Color Grading Breakdown of Five Famous Films

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One of the best ways to learn any craft is to dissect the work of other successful craftsmen.

So, for those of you aspiring colorists who’ve already got a good grasp of the craft’s technical aspects but who are looking for ideas of how to apply a grade, the following videos should prove useful.

These come from IWLTBAP, a company that sells a pretty nifty pack of LUTs. Each video breaks down a single static shot from a famous film. It’s worth noting that these are just approximations of the steps the original colorists might have taken. Still, they’re extremely helpful for someone wondering what kind of steps go into a polished grade. So without any further ado, here are the color grading breakdown videos.

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Melancholia

Lars von Tier’s apocalyptic drama was shot in Arri Alexa, and the color grading was done by Norman Nisbet, who also did the coloring for Nicolas Winding Refn’s horror thriller The Neon Demon, for the highly acclaimed political Danish series Borgen and the 2015 award-winning Icelandic dramedy Rams.

Midnight In Paris

Fabien Napoli, who did color grading for Woodie Allen’s romantic comedy, has worked with many high-profile films and directors. He did color grading for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 & Part 2, for two Roman Polanski films, the 2010 thriller The Ghost Writer and the 2011 comedy Carnage, for Terrence Malick’s drama To the Wonder, as well as 2012 the French international box office hit The Intouchables, and the period drama Farewell, My Queen.

Fury

Fury’s coloring supervisor Yvan Lucas has had a stellar career in the coloring department. Luc Besson (The Big Blue, Nikita and The Fifth Element), David Fincher (Se7en and The Game), stylish French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet (The City of Lost Children, Alien: Resurrection, the Oscar-nominated Amélie. and A Very Long Engagement), Quentin Tarantino (Inglorious Basterds, Django Unchained, The Hateful Eight), David O. Russell (American Hustle), Martin Scorsese (Shutter Island, The Wolf of Wall Street) and Bong Joon Ho (Snowpiercer, Okja) are only part of a long list of A-list directors he worked with.

Gone Girl

Ian Vertovec, who worked as the digital colorist on David Fincher’s mystery thriller, also worked with the masterful director on The Social Network and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Among his other credits are Charlie Kaufman’s animation film Anomalisa, action-thriller John Wick and the 2013 indie dramedy Enough Said.

Spectre

Greg Fisher, who’s credited as the digital intermediate colorist of the 24th James Bond film, has also worked on Alfonso Cuarón‘s Gravity, Action Horror film World War Z, Harry Potter and Deathly Hallows: Part 2 and The Imitation Game. If you’re interested in checking out another color grading breakdown, the IWLTBAP Vimeo page has quite a few more, in addition to several grading and Resolve tutorials.

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