Colourist Ra l Lavado explains how he created emotions with colour for Spains first original Disney Plus series
By Contributor
Published: May 2, 2023
Colourist Ra l Lavado explains how he created emotions with colour for Spain's first original Disney Plus series
target=_blank title=Share on LinkedIn class=share-linkedin>
La ltima, also known as Our Only Chance, is Spain's first original Disney Plus drama series. Platinum recording artist Aitana and award-winning actor Miguel Bernardeau lead the cast of the music-filled series about overcoming obstacles and disappointment and experiencing hope, love, and friendship.
The series was directed by Eduard Cort s and Abigail Schaaff with cinematography by Ricardo de Gracia and Paco S nchez Polo. It was graded on Baselight by senior colourist Ra l Lavado at Madrid FTFcam.
Beginning La ltima Lavado was involved in the project from the beginning, something that is becoming more common and appreciated by colourists.
Ra l Lavado With Ricardo De Gracia, the DoP, we had the opportunity to test a few cameras and various sets of lenses in Baselight, to see what types of textures and features were closest to Ricardo's creative intent for the series, he explains.
The main premise of Ricardo and Eduard Cortes, the director, was that everything be very natural, vibrant and organic, but above all that it be an image with volume, as three-dimensional as possible, adds Lavado. This was very much the goal for the look of the series.
The workflow The team chose to work under the T-CAM pipeline, with all VFX management in ACES (The Academy Colour Encoding System). T-CAM is a feature in Baselight that helps to improve appearance matching between viewing conditions, create better shadow definition, improved skin tones, and less noise.
T-CAM allows you unprecedented creative speed when developing looks, both in a general show look and by scene, explains Lavado.
Baselight's colour management allowed us to take the VFX pull from T-CAM to ACES AP0, directly from the work timeline without having to make intermediate adjustments. It also meant we could export SDR versions for review, with total confidence, without the need to do any trim pass or change the project settings.
The IMF mastering was completed in Dolby Vision on Baselight, as well as all supplementary assets (additional renders that can be overlaid or added to the master/original IMF via metadata in the CPL, if changes are required).
The grade While many of the scenes in the series adopt a vibrant and warm feeling, Lavado utilised Baselight to create different looks for certain characters and sequences. One example of this was the cooler palette he applied to the boxing scenes, to help emphasise the intensity of the sport.
We wanted to evoke some boxing and street fighting classics, but without losing the essence of our series, he explains. We always worked by scene, under the overall show look' that we designed, but we adjusted the temperature and exposure accordingly to help the narrative of the series and support the events occurring with temporal credibility.
That's something I love about Baselight. I always have a reserved layer in my stack, to make those general adjustments per scene - and with group grading it's very fast.
Baselight For La ltima, Lavado's preferred tool was Baselight's Base Grade feature, which allows colourists to create images based on the way people perceive colour, instead of the traditional lift/gamma/gain approach. It offers natural grading adjustments using a set of controls: Flare, Exposure and Tint.
More than anything else on this series, I used Base Grade, comments Lavado. It is a tool that changes everything and my go-to for almost anything. Sometimes I combine it with Film Grade to get some nuance with more character and I almost always make fine adjustments with Hue Shift.
Lavado considers himself a technical and methodical colourist, but also likes to tap into his creative side when grading moving images.
I like to lean on my artistic expression and create emotions with colour, to help tell the story, he comments. I let the images speak and spontaneously my instinct guides me to the tools I need to develop looks that emotionally match the scene.
Being an HDR series, Lavado wanted to avoid harsh and unnatural highlights, so turned to Baselight's Texture Highlight tool to help to bring a softness and perceptual realism to the images.
I always like to do a fine spatial adjustment per scene, to find the best possible texture and tweak any skin imperfections, he adds. The Paint and Texture Equalizer tools create a very natural and smooth result, without losing texture.
Collaborative success Lavado puts the success of the project down to his close relationship with the directors and DoPs, as well as his involvement in the project from the very beginning - leaving little margin for error.
La ltima has been one of the most pleasant projects I have ever worked on, he states. Ricardo and Eduard let me work independently. When I had an episode ready, we would have a review and adjustment session and in general everything worked very well.
I'm extremely honoured to have been involved in the creation of the first original Disney Plus series from Spain, and I am very happy with the result, he concludes.
Most recent headlines
24/12/2025
What is AI good for? Posted by MTI Film on December 24, 2025
What is AI good for?
What is AI good for?
It's been three years since ChatGPT first cap...
24/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
24/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
24/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
24/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
24/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
24/12/2025
Back to All News
Love, Fights, and Everything in Between: Badly in Love' Returns for Season 2
Entertainment
24 December 2025
GlobalJapan
Link copied t...
24/12/2025
Scripps Research study links sleep variability with sleep apnea and hypertension How consumers' digital activity trackers could enable personalized health s...
23/12/2025
How guilas Cibae as Dominican Winter League Games Are Locally Produced for Glob...
23/12/2025
BitFire's Jim Akimchuk on Supplying Scalability and Customization in the Clo...
23/12/2025
CAMB.AI Enables European Athletics to Offer Multi-Language SupportPlan is to eventually offer translation into all languages spoken in EuropeBy Ken Kerschbaumer...
23/12/2025
Analysis: As sports media values trend negative, scarcity and quality are king By Callum McCarthy, Editor-at-Large
Monday, December 22, 2025 - 14:08
Print ...
23/12/2025
ESPN, Disney, and NBA Return to the Animated Altcast Fray With Second Edition of...
23/12/2025
End the Year on a High Note and Donate to the Sports Broadcasting Fund Today! By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director
Tuesday, December 23, 2025 - 12:25 pm
...
23/12/2025
The year is winding down, the weather outside is frightful, and it's the perfect time to escape into a story that warms the heart. For listeners looking for...
23/12/2025
A Zeus motor is hot fire tested at L3Harris' Camden, Arkansas, solid rocket ...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Lightware will exhibit several major product innovations at ISE 2026, including the new USB-C BOOSTER-V1, Google Meet. integration for various Taurus UCX models...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Taking the Stage at Carnegie Hall-On a Global Scale Boston Conservatory Orchestra students reflect on their epic concert marking the 80th session of the UN Gene...
23/12/2025
Back to All News
Netflix's The Great Flood and Culinary Class Wars 2 Top Gl...
23/12/2025
Back to All News
Stranger Things By the Numbers: How the Global Phenomenon Shap...
23/12/2025
Experience the power of WO Automation for Radio's newest service, the System Effectiveness Review. Designed to help you achieve more, a System Effectiveness...
23/12/2025
23 Dec 2025
VEON's Beeline Kazakhstan and Rakuten Symphony Collaborate to A...
23/12/2025
Back to All News
How Steamy Can It Get? Single's Inferno' Season 5 Pre...
23/12/2025
Back to All News
33 Million Global Viewers on Netflix Watched Jake Paul vs. Ant...
23/12/2025
New technique lights up where drugs go in the body, cell by cell Scripps Research scientists developed a technique that maps drug binding in individual cells th...
22/12/2025
SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: Presidio's Neerav Shah on the Role of Its Captiva...
22/12/2025
Hitting the bullseye: Sky Sports readies itself for the biggest PDC World Darts ...
22/12/2025
Unique skillset: Bringing new directors to the world of darts at The Worlds with...
22/12/2025
Gravity Media prepares for a flight of fancy with the PDC World Darts Championsh...
22/12/2025
One hundred and eighty: Gravity Media on hitting the production bullseye at the ...
22/12/2025
The Famous Group's Jon Slusser on Fascinating Fans Through Immersive Content...
22/12/2025
ESPN's Meg Aronowitz on Continuing High-Quality Broadcasts of Collegiate Spo...
22/12/2025
ESPN Takes Data-Driven Storytelling to New Heights with MNF Playbook with Next ...
22/12/2025
For a decade, popular German podcast Fest & Flauschig has hosted an annual Chris...
22/12/2025
Paramount Scores Largest Share Increase Among Distributors as Paramount and CBS...
22/12/2025
New multi-year deal integrates Roku's data to fuel Nielsen's measurement suite
Roku gains access to Nielsen's streaming ratings, showing The Roku C...
22/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
22/12/2025
Berklee Wrapped 2025: Our Top News and Stories A look back at a year highlighted by faculty milestones, major film and television projects, Bob Dylan's ho...
22/12/2025
The works of Plato state that when humans have an experience, some level of change occurs in their brain, which is powered by memory - specifically long-term me...
22/12/2025
Partnership integrates complementary satellite data and AI analytics to enhance security, infrastructure, and environmental monitoring solutions for global cust...
22/12/2025
Workflows allow you to create a sequence of planned events which may be added to your template(s) or inserted directly into your sequential or background playli...
Colourist Ra l Lavado explains how he created emotions with colour for Spains first original Disney Plus series
