Dungeon Beach Collaborates in Cinematography Win at Tribeca

Following the recent Tribeca Film Festival, post production studio Dungeon Beach is pleased to share its work on ‘Bitterroot’, which won a Special Jury Mention for Cinematography in a U.S. Feature.

Set in rural Montana, ‘Bitterroot’ follows Lue, a middle-aged man reeling from a failed marriage and responsible for taking care of his ageing mother. The narrative feature foregrounds the Hmong American experience – rarely seen on film – as Lue struggles to accept Hmong spirituality upon his mother's insistence. Meanwhile, in his day-to-day life, he experiences blue-collar job loss, navigates the impact of a forest fire on his farmer's market stall, and carries with him a buried grief. 

Above: The campfire scene from ‘Bitterroot’

Carefully composed visuals from director Vera Brunner-Sung and cinematographer Ki Jin Kim, in harmony with colour from Dungeon Beach, led an esteemed jury comprised of David O. Russell, Chinonye Chukwu, Noah Hawley, Scott Shooman and Desiree Akhavan to laud ‘Bitterroot’ “for its marriage of the spiritual and the literal, and its contrast between natural beauty and the mundane.” 

Vera and Ki Jin staged the characters with the existing space in mind, relying primarily on available light, and only occasionally augmenting the actors' faces with small LED fixtures or practicals. Dungeon Beach supervising colorist Jeff Sousa took on the mission of complementing this naturalistic approach, enhancing but not embellishing the earthy Montana palette, and subtly drawing eyes to those of the characters without shining a blunt spotlight. Jeff brought his shot-matching A-game to the project, balancing out scenes where the fickle mountain clouds were moving from take to take. 

To grade the film, Jeff utilised a unique software package: Mistika Boutique. Its smooth colour math allowed him to cleanly rotate the colour of certain leaves in the forest without affecting lead actor Wa Yang's skin tone, highlighting the rusty appearance of the burned forest—a key plot point—and skipping the need to resort to VFX.

Dungeon Beach released a statement on the win, “Dungeon Beach is extremely proud of ‘Bitterroot’ for receiving a cinematography nod from Tribeca. We believe the win reflects the calibre of work coming out of our colour grading department, not just in terms of talent, but also in our ability to collaborate with thoughtful filmmakers and execute their unique visions. In addition, we like to think our bespoke sound design and mix played a vital assist role in the visual win. The gorgeous photography of Montana just hits different when paired with the hauntingly beautiful tones our team crafted for the movie.”