Colored by Thomas Urbye

The Look

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I had worked with director Alex Garcia Lopez, writer John Harrison and producer Charlotte Walls before on other projects. Unusually, this series was initially intended as a feature film but the financiers felt it would work well as a short-run TV series. Alex and DP Felix Wiedemann's vision was clear, it must be cinematic and post-apocalyptic, not dissimilar to "Blade Runner", but with stronger primary colours and enhanced contrast. Alex and Felix had graded some images themselves from the rushes as a guide.

There often needs to be a common thread, and that can either be a consistent contrast or colour theme

- Thomas Urbye -

Grading technique

Residue was shot on Alexa and I used a combination of primary controls: lift gamma and gain with RGB s-curves to balance the images. I rarely work with LUTs, preferring to start from the raw Log-C image and being able to control every nuance of it. I usually start by setting the inverse of the Log curve, bringing the image towards normal black and white points, then correcting the gamma to an aesthetic choice. After that, I’ll continue to work with lift, gamma, and gain and then move to adjusting the colour on those controls. The exception is if we are looking for film emulation, in this case, it's easier to work through a film LUT.