A Billion Pound Grade for Channel 4 Hotel Documentary

The distinctive sail shaped silhouette of Dubais Burj Al Arab hotel is not only a stunning feature of the citys skyline; it also represents the lavish glamour and prosperity of modern Dubai. Repeatedly voted the worlds most luxurious hotel, it offers guests the finest service from a host of personal waiting staff right up to a chauffeur driven Rolls Royce.

Channel 4 has checked into the world renowned destination for a one hour observational documentary, The Billion Pound Hotel, which follows the day to day workings of the hotel, and offers a unique insight into the lifestyles of the worlds wealthiest people and the 1,600 staff who serve them. Despite the programs behind the scenes format, the documentary, which was produced by Rize USA (part of the DCD Media Group), needed a much more luxurious and glossy feel in order to emphasize the stunning surrounding of the resort. This contributed to director Osca Humphreys choices on set as he explains: For this type of observational filming, it would have been easier to use a camera which would have reduced the amount of lens changing required, but instead we sacrificed practicality for look, opting for cameras that gave us an extra layer of gloss, which was vital when making the most of the opulent details of the hotels decor.

Naturally the post production also had to ensure that luxury and glamor resonated throughout the footage. Fitzrovia-based post house Sequence Post was tasked with taking the grade far further than a traditional documentary and into the realms of aesthetics more suited for a feature film.

As DaVinci Resolve colorist William Read explains: My brief for the project was to deliver a cinematic look, and whilst this gives a very wide scope for interpretation, I knew that full color was the way to go. I had recently worked on some very punchy grades for automotive projects and I knew that the luxury of the hotel and its beautiful surroundings would be evident through such a strong look.

"Once I had balanced the images within Resolve, I really let loose; the prevalent warm tones were pushed to a very strong orange hue to reflect the heat of Dubai, and using complementary colors I injected a lot of dark blue, edging towards the greens. In order to get a very glossy finish, I pushed the contrast quite hard, with a particular lift in the highlights to produce a high key look. And wherever possible I gave the skies a vibrant cyan, almost turquoise feel to give Dubai an idyllic feel; I used this to great effect in the scenes that depict the hotels helipad and all of the guests jetting in. It is testament to the sensitivity and color capacity of Resolve that the contrast can be pushed to such an extent, but without the effect becoming too cartoonish or artificial.

As with the majority of my grading work, I used about twenty nodes for each image, which enables me to produce a high quality, detailed finish, but also can be rather demanding on the processors. We were working to very tight deadlines and we knew we wouldnt have time to render the job before the clients review at the end of the day, so the Sequence team made sure that Resolve cached in the background as much as possible, as soon as possible in uncompressed DPX. By the time I had completed the grade, two thirds had pre rendered, and it took just a short amount of time to finish completely. Its this kind of power that you need to be able to rely on when you have a strict post production schedule to adhere to.

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