Senior Colorist Sean Coleman didn’t know what to expect when he took on sports biopic Unstoppable. “It’s a wrestling film, and I thought I had an idea what it would be like,” he says. “But I found out right away that there was much more to it than I’d thought. The writing is amazing, and the acting is beautiful, and the story about the wrestler who was born without a right leg or hip is really nice.” 

In the directorial debut of Oscar-winning film editor William Goldenberg (Argo, The Imitation Game), the movie, based on a true story, stars Jharrel Jerome (who took home a Critic’s Choice Award for Breakthrough Actor) as Robles, Jennifer Lopez as his determined mother, and Don Cheadle as his dedicated coach. Set in the early 2000s, it follows Robles’s struggles to compete in a physically demanding sport.

Coleman, a frequent collaborator of cinematographer Salvatore Totino, brought to the project a distinctive look that combines an overall filmic feel in terms of image characteristics. 

Coleman worked with Totino to build a specific LUT to help push the Sony Venice-originated imagery into the space Totino and Goldenberg wanted. “We created a look that entails the feeling of a film print projected. It’s not a heavy in-your-face ‘film look,'” he specifies. “It wasn’t about making people think it was shot on film, but just to bring some of those qualities to it overall. It’s about the sport, and in some cases, where we’re supposed to be seeing televised events, we moved away from the film feel and embraced digital qualities of the imagery.”

Coleman explains that Totino works with a D.I.T. on set who utilizes their pre-built LUT and finetune looks, scene by scene, with the cinematographer on the day. “Then I see what they did on set, wipe them out, and recreate them quickly.  The process helps him get as close as possible on set with his lighting. By starting from scratch in the final color, it gives us more room to refine them as everybody gets to see the film take shape cut together and in a perfectly calibrated environment.”

“There’s also a massive amount of VFX work,” Coleman notes, given that companies including Crafty Apes and Gneiss Stuff had to remove Jerome’s leg and hip for a very large number of shots (the real Robles also doubled for certain angles). “It’s a big task to remove a leg and make it look genuine, and I was very impressed by the work.”

Coleman and Totino worked in the colorist’s DI theater with VFX supervisors to subtly add bits of color correction to help finetune the integration of the effects and live-action elements. “We spent much of the job in VFX reviews,” Coleman recalls, “and I really enjoyed working with them. I also think the resulting effects work is really seamless.”

While Unstoppable is ultimately about a wrestler’s fight to succeed in his chosen sport, Coleman notes, “It’s about a lot more. It’s a family film that’s also about the courage of this mom who supports him through his battles while raising all her kids. There’s a lot to it, and I hope people check it out.”

Unstoppable is now streaming exclusively on Amazon Prime Video.