Brief color grading

What this is about

Two things separate a smooth grade from a painful one, and neither is talent. The first is a locked picture: every trim after grading begins means shots get regraded, and on a long timeline that is hours, not minutes. The second is a reference language both sides share. Words like warm, natural or premium mean something different to everyone, while three stills from a film both of you have seen mean exactly one thing. Add clean camera originals and a consistent on-set look, and the grade becomes craft instead of negotiation.

The order matters more than the tools. Skip a step and you usually notice two steps later — by which point the fix costs several times as much.

What runs differently here

Where this differs from the general case:

• Lock the picture before grading starts; recutting afterwards means regrading, and the cost lands on your side of the invoice
• Reference stills beat adjectives — collect frames from films both of you can actually watch
• Brand colors and skin tones are the two things clients notice first and forgive least
• Grading decisions made on an uncalibrated laptop get reversed on the client's projector
• Say where the film will play: a foyer screen, a phone feed and a trade-fair wall need different contrast

Step by step

This order gets you there fastest:

1. Decide the look before the shoot, not after it. A monitoring LUT on set gives everyone the same expectation and stops the grade from being asked to invent a mood later.
2. Shoot with grading in mind: consistent white balance within a scene, exposure that protects highlights, and a log or raw format if the camera and the workflow support it.
3. Lock the picture and say so in writing. Any change after that point is a new version with its own name, not a quick trim someone slipped into the timeline overnight.
4. Build a reference board of six to ten stills with a sentence each on what you want from that frame — the contrast, the skin, the sky, the mood. Not the film, the frame.
5. Hand over what the colorist actually needs: camera originals or high-quality intermediates, an XML or AAF from the locked timeline, the on-set LUT, and the brand color values.
6. Name the delivery targets up front: web, broadcast, cinema, LED wall. Different targets need different masters, and deciding this after the grade means grading twice.
7. Review the first pass on a calibrated display in a controlled room, with the colorist present if possible. Judging a grade over a compressed video call produces notes about compression.
8. Give notes shot by shot with timecodes and intent — too green in the faces at 0:42, want the interview warmer than the factory. Global adjectives cost a whole extra pass.

Common pitfalls

What most often goes wrong in practice:

• Starting the grade on a cut that is still being trimmed
• Approving the look on a phone and rejecting it the next day on a large screen
• Expecting the grade to repair mixed white balance from three cameras in one room
• Handing over proxies instead of camera originals and wondering why the sky bands

With TillyGen

TillyGen carries the look references and the camera and format decisions from the treatment through to the shoot day, so the colorist receives the same intent the crew was working to — not a mood board rebuilt from memory.

Change one constraint and the consequences travel through the whole plan: affected shots are flagged, the call sheet is regenerated, and nobody keeps working from yesterday's version.