Anatomy Of A Commercial Color Grade: Behind The Scenes

For god’s sake, someone think of the products! I think this is such a big issue when you’re trying to create a unique look for commercials. I have been burned before by going too far and backing myself into a corner with a LUT. We put the image first over the product, which can work for branding but where products are in shot clients can lose their minds over subtle variations in colour. Glad you sorted it out!

Great insight Dan. I feel your pain with the LUT swap! Did that for a whole feature once! We used a beta FNE LUT I had made for the main grade and then months went by and when it came to deliver the DoP and I tried a newer LUT and we both loved the subtle difference it made to the shots we tested, so I had to match the tone properties of the new LUT with the old LUT, keeping the new colour difference and go through and change the LUT on every shot!

Very informative. I appreciate your honesty, Dan — we’ve all been there, and I’ve gotten 2 reels into a feature and realized we were off in the wrong direction, then had to retreat, regroup, and redo. Doesn’t happen often, but it happens. Live and learn. As long as the client is happy at the end, that’s all that matters.

Interesting how others handle situations like this..thx for sharing

Fantastic insight! Thanks for sharing, Dan. Curious how others handle this and similar situation(s).What helped u figure out where things went wrong? I sometimes get stuck in the “figuring out what im NOT seeing” step, even with client feedback.

would using film convert have helped with the tweaks at all? I don’t think its a lut.

Can you tell us more about how you approached the LUT breakdown and how you changed it to work for you? Interested to hear your approach on that. I’ve had this happen often and would be curious as to what your methods of attack were.

Dan I appreciate your honest clarity all way through to the end on this. I too can feel your pain and it’s helpful to just hear another colorist speak with us such authenticity about your process including your mistakes as well as successes. Thank you!

Exactly! The hardest / most important part was when that thought clicked in my mind. I had pushed everything too yellow / brown via the LUT and knew I had a difficult fix to make. Once I committed to that it was just a matter of hard work and time 🙂

Man it must be back breaking to do on a whole feature. I’m sure you were like me and knew it was worth it in the end though 🙂 Making beautiful pictures isn’t all fun!

So true sir! I still kept the original look for my showreel as I loved it once I started trying to fix the clients concerns I realised instantly that I had caused the issues they had and only retreating would solve the issue properly!

I honestly stared at my monitor for a good 30-45 minutes thinking. They are wrong, what are they talking about, stupid clients etc.. and then on one shot it hit me like a ton of bricks. By swapping out that LUT everything went from yellow brown earthy tones to bright airy summer in an instant. It was actually quite a scary feeling that my stubbornness was making me essentially color blind to the issues!

I don’t think it was a LUT issue in particular as the LUT was doing exactly what it was designed to do. By emulating film it was giving the image certain characteristics that would have looked amazing on a narrative piece but the products were all pastel blues and reds and very summery. The problem was definitely me not noticing what I was doing to the poor innocent products 🙂

The main thing I did was pull a still of the grade as it was. I then disabled the LUT and added another empty node. I brought up the still of the “finished” grade and then did my best to match the contrast and saturation of what the LUT was doing. The main thing I found is that the LUT was working a lot on individual colors and pushing them towards darker browns and yellows so my simple primary grade actually solved 90% of the issues straight away by keeping much more natural colors.

Glad you enjoyed it sir! It was quite refreshing to get it all down as a full piece. It was quite funny at the time as I had fallen in love with the look and was being stubborn and not seeing the issues as I was to close to the project.