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projects - graded with coolgrades
this is where the pipeline gets tested. not in a studio, not on perfect footage. but in jungles, deserts, snowstorms, and market streets where the light changes every two minutes and there's no second take. every project here was graded with the coolgrades workflow. the same one you can get.
good riddance
the goal from the start was to stay in the documentary.
we pulled the density down across most of the film to keep it feeling honest: slightly underlit, slightly restrained. grain stays light throughout, just enough to take the digital edge off without calling attention to itself. the bigger tool was overall exposure: we used it to move between moods. brighter for the lighter moments, a little darker when things got heavy. no heavy-handed grades, just a quiet shift in how the image feels.
the coffee scenes were the only place we brought in extra light. everything else was natural: windows, open doors, whatever was there. the grade had to work with whatever the light gave us, which is exactly what this pipeline was built for.
captain hook
the childhood archival footage we kept almost untouched. it had its own texture (the grain, the warmth, the slightly washed quality of home video) so trying to correct it would have taken something away.
the ocean and mountain shots are where the image opens up the most. cape town at golden hour does something the grade can only support, not replicate. deep amber, the waves catching light, table mountain going dark against the sky. we let those frames breathe wide and warm.
the underwater sequence at the end was our biggest challenge, as it reads completely differently than the rest of the film. clean teal, cool, light cutting through the surface from above. after everything that came before it, it feels like release.
for the close-ups of the custom kite rig we went a bit over the top with the grade, since we wanted that punch, working together with the sfx. we used a lot of different blending modes, blur filters, selective masks and native effects from davinci resolve.
more human - intro
a compilation of moments from two years on the road. different countries, different light, a handful of different cameras. some days perfect, most days not.
the hardest thing with footage like this isn't the grade itself, it's the matching. when you cut between a bright afternoon in one country and a grey overcast morning in another, the grade has to hold them together without either clip feeling forced. nothing should pop. nothing should break the thread.
consistency across wildly different scenarios is something we were thinking about the whole time we were building coolgrades. the more we use it across real footage - different cameras, different colour temperatures, different exposure conditions - the more we see it do exactly what it was designed to do. the pipeline keeps the identity intact even when the footage isn't cooperating.
that's harder to show than a single beautiful frame. but it's what the workflow is actually for.
life without AI
a short reel. an ode to the real world. real light, real places, real footage.
no setups, no second chances.
the grade had one job: feel good. we pushed the saturation further than we normally would, added a bit more grain, and kept the exposure consistent from clip to clip so the whole thing flows without anything pulling you out of it.
patagonia, norway, finland, canada, namibia. different continents, different seasons, completely different light. the pipeline held it all together without any of it feeling forced. that consistency across wildly different conditions is one of the things coolgrades was built for.
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