Behind The Curtain – Thrice The Grey

Creating Two Black And White Worlds

It’s not every day that you get to work for your favorite band, especially cool when it’s the launch single “The Grey” from their new album.

It’s quite a funny story on how I ended up grading it.

I basically stumbled upon a casting call for the music video and emailed everyone and anyone that I could about landing the grade.

Turns out Daniel the director and Nicolas the DOP are amazing humans and I had such a blast grading the video.

The only downside was starting the grade at 10pm UK time and continuing until the sun had risen the next day.

Unfortunately getting permission to show the full rushes and rebuilding the look didn’t work out but I had so much fun I thought it was worth showing it on some other footage.

The “Black And White World”

The black and white world is harsh, sharp and dirty.

In my mind as soon as I read the brief I knew that it had to be in the style of Anton Corbijn and to be even more precise his Lith prints.

Filthy contrast and tons of sharpness in the highlights creates a stunning dynamic feel to the photos.

I really wanted to bring this into the first phase of the music video.

It’s easier to describe in the video below but as a taster, I use double sharpening and double grain on my image to get it dirty enough.

Something I have never done before

This world is supposed to feel unnatural and hostile.

The “Grey World”

The grey world is supposed to be a relief and escape into the calm and softness of the wide-open world.

Thanks to an incredibly strong look for the first section all I had to do was roll everything back.

I  kept a lot of the same characteristics like the dirty shadows and grain in the grey world but softened everything up.

You can see in the video below the first grade maxed out the levels and this second grey world hovers in almost log territory.

Check out the finished video below before watching my video insight!

-Dan