Senior Colorist Jill Bogdanowicz and multiple‑award‑winning cinematographer Lawrence Sher, ASC — the team behind the celebrated Joker films — are excited about back‑to‑back releases of major features. The revisionist monster saga The Bride! opened in theaters last Friday, and the taut thriller Apex arrives on Netflix April 24.

“It’s always a joy to work with Larry’s beautiful photography,” says Bogdanowicz, who has worked with Sher since The Dukes of Hazzard in 2005. 

The Bride!, directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal and starring Oscar and BAFTA‑winner Jessie Buckley as the title character and Christian Bale as Frankenstein’s monster, presents a unique reinterpretation of Mary Shelley’s timeless classic. 

While both The Bride! and Apex feature the rich, expressive imagery for which Sher and Bogdanowicz are known, each film demanded a unique approach to the color. The pair had originally developed an elaborate show LUT for Joker, designed with the help of her father — Mitch Bogdanowicz, a two‑time Oscar‑winning color scientist at Kodak — to recreate the feeling of a 1970s film print: A look characterized by subtle cyan hues in the shadows and warm, glowing highlights. Then, for Folie à Deux, the colorist expanded the capabilities of the LUT to allow for bolder, more vibrant colors for the sequel’s musical sequences.

 Gyllenhaal, drawn to the look of both Joker films, envisioned a similar aesthetic for her energetic, period‑set The Bride!, Sher and Bogdanowicz began with the Folie à Deux LUT as a foundation and pushed it even further, opening the palette to let the film’s wild musical moments resonate with additional depth and intensity. Working closely with Company 3 Color Scientist Emily Faw, Bogdanowicz made the precise technical adjustments to ensure compatibility with the Sony Venice 2, the camera Sher chose to shoot this project on.

Because portions of The Bride! are presented in striking old-school black and white, the DP and colorist also crafted a dedicated LUT for those sequences. “Emulating black‑and‑white film is about more than just removing color,” Bogdanowicz explains. “We gave it a bit more contrast in the midtones; the way black‑and‑white film does.” During the final grade, she used extensive Power Windows in DaVinci Resolve to “dodge and burn” — selectively shaping light to emphasize faces or reduce background detail techniques also used in color portions but applied more heavily in the monochrome sections. 

For the upcoming thriller Apex, starring Charlize Theron and Taron Egerton, director Baltasar Kormákur (Everest) returns to visceral, people‑vs.-nature storytelling set against precarious mountain environments. For this film, Sher and Bogdanowicz chose to build an entirely new LUT from the ground up.

“Baltasar likes things to look natural but always with a lot of contrast,” Bogdanowicz says. “That’s very important to him.” The LUT for Apex avoids the nostalgic, film‑print feel of Joker and Folie à Deux

and instead, it is entirely about pulling audiences directly into the immediacy and physicality of the wilderness setting.

“Working with Larry is always an intense process and always very rewarding,” Bogdanowicz adds, as she puts the final touches on Apex. “He has a clear vision of where he wants to take his images and a deep understanding of the technical elements of post. That’s reflected in every film we’ve created together.”

The Bride! is now playing in theaters.