“The Substance” of being a DIT: Baptiste Marnière’s work on the hit horror film 

"The Substance" of being a DIT: Baptiste Marnière's work on the hit horror film 

The hit horror movie The Substance took audiences by storm and recently earned lead actress Demi Moore her first Golden Globe at the 2025 Awards. A dark satirical critique of Hollywood’s misogyny toward aging, the film follows a 50-year-old TV star who gets fired for being ‘too old‘. Desperate, she turns to a black-market drug, The Substance, which temporarily transforms her into a younger version of herself – until the cure becomes a nightmare. 

An arsenal of cameras and lenses was used to craft the movie’s eerie visuals and distinct vibe, complemented by heavy use of VFX. In this interview, DIT Baptiste Marnière takes us behind the scenes and shares exclusive insights into his workflow. 

"The Substance" of being a DIT: Baptiste Marnière's work on the hit horror film 

Joining the crew

Based in Paris, Baptiste is an experienced DIT who primarily works on feature films and TV shows. He joined The Substance at the request of DP Benjamin Kračun, who decided after the first optical and camera tests that a live DIT would be essential for the project. In his role, Baptiste took on various responsibilities, as he recounts: „In prep, I was in charge of the overall workflow design. During the shoot, I was mainly in charge of the look continuity. It took a lot of back and forth with the lab to adjust the LUT as the shoot progressed, so I also handled the relationship between set and post-production. There was also a lot of communication with VFX, as the number of cameras and configurations required many adjustments”. While reflecting on his responsibilities, Baptiste credits much of his success to working with his trusted Data Manager, Maëva Drouin: „Clearly, I couldn’t have made this film without Maëva accompanying me. I absolutely needed someone fully dedicated to managing the data”. So, let’s take a closer look at how Baptiste and Maëva used the Pomfort ecosystem to effectively manage their individual tasks while working together seamlessly.

"The Substance" of being a DIT: Baptiste Marnière's work on the hit horror film 

Keeping the look consistent 

Since it was Baptiste’s first collaboration with DP Benjamin Kračun, clear communication was key to aligning expectations and requirements for the film’s visual direction. Baptiste explains: „In prep, we talked a lot about the image he wanted for the film, and I also took part in the look creation session with colorist Fabien Pascal”. Thus, Baptiste got a clear understanding of both the creative intent and its technical implications for the future show LUT. On set, further tweaks were made: „During the first few days, we continued talking a lot with Benjamin to adapt the look and ensure I understood the contrast and colorimetry he wanted. After that, we looked at the first shot of each sequence together, and I matched the rest of the sequence”.  

It was a good color grading challenge to match all the shots together.

However, maintaining a consistent look was a challenge, given the variety of cameras and lenses used on the project. While their primary camera was an ARRI Mini LF, they also used a RED V-Raptor for certain VFX shots, a RED Komodo for body-mounted sequences, several crash cams, a GoPro, and a Sony FX3 for specific scenes. Sounds challenging already? Well, things got even more complicated. „For me, the biggest challenge was all the bathroom scenes“, says Baptiste, referring to key sequences that depict the protagonist’s eerie body transformations. „Those scenes were shot with Canon K35 lenses re-bodied by TLS (True Lens Service, UK). They’re part of what gives the film its look“, Baptiste explains and then outlines the implications: „But they have the disadvantage of not being color-matched at all. On some lenses, the colorimetry even changes according to the aperture“. Visual effects were later added to really bring the bathroom scenes to life, creating another layer of complexity: „For some of those VFX shots, we happened to use a mix of the Leica Thalia with the Laowa 24mm and the Angenieux 24-290mm; three lenses that have absolutely nothing to do with each other in terms of colorimetry, which was exacerbated by the white walls of the bathroom. So it was a good color grading challenge to match all the shots together“,  he concludes.  

"The Substance" of being a DIT: Baptiste Marnière's work on the hit horror film 

Baptiste’s setup with Livegrade Pro 

Baptiste worked from a compact live grading station, which kept him close to the action and therefore allowed for better collaboration: „My cart is based around an Inovativ Echo 30 because I like to be as compact as possible to be as close as possible to the DP“, he explains. To better keep an eye on consistency, Baptiste equipped his cart with not only one but two 17″ Sony PVM monitors, which allowed him to „always keep a reference of the start of the sequence on one of the monitors“. In order to get the camera signals into Livegrade Pro and make adjustments, he included two Fujifilm IS-Mini LUT boxes and an AJA IoX3 video I/O device in his setup. He also used a Blackmagic Mini Monitor connected to DaVinci Resolve to display a timeline with all the stills in the order of the film. The whole rig was powered by a custom power supply created by rental house B4Post, which allowed Baptiste to seamlessly switch between 24V batteries and a 220V local power source. This provided him with even greater flexibility on set. Last but not least, the whole station ran on a Macbook Pro 13″ M1, which Baptiste selected for the following reasons: „Its small size and low power consumption enable it to remain discrete while still having enough power to run Livegrade and do small transcodes”.

Synchronizing Livegrade and Silverstack with ShotHub was a real game changer.

Maëva’s data management workflow 

While Baptiste focused on look and color, Maëva took charge of data management using an iMac Pro 2019 equipped with Silverstack XT. Although Maëva and Baptiste focused on their individual responsibilities, both their stations were connected via Pomfort’s cloud service ShotHub for seamless collaboration: „Synchronizing Livegrade and Silverstack with ShotHub was a real game changer“, Baptiste notes. With the connection via ShotHub, Maëva was not only able to directly retrieve Baptiste’s grade but also access additional metadata, as he explains: „I entered as much metadata as I could directly into Livegrade Pro (for example, scene/shot/take, VFX or not, comment, nudity, etc.). We had a lot of different frame lines depending on the optics and so on. So, we also created a custom metadata field that I filled in as we went along. Thanks to the cloud connection via ShotHub, Maeve could retrieve this information in Silverstack XT and directly apply the right sizing for each shot”.

Maëva used to work in a VFX studio, so she was able to input a lot of useful information for them into Silverstack XT as we went along. 

Overall, Maëva’s workflow looked as follows: When receiving the cards, she’d make a backup with Silverstack XT and import all metadata and grades as described above. Everything was then imported into DaVinci Resolve for transcoding into ProRes for editing and H.264 for their daillies platform. The rushes were then sent by data transfer service Aspera to the digital lab, and the proxies were sent to the editor. 

During her QC in Silverstack XT, Maëva also added further comments for VFX and editing, drawing from previous experience in the field: „Maëva used to work in a VFX studio, so she was able to input a lot of useful information for them into Silverstack XT as we went along. Every evening, she would send reports to the VFX supervisor and the post-production director, who then had very precise information on any VFX to be planned“, Baptiste explains. The rest of the team also received PDF metadata reports every night, and two LTOs were made. 

Asked about a key memory from working on The Substance, Baptiste recalls a moment when he himself became mesmerized as if influenced by a mysterious substance: 

„I think it was the day we shot the showdown of the two main protagonists. Demi Moore’s performance completely fascinated me, so much so that I had to watch the playbacks to make sure everything was okay because I hadn’t been looking at the image technically at all; all I could see was her performance unfold before my eyes”.

_____

Big thanks to Baptiste for sharing these insights with us! 

Baptiste Marnière, DIT

Baptiste is a French DIT based in Paris. While mainly working on feature films and TV shows, he occasionally works on commercial shoots to bridge gaps between longer projects.



About the author
Kim is a Marketing Manager at Pomfort and Editor of the blog. When she’s not teasing exclusive production insights out of film professionals, she’s busy planning and prepping the editorial calendar to provide a constant stream of engaging articles.
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