When I was creating my demoreel, I was curious about how you get the best color grading so I did a little research! I found a post on Into The Abyss about color grading in Hollywood. He found out that most of Hollywood’s blockbusters have a pattern in color grading. They always use 2 colors: teal and orange. Teal is mostly used for surroundings and shadows while orange highlights the main character. But it doesn’t stop there, there are examples in which the whole damn scene is teal or orange! The author of that post give us some screenshots of the blockbuster Transformers and he’s absolutely right!
So I started looking and what has been seen, can never be unseen! I keep on noticing it over and over again. Here are some of the examples I’ve found since I’ve read the article. Starting with: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.
I really realise that they want to make the last Harry Potter movie the darkest of them all, but this is just ridiculous, complete scenes in only teal!
For more examples, I suggest you read the original post or just pay a little intention when watching a movie, you’ll quickly notice some! If you do, don’t forget to share in the comments section!
4 February 2011 at 20:07
Funny find! Definitely a “how to make your movie look familiar” guide!
4 February 2011 at 20:34
True story! I found a tutorial about color grading afterwards and they used the exact method!! Teal for midtones and shadows, orange for highlights! It’s crazy!