Colorist Inspiration – September 2017

Colorist Inspiration – September 2017

The ‘Outstanding Color Grading – Commercial’ HPA award nominees have been announced, and it’s heavily dominated by the colorists at Company 3.

There are also nominations for ‘Television and Feature Film’ grading, but in this insight i’m going to focus on the commercial aspect as that’s the area I know best.

I’m incredibly jealous of these grades because in my heart I would grade more in this style like this if I could. This is because they all have a common trait. They are dark. The levels are not maxed out to 100, the midtones wound up all the way to increase the ambient light and the shadows are rich and almost heavy in some grades.

My grades in the past week have been plagued with clients freaking out about the offline being brighter than the grade and 9 times out of 10 I’ve been forced to grade things brighter than I’d like. If more of these dark grades came across my desk i’d be a very happy man.

Watching all these nominees has inspired me to share a new insight on grades that I would have liked to release versus what actually went out – expect that insight out in the coming weeks.

I understand that as a colourist we are paid to help other peoples’ work look as good as possible. Normally myself, the DOP and the Director are all aligned in our vision but we have to make concessions for the marketing department from the company, who (rather more often then i’d like) will push our vision aside and asks for 20% brighter.

Lets move on to the nominations!