The Look of ‘Westworld’ & Look Creation Philosophy

Day 15: 25 Insights in 25 Days New Year Marathon

Episode 35: From The Mailbag

The Digital Film Look Of Westworld & Our Look Creation Philosophies

We sincerely hope you’re enjoying the New Year Marathon!  This is the third weekend of the marathon and we have lots of great Insights planned for this week so be sure to check them out.

Sunday’s are Mailbag days during the marathon, and this week we have a good episode focused on looks.

No doubt you’ve seen or heard of the HBO series Westworld.  Team Mixing Light loves this series, but it’s caused a bit of a stir amongst colorists – we’ll discuss this row in depth.

Continuing on the theme of looks, up next we continue the discussion about looks, and explore how each of us approaches look creation.

Remember, if you have questions that you’d like to get our opinion on please use the contact form.

Your questions can be aesthetic, technical or even client related. We’d love to hear from you, and your question might make future episodes of From The MailBag.

The Look Of Westworld

The HBO ‘science fiction western thriller’ series Westworld was a huge hit in 2016.

The brainchild of Jonathan Nolan & Lisa Joy, the series has become an all-out hit for HBO and the subject of hours and hours of discussion & speculation of what’s next all around the world.

But like anything that is really popular, the magnifying glass of criticism has been placed on the look of the show.

A recent Lift Gamma Gain thread about the look of the series sparked a lot of opinions about the overall look of the project that was actually shot on 35mm film.

After reading through the thread and talking about it on a recent Skype call, we decided to record our opinions – not only about the overall look, but we weigh in about the evergreen film vs. digital argument.

Look Creation Philosophies

The Westworld discussion sparked us to discuss in a bit more depth our individual look creation philosophies.

This interesting discussion ranges from handling client direction on looks to the actual process of ‘layering’ corrections to create a look.

What was clear about the discussion is that looks are bespoke – what might work for one project may not work for another project, and as a colorist, you always have to be prepared to adapt a look to the actual footage you’re working with.

You guys have been quiet! We want your questions! Of course, you can use the comments below if you have more to add to the conversation. 

-Team Mixing Light