The feature film Usher: Rendezvous In Paris brings a live audience experience to cinemas during its run with AMC Theaters Distribution. The renowned R&B artist, known for his sold-out Las Vegas shows, recently performed in Paris, and the film, directed by longtime collaborator Anthony Mandler, beautifully captures the magic of that performance.

The shoot in France focused entirely on Usher himself. Mandler’s cinematography team captured every movement from some 22 cameras, with the primary camera (a Sony Venice) on a Steadicam on the stage with the performer throughout. But the stage in Paris couldn’t accommodate him and his musicians together. In Paris, they were positioned off stage, which was hard to photograph, so Mandler came up with the idea of shooting the musicians during a subsequent Las Vegas performance of the show, where the stage lights also lighted them.

Making those transitions work visually was primarily the job of editor Joan Pabon, principal of Hollywood-based editorial company Digital Sword, with the help of Senior Colorist Bryan Smaller, who has colored quite a few major videos from top-tier acts, including Ariana Grande, Post Malone, and Justin Bieber.

Smaller used DaVinci Resolve to help fine-tune all the footage and smooth out the differences in the color whenever shots of the musicians were bathed in different colored lights than Usher is in the surrounding shots.

Pabon, who has directed and edited commercials and music videos for years, had worked with Smaller on much of his previous work. His process began by selecting shots from among the 22 cameras within Adobe Premiere Pro’s multicam function and then, once the concert footage was roughed out, fine-tuning the edit shot by shot.

For Rendezvous, Smaller recalls, “Several songs have moments where it cuts from Usher performing in Paris to the band playing below the stage in Las Vegas.  Because the positioning and lighting were inconsistent between the two venues, it was a fun challenge to manufacture continuity by entirely changing the color of the lights on the band.”

“If there was a lighting cue that was one color in Paris and another color on the musicians,” Pabon elaborates, “Bryan would use the lighting color on Usher and then bring the surrounding shots of the musicians into that same space. This happened a lot because we cut for the overall visual experience, so sometimes, we’d even use sections of the musicians from a different song if it looked good.”

Smaller used another technique that involved repurposing a beauty tool designed to soften skin for a different purpose. “Usher has this very sparkly outfit,” Smaller explains. “We used a beauty tool, but in reverse: instead of softening small details, reversing this tool exaggerates them, bringing out the sparkles from the outfit and giving Usher’s outfit a larger-than-life feeling without calling attention to the post-production craftsmanship.”

“Bryan has always been very helpful and very attentive to me as a person and as a client,” Pabon says. “So, when I have something like this feature film, I go to him for the color. I know he cares about the work, and he’s going to make the project better.”

MC Theatres Distribution and Trafalgar Releasing partnered with Sony Music Vision to bring the highly anticipated concert film Usher: Rendezvous In Paris to fans in cinemas around the world between September 12 – 15. Although there are no confirmed details about when or where the concert film will be available for streaming, check here for more information.