How to… Meet a Client’s Vision Through Grade

Very early in my career I was grading a shot of a man walking in long grass. After I’d put a look on it, I turned to the director for feedback and heard the following, “Yeah, that’s a man walking in long grass. But what I really want is (*deep movie trailer voice*) a man, walking in long grass.”

I quickly discovered that being a great colourist requires taking (sometimes vague) feedback and interpreting it into a visual language that meets the client’s expectation.

Preparation

Before each session, I’d recommend doing as much research on the director as possible to get an idea of their style. If you can find something that connects their portfolio works, you’ll be off to a creative head start. Being able to use their work as a reference point will help the client to feel like they’re being listened to.

Listening

Don’t unleash an avalanche of your own ideas for the initial conversation opener. It’s important not to dominate the early creative conversation; there will be plenty of time for that later …

Have Something Up your sleeve

If time’s on your side, play with the footage before anyone else gets into the room. With any luck, you’ll have received references in advances – something you should always ask for – and you should begin by thinking how to extract the same vibes from the raw material. If a client is new to the grading process, they may struggle to clearly articulate what they want. But by working off looks, you will instantly have something to compare and work from – which look they like or dislike.

Take Charli XCX latest promo, Boys (above), which was co-directed by the artist. The footage came from seven different shoots around the world, each recorded with different cameras, in different studios and by different DoPs. It took us four hours to even out the footage so we could see what was really there, without being distracted by the variation of it all. Only then were we able to try a few different grade styles to see what would work.

Use the Client’s Nomenclature

Borrow phrases from the room. I’ve been grading room for almost 20 years and can’t help but use well-worn phrases to describe various looks - cinematic, printy, organic, crafted, digital and photochemical etc. Although they can be accurate and useful, they can also sound a bit hackneyed. Clients are much better at coming up with ways to describe how they want something to look.

BlinkInk director Noah Harris is great with words. For his recent E.ON x Gorillaz film (below), we discussed in depth the ‘Harris magenta,’ his preferred hue from the grading session. And even Charli XCX started to get the hang of it after a while and invented ‘magaziney’ to describe something being slick or polished.

Keep Watching Things

And of course, grading trends come and go too. There are ‘cool’ colours and ‘warm’ colours which may seem constant but even they can shift around for different jobs. Therefore it’s our responsibility as colourists to refine current trends and invent new ones.

If you look at commercials from the early 2000’s, they feel like they’re graded and boast much stronger looks. These days, you just don’t see stuff like that; everything’s treated with a gentler, stealthier hand. And I think the advent of HD and better compression has helped to relax grading so we no longer have to rely on bold contrasting grades to achieve the desired effect.

Stop Flogging a Dead Horse

It’s easy to make one shot look good but it has to match the entire spot. Far too many times I have fallen in love with a look, only to ditch it later because it wouldn’t work against the whole spot. You have to keep stepping back and re-thinking – to make sure it works and looks good. But there are no mistakes, just experiments to finding what you’re after.