Grading with Consumer Displays in Mind

Colorist Eric Weidt recounts how David Fincher would have him tailor the grade in order to align with consumer devices.

Eric Weidt: Once, he [David Fincher] came into Los Angeles; he would stop by, because his office is right there… he would stop by, pop in. But really, you know, to him, it always looks amazing on the the BVM [Sony reference monitor], right? He’d say, ‘God, it looks great in here. But on on my monitor, this gamma is stretching too much and it’s making it too saturated’ – and he hates too much saturation, right? So, he really doesn’t want a consumer device to look, he does not trust the fact that this is what everybody in the world is gonna see, by any stretch. And I think he’s right, actually. For me, grading, it’s really a little bit frustrating, because I feel like I’m looking at this [the reference monitor] all the time, and it’s really tight, and it’s really compacted, and it sometimes feels a bit flat. But he’s right, that if you put it on the LG OLED, it’s gonna stretch out, it’s gonna be really contrasty, and the colors are gonna come up. And I think it travels well, his approach. And I do have an iPad that I render everything out to before I send it to him because I want to see what he’s seeing.