Colored by Julien Alary

Joachim Trier is a director with strong ideas about how the film should look. He likes clean images. The blacks should be black and the whites should be white. The goal for Louder than Bombs was to achieve a natural 35mm analog look.

The natural look makes the public come closer to the characters, and natural skin tones make the movie more tactile. This was essential for Louder than Bombs as a family drama, and I think that the look should not take the attention from the acting and the story.

For me, this is a very difficult approach and one could find it easier to just desaturate or make a «two tone look» for the whole movie. But the movie should last, and be picked up ten years later and still be watchable. You should be able to see it without thinking «that look isn’t so cool anymore».

I will only use keys to take down annoyingly strong color patches or to clean the whites and blacks a little extra

- Julien Alary -

Grading technique

The movie was graded on a Baselight with the Truelight colour management system. I generally like to work from scratch, starting off from the Log C image to retain as much information as possible. I’m using a very basic approach starting off by balancing the image and then adjusting the primary exposure controls.

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