COLOUR GRADING (2024)
COLOUR GRADING is a 4-minute short film I co-wrote, co-directed, and (regrettably) starred in.
On the surface, the project is fairly conventional. As first-time directors, my co-director and I set out to make something formally disciplined and quietly respectable, with a strong deference for industry standards.
At the same time, the film subtly pushes against that restraint. One such way is through its black-and-white palette. While a monochrome filter over a story about a color-blind artist risks being on the nose, we approached it less as a literal representation of sight and more as an extension of Novikov’s noir-inflected, gloomy interiority (the color, notably, never returns).
A similar instinct guided the sound design: non-diegetic elements used sparingly but deliberately: a remixed toilet flush to externalize inner turmoil, a nearly imperceptible sustained note to prime emotional tension.
Ultimately, what interested us most was not the return of color or sound, but the question of whether it was ever missing in the first place.
For me, the film became an early experiment in using formal constraint as a tool for emotional expression, an approach I continue to return to across mediums.