Peixe-Gato

Translated to ‘Cat-Fish’ in English, Peixe-Gato is a light-hearted comedy about Miguel, Luisa and Rafael, a family of 3 who work at a fish market in Portugal. When an English man visits their stall and Rafael accidentally steals his wallet, the three hatch a plan on how to return it to him without getting caught.

In terms of the edit, I conducted quality-control on the cut of this film, with the final cut coming to me just before picture-lock, and the director, Inês Costa Matos, and I making some final tweaks to the pacing. The titles were also designed by me.

For the grade, Inês wanted a warm and fun look – not explosively saturated, but with dense colours. The film was shot in Blackmagic RAW, making it a joy to colour grade in DaVinci Resolve. After developing the initial look with Inês, I set about colouring the rest of the film. Exposure was adjusted using the RAW controls, with contrast done thereafter. A smooth highlight rolloff was achieved through the use of Phantom LUTs.

Challenges were presented in the form of uneven lighting in various indoor scenes due to a change of weather from one day to the next, but with the powerful tools included with Resolve, a lot of these problems melted away with some work and experimentation.

The final grade came out looking quite film-like – the warm, dense colours gave it a certain vibe of the mid 20th century, which both the director and I quite liked, and was paired well with the light-hearted, comedic storyline and beautiful setting.