FEATURE FILM / VISUAL EFFECTS & COLOURGRADING

"In 1903 Daniel Paul Schreber published the most celebrated autobiography of madness 'from the inside' ever written. Shock Head Soul interleaves documentary interviews, fictional re-construction and CGI animation to portray his story.

Running as a recurrent motif through the film is an imaginary Writing Down Machine inspired by both the delusory writing down systems envisioned by Schreber and also the Hansen Writing Ball. This early visionary design for a typewriter is famous because Nietzsche used such a machine to compose reflections on the relationship between writing and technology."

(excerpts from www.shockheadsoul.com)

Review in 'Variety'

I first talked to Simon Pummell about the project in september 2008 and started working on animation tests and designs for the 'writing down machine' soon after. The project evolved in a rare way - the animation tests inspired adjustments to the script to take advantage of the new ideas about the narrative possibilities of the animation.

In colourgrading it was challenging to bring together images that were very different stylistically . But in general it was a pleasure working with the material that Reinier van Brummelen shot - and we managed to create a very diverse but coherent and powerful look for the film.

The film was selected for the prestigious 'Orizzonti' competition at the Venice Filmfestival 2011, and went on to screen at the BFI in London, CP:DOX in Copenhagen and the IFFR in Rotterdam.

DONNIE

SHORT FILM / COLOURGRADING

Eleven year old Donnie has conflicts with the boyfriend of his mother. Meanwhile he strugles at his swimminglessons. Is Donnie going to find comfort with his mother or stand on his own feet? A short story about growing up in an emotional vacuum.

THE SPUTNIK EFFECT

STEREOSCOPIC GALLERY INSTALLATION / VISUAL EFFECTS & ANIMATION

The installation 'The Sputnik Effect' shares its depictions of a fictional Writing Down Machine with Simon Pummell's feature film 'Shock Head Soul'.

Parallel to our work on the feature film Simon Pummell developed the concept of an anaglyph stereoscopic (to be viewed through red-green coloured glasses) featuring animated writing down machines that we developed for the film.

The first of the three 'rooms' of the installation premiered in march 2011 in M KHA. The premiere of the three room installation in TENT coincided with the Dutch premiere of Shock Head Soul during the IFFR in 2012.

RADIO VERONICA

TELEVISION PROMO / COLOURGRADING

For Active Studios I colourgraded this short promo for Radio Veronica. The grade emphasizes the blue colour that represents the Veronica brand. Most of the work was actually cleaning up the ceiling and background: painting out a lot of small reflections and rigging to get closer to the clean and graphic look that was wanted.





www.activestudios.nl

LOTUS

FEATURE FILM / VISUAL EFFECTS & COLOURGRADING

Lotus ensues almost silently several anonymous lives during one afternoon, that night and the following morning in our busy and hectic society, after which a moving palette of both grievous and humorous stories about loneliness come into being.

In these modern times, we have numerous ways to connect with each other through social media, but to really reach one another is less easy. In search for happiness, the characters in LOTUS attempt to break through the social connection barriers.

Lotus was the first feature film that I colourgraded - in my own studio, supported by the excellent people at Filmmore Amsterdam (I thank Ben and Remco for this opportunity). Together with cinematographer Micha Douwes we worked hard to make the film feel like one continuous storyline unfolding in 36 hours.

When the film was shot in fall 2011 the Arri Alexa digital camera was very new. Most of the scenes were shot in available light, sometimes with nothing more than a streetlight in the night.

www.lotusdefilm.nl

I'M NEVER AFRAID IK BEN ECHT NIET BANG

SHORT FILM / TITLE DESIGN & COLOURGRADING

Mack, a 8 year old streetwise boy, who wants to win all the time, lives on borrowed time. With his mirrored heart he has to perform on the motorcrosstrack while death watches him from all corners. He finds inspiration with his grandfather who has passed away and support from his sister who lives in constant fear of going into anaphylactic shock and die. A short, sometimes quirky and funny, youth documentary about the strength to win and facing ones fears.

Director Willem Baptist chose to shoot on 16mm film to achieve the soft feel of the childrens television he grew up on. In colourgrading we chose to keep the gentle palette to give the film a slightly nostalgic and romantic look, juxtaposed against the sometimes harsh reality of Mack's life.

CHAIRS MISSING

SHORT FILM / COLOURGRADING

Chairs Missing is an ambient film that shows the last days of a swimming pool, just before its destruction. The film unfolds in sequential patterns, creating a distance from a dramatic event, not showing the confrontation between people who meet, but returning to the place of action right after the event. Its regular visitors are isolated in a series of inscrutable encounters. The silence in the almost empty building is distinct from the local meeting place the swimming pool once was. Here "absence" is a significant indicator. If it is true that a building after 40 years has gained a soul, the film intends to show this 'soul'.


www.anotherfilm.org