From The Grading Room – Behind The Looks of 2016 UK Best Nominated Commercials

Not from the British Arrows Best Colorist Nominations 2016, but would love a behind the look for the ‘Biffy Clyro – Howl’ video you’ve graded. Thanks in advance sir!

Hi Dan! Thanks for this Insight. Can’t wait to see your approach on recreating some of these looks. I pretty much agree with your comments in the previous post. My favourite, too, is the IKEA advert, although I’m personally biased: I have just worked on a show, where the story jumps back and forth between different times, mainly from the 1930s through to the early 70s, and each time is represented by a certain look, from a desaturated, subtle brown-sepia look in the 30s to more contrasted, creamy-orangy tones in the 50s and early 60s to saturated and garish colours in the late 60s and 70s. I soon realised that maintaining these looks throughout scenes, shot in varying light conditions without breaking them is very tricky. So, looking at this advert, I am blown away by the subtlety of differences in emulated film and, I suppose, photo paper stock. I particularly like that it’s done, not as I described above as a linear progression, but sometimes juxtaposing, sometimes even confusing the story time; just like you would look at a photo album and see photos next to each other from the same time, maybe from the same event, but shot with different cameras or on different film stock or developed in different labs or even just stored in different conditions. It’s obvious that an awful lot of research has gone into this. And it works. Obviously, these sort of retro-looks are very popular at the minute and I am looking forward to get your take on them.