Project Overview
Hoonicorn: Carbon and Carbide is a monochromatic reinterpretation of the original Hoonicorn automotive cinematic, using the same photography, Unreal Engine environments, animation, compositing, and editorial structure while introducing a completely different visual and auditory treatment. The objective was to remove the visual and sonic elements that made the original version feel contemporary and instead create a more timeless, severe, and graphic interpretation of the same material.
The colour grade was rebuilt in DaVinci Resolve around a monochromatic tonal structure, while the original background music was removed and the production sound was retained. This shifted the emphasis toward the mechanical character of the vehicle, environmental effects, impacts, tyre movement, engine response, and physical atmosphere.
Creative Intent & Visual Treatment
The monochrome treatment was developed as an alternative visual language rather than a simple black-and-white conversion. Removing colour reduces the amount of chromatic information competing for attention and places greater importance on luminance, contrast, silhouette, texture, motion, and performance.
The result moves the film away from a literal representation of a brightly coloured desert world and toward a more symbolic interpretation of the environment. The canyon, machinery, vehicle, and protagonist become graphic forms within a common tonal space, allowing the audience to interpret the physical world through shape, light, and movement rather than colour identity.
Industrial Underground Facility: High-detail monochromatic macro and wide shots of the Hoonicorn parked inside a gritty, pipe-laden industrial cavern setting.
Monochromatic DI
The original colour grade was rebuilt in DaVinci Resolve by substantially reducing chroma while retaining a controlled warm bias within the monochromatic image. Saturation was therefore not treated as a simple zero-value operation; the remaining tonal colour response was carefully managed so that highlights, midtones, and darker regions continued to possess subtle separation.
Shot-specific contrast adjustments were then introduced to maintain the intended focal hierarchy. Bright vehicle surfaces, headlights, practical sources, explosions, and atmospheric elements were shaped against deeper environmental blacks so that important action remained legible even when large portions of the image occupied similar tonal ranges.
Moody Driver & Interior Details: Dark, dramatic monochrome stills highlighting the driver inside the cockpit, close-up engine bay accents, and custom headlight elements.
Contrast & Tonal Hierarchy
Because the original colour palette was no longer available to separate the vehicle from the environment, contrast became the primary compositional tool. Each shot was individually adjusted to establish a controlled relationship between highlight density, midtone separation, black levels, and atmospheric detail. Vehicle silhouettes were allowed to become stronger where necessary, while backgrounds were selectively compressed to prevent them from competing with the action. This was especially important during the high-speed driving and explosion sequences, where maintaining readable vehicle geometry against complex terrain and debris required deliberate tonal shaping rather than relying on colour contrast.
Desert Canyon Exploration: Dynamic monochrome camera angles capturing the vast scale of rocky canyon formations with fast motion-blur camera sweeps.
Detail & Texture Enhancement
The monochromatic workflow also provided an opportunity to emphasise surface information that was less apparent in the original colour version. Local detail, texture response, and image sharpness were selectively increased to strengthen the perception of carbon fibre, metal, tyre tread, mechanical components, rock surfaces, and industrial structures. The sharpening treatment was controlled on a shot-by-shot basis so that high-frequency detail remained crisp without producing excessive digital edge enhancement. This gave the vehicle a more tactile appearance and reinforced the mechanical character of the production.
Explosive Blast Sequences: High-contrast monochrome renders displaying massive fiery explosions and shockwaves rocking the car in open desert terrain.
Halation & Optical Treatment
A restrained warm component was retained around selected highlights, particularly intense light sources, headlights, fire, and reflective metallic surfaces. Subtle halation fringes and bloom were introduced to prevent the monochromatic image from becoming clinically neutral.
The optical treatment was deliberately kept below the level of the original colour-driven visual effects. Its purpose was to provide a slight photographic response and maintain continuity with the anamorphic cinematography rather than to create an obvious post-production effect.
Airplane Wreckage Navigation: Action shots showcasing the Hoonicorn weaving past a destroyed passenger jet in a desolate desert graveyard
Sound Design — Music Removal
The original background music was intentionally removed while retaining the existing engine, tyre, impact, environmental, explosion, wind, and mechanical effects. This materially changed the perceived rhythm of the film. Without a continuous musical layer controlling the emotional pacing, the soundtrack became driven by physical events: engine acceleration, gear changes, tyre slip, impacts, explosions, airflow, debris, and environmental transitions. The result places greater attention on the recorded and designed sound itself, making the vehicle feel more mechanical and immediate while giving each action beat greater acoustic separation.
nvironment Wide Shots: Sweeping monochrome vistas featuring the plane crash site scattered across the vast, arid desert landscape.
Sound as Narrative Structure
With the music removed, sound effects became a primary structural component of the edit rather than a supporting layer beneath it. Engine intensity establishes acceleration, tyre response communicates vehicle movement, environmental wind provides spatial continuity, and impact layers define moments of collision and instability. Large-scale events such as explosions and the sandstorm therefore gain greater perceived scale because their acoustic information is no longer masked by a continuous musical bed. This approach makes the film feel more documentary in its physicality while retaining the heightened cinematic treatment of the original production.
High-Speed Sand Drifts: Kinetic monochrome renders of aggressive drifting maneuvers, spinning tires, and extreme ground-level motion-blur perspective.
Graphic Cinematography
The monochromatic image places greater emphasis on the project's existing anamorphic compositions, silhouettes, negative space, leading lines, and motion geometry.Industrial structures, vehicle contours, canyon walls, smoke, fire, dust, and mechanical components naturally separate through differences in luminance rather than hue. This makes the frame more graphic and allows complex machinery and high-speed vehicle movement to remain visually readable even within extremely busy compositions. The result is a stronger emphasis on shape and movement as compositional devices.
Electrical Lightning Storm: Apocalyptic monochrome sequence capturing jagged lightning strikes and sandstorms surrounding the high-speed Hoonicorn drift.
Emotional & Narrative Effect
The removal of colour also changes how the viewer interprets the characters and environment. The desert becomes colder and more depleted, while the protagonist and vehicle are represented primarily through silhouette, gesture, posture, scale, and movement.
This encourages the audience to read the scene through physical behaviour rather than relying on colour-coded visual information. The absence of a conventional colour palette leaves more space for interpretation, allowing the environment to function less as a literal geographic location and more as a heightened cinematic world.
Canyon Edge & Sun Flares: Stylized monochrome stills featuring the driver beside the vehicle, backlit lens flares, and close-ups of front grille badges.
Tonal Separation & Subject Isolation
The monochromatic grade required a more deliberate separation between foreground subject and environment because chroma contrast was no longer available as a visual discriminator. Luma-based qualifiers, Power Windows, and localized contrast shaping were used to selectively lift the Hoonicorn, headlights, and key mechanical surfaces while compressing surrounding terrain and structural elements. This maintained readable vehicle contours during high-speed tracking shots and prevented the darker carbon surfaces from merging into the background.
miniature Aerial Canyon Vistas: Ultra-wide monochrome aerial perspectives showing the winding river cuts and expansive geology of the desert canyons.
Highlight Management & Motion Texture
High-intensity elements such as headlights, fire, sparks, and reflective metal surfaces were carefully balanced to preserve their luminance without flattening the surrounding image. Highlight roll-off was controlled before the final optical treatment, while selective sharpening was applied to mechanical details and vehicle graphics. Motion-heavy shots also received controlled texture enhancement so that wheel rotation, dust displacement, debris, and environmental movement retained definition without producing excessive edge artefacts.
Post-Production Video & Audio Interface: Adobe Premiere Pro timeline showing monochrome CGI sequence assembly, asset media bins, effect controls, and multi-channel audio mixer levels.
Mastering Consistency
Because the project reused the original 4K / 24 fps ACES-based image pipeline, the monochromatic version was treated as a shot-by-shot regrade rather than a global preset. Exposure, contrast, monochrome density, warm bias, halation, bloom, grain, and sharpening were individually matched across the sequence to maintain continuity between miniature photography and Unreal Engine renders. The final master was conformed to the established Rec.709 delivery pipeline, ensuring consistent tonal response across the complete film.
Monochrome Color Grading Workspace: DaVinci Resolve Studio workflow displaying node tree networks, waveform scopes, primary wheels, and HSL curves configured for high-contrast black-and-white look development.
Project Outcome
Carbon and Carbide demonstrates how the same production assets can support an entirely different cinematic identity through DI, tonal design, sound restructuring, and image prioritisation rather than additional VFX production. The project became a study in how reducing information can increase visual impact: colour was replaced by luminance hierarchy, music by physical sound, and saturated environment design by silhouette, texture, contrast, and atmosphere. The resulting version presents the Hoonicorn as a more severe and enduring visual object while preserving the original project's technical foundations in Unreal Engine, miniature compositing, automotive animation, cinematography, VFX, and sound design.
