The first feature film from writer-director Shaun Seneviratne, Ben and Suzanne: A Reunion in 4 Parts depicts the struggle between love and duty as Ben (Sathya Sridharan) steps out on a limb to rekindle his relationship with Suzanne (Anastasia Olowin), who can't escape the calls of her work. Seeking to make a film that felt grittier than the manicured qualities typically associated with romantic comedies, Seneviratne decided to employ non-actors in every role except the leads.
Complementing the decisions Seneviratne made in prep and on set with cinematographer Molly Scotti, Light Iron colorist Keith Jenson helped fine-tune the visual language in the final color grade, which took place at Light Iron New York ahead of the movie's world premiere at the 2024 SXSW Film Festival. Here, Seneviratne and Jenson share their perspectives on their memorable collaboration.
Light Iron: Shaun, what brought you to Light Iron for Ben and Suzanne?
Shaun Seneviratne: Our producer Doron J Paul Mitchell has a mutual friend with Freddy Hernandez, VP of business development at Light Iron. We felt Freddys passion and support for independent filmmaking, and the vibes were right! It just felt like Light Iron was the place to go.
How did the two of you discuss the desired look for the project to ensure you were seeing it the same way?
Seneviratne: I wanted the movie to have the look of a verit documentary particularly one shot in the '60s or '70s such as Tokyo Olympiad Jean Rouch films, and ric Rohmer's films. We were interested in keeping things natural and filmic; we weren't interested in applying more modern trends and looks. We also weren't afraid of contrast and were quite interested in playing with darkness and letting parts of the frame go fully black.
Keith Jenson: When we were first beginning the project, Shaun sent over stills from existing films that reminded him of scenes from his own film. Shaun had a really good idea of the sorts of tones and moods he was going for.
We got on a call so that we could both look at the references and talk them through, and during that call, Shaun and I discovered we had some pretty strong similarities in some pretty obscure and niche music. As creatives, we quickly realized that if we'd both gravitated to those interests independently, then we would probably be able to communicate a lot of the more abstract and esoteric ideas of color quickly basically, we could have a creative shorthand in the studio during our sessions. I think I can speak for both of us in that we walked away from that call excited to begin collaborating!
Seneviratne: Keith had shared his work on Eyimofe, which was very much in the vein of what we were trying to achieve. Also, Keiths background with film and telecine gave him an authentic perspective on how we could achieve a naturalistic film look.
What were some of your main areas of focus in the color grade?
Seneviratne: Shadow and highlight levels, saturation, authentic film texture principles, and how to approach the night scenes, which were an area where we allowed ourselves to be open to stylization.
Jenson: We really tried for an authentic filmic look with strong colors and strong contrast. The film itself has title cards against strong color backgrounds, and we didn't want those to feel out of place when they cut on screen, so the rest of the film had to have very prominent primaries and healthy saturation. To achieve this, we utilized the toolset inside of DaVinci Resolve. We built our own LUT utilizing some softening in the shadows, some halation effects, and some film grain. I like to apply different levels of film grain over top of each other to achieve a more photographic grain appearance that feels a bit less like an overlay filter.
Seneviratne: Keith spoke about what people sometimes get wrong with film grain, which is applying one uniform grain over the entire image. To truly emulate film grain, one needs to take into account how that grain looks over the highlights, mid tones and shadows.
Any final thoughts from your collaboration that you'd like to share?
Seneviratne: Keith is a great guy who was easy to collaborate with and had great taste and insight. Our DI producer at Light Iron, Bonnie Gross, was also instrumental in the process, always making sure everything was taken care of and that the process was super-smooth.
Jenson: It was an absolute pleasure to work with Shaun, [editor] Joe Violette, and Doron. We had a great time in the studio in what were extremely memorable sessions for me. It was some of the most fun I've had grading everything about our sessions went so smoothly. A lot of that is thanks to Bonnie Gross, who helped manage the entire project on our end. She was even able to wrangle large Toblerone chocolates to surprise everyone on our final session a comedically large Toblerone bar features in one aspect of the film. Bonnie and I would both love to work with Shaun and his team again!
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
The first feature film from writer-director Shaun Seneviratne, Ben and Suzanne: A Reunion in 4 Parts depicts the struggle between love and duty as Ben (Sathya Sridharan) steps out on a limb to rekindle his relationship with Suzanne (Anastasia Olowin), who can't escape the calls of her work. Seeking to make a film that felt grittier than the manicured qualities typically associated with romantic comedies, Seneviratne decided to employ non-actors in every role except the leads.
