Case Studies
The aesthetics of dystopia:
Colour grading Black Mirror season 7
PART TWO
In this three-part series, we go behind the scenes of three episodes from the latest season of Black Mirror, with senior colourist Sam Chynoweth at The Farm.
See: PART ONE | PART TWO | PART THREE
EPISODE 3: Hotel Reverie
Hotel Reverie is the third episode of the seventh series, directed by Haolu Wang and shot by DoP Philipp Haberlandt. It explores the concept of ReDream, a technology that allows actors to inhabit the world of classic films. In the episode, A-list actress Brandy Friday steps into a 1949 British film called "Hotel Reverie" as it delves into the ethical implications of AI in filmmaking and the potential for blurring the lines between reality and simulation.
Recreating the classic film look
The goal for this episode was to authentically recreate and reinterpret the visual aesthetic of a 1940s black and white classic film.
“Getting the opportunity to shoot Hotel Reverie with its highly visual approach was a thrilling offer,” comments Dop Philipp Haberlandt. “The scripts called for three completely different looks and I’m more than glad that Sam was involved in creating these from the very beginning.”
“It was a homage to films like Casablanca and Brief Encounter,” adds Chynoweth. “We wanted to use the grade as a storytelling tool to reflect the shifting narrative layers and environments of the episode. Rather than a single, static black and white look, the challenge was to design and differentiate multiple versions that each served a different conceptual or narrative purpose.
“We started with a look resembling an original 1940s print; faded, shaky, and with coarse levels of grain, this was our most damaged version of Hotel Reverie. Next, we see the Blu-Ray remaster which we gave a higher contrast and removed all but the finest grain.
“The ReDream simulation is designed for Brandy’s immersion and is much truer to the source material, allowing for some flicker, light scratching and dust particles, whilst maintaining an overall good level of clarity and detail.
“When the accident occurs, we see the simulation lose the ability to recreate the skeuomorphic (digital mimicry of a physical object, in this case celluloid film) elements and revert back to a cleaner, more modern rendition of the world, coinciding with the change in camera and lighting language used by Haolu and Philipp to exemplify the moment.
“Finally, we have our remastered for Streamberry version (the fictional streaming service within the Black Mirror universe) – cleaner, sharper, and now in widescreen,” says Chynoweth. “In essence, the grading served to be both a homage and meta-commentary, guiding the viewer through the narrative reality of the episode.”
Collaboration and testing
Recreating the look and atmosphere of a golden era black and white film takes a lot more work than just stripping the colour out.
“Collaboration with Philipp Haberlandt and the creative team was essential to achieving the episode’s visual identity,” adds Chynoweth. “Since recreating the look of a classic film was a key goal, Philipp shot a range of tests to explore elements like lighting and lenses as well as period-accurate hair and make-up.”
“We tested various lenses, filters, and techniques from that time to achieve the classic aesthetic Haolu Wang and I were aiming for,” says Haberlandt. “The test footage provided the perfect foundation for creating a LUT that would emulate a film emulsion from that era.”
The team reviewed these tests in the grading suite to assess which combinations best captured the era’s authentic texture, contrast, and tonal balance. Details like lens halation, skin rendition, and shadow detailing were carefully considered to support the monochromatic look.
“One of the key tools opted for was a heavy orange filter, which helped to lower the contrast within skin to create the soft glowing glamour tones of the era whilst maintaining a pleasingly strong overall contrast,” recalls Chynoweth.
These tests helped define the grading strategy. Early on, they tested three black and white LUTs, monochromatic, orthographic, and panchromatic, to see how each rendered tone and contrast.
“Mono and orthochromatic options created a striking, vintage look,” says Chynoweth. “But they had strong implications for makeup and lighting: for example, red lipstick could register unexpectedly dark, and certain fabrics or skin tones could lose detail or tonal separation.
“After seeing these results, we opted for a more controlled desaturated approach, blending it with subtle RGB channel tuning to shape the contrast in a way that felt period accurate but more adaptable for the needs of the production.”
“The lenses (Super Baltar), combined with the varying use of diffusion filters like Soft Net and Black Satin, along with the LUT, gave us the authentic look we were striving for,” says Haberlandt.
For their two other major looks, the team looked to a different era of Hollywood.
“Our modern ‘real’ world look has a palette heavily influenced by modern film stocks, but with a slightly more open shoulder making use of the extended dynamic range available in HDR,” continues Chynoweth. “For the moment when Clara is exposed to her memories, we wanted to create the sense of colour leeching into her life, but still with a heavy sense of nostalgia. The look we settled on is reminiscent of faded newspaper, made by blending our modern and black and white looks.
“The three LUTs developed during testing travelled through the entire shoot, acting as a visual anchor, and became the foundation of our final creative grade. This ensured that all departments were aligned from capture through post, and that our final look felt cohesive and intentional,” says Chynoweth.
Balancing authenticity with storytelling
One of the key challenges for Chynoweth was managing the levels of skeuomorphism throughout the episode.
“Working closely with Charlie (Brooker – series creator), we developed a detailed set of rules that dictated how much texture, degradation, and stylisation to apply at each narrative stage, striking a careful balance between authenticity and storytelling clarity,” explains Chynoweth.
“For example, the grade and film damage were at their highest for the opening Hotel Reverie trailer, in an effort to make them feel like an authentic found artefact. In the simulated ‘1940s’ film version, we continued to add elements of degradation, but in a slightly more conscious manner careful of their placement – and never to a level that would be distracting to the scene.”
Another challenge for the team stemmed from the fact that streaming services are designed for maximum efficiency in their delivery of images to the viewer.
“Sadly, grain is at odds with efficient image compression and can often be reduced through the encoding process,” comments Chynoweth. “We debated whether we needed to take this into consideration and effectively overcompensate our grain levels to balance out for this effect, but ultimately we decided not to and the wizards at Netflix created a streaming master that preserved our intent.
“The challenge wasn’t just in creating these looks individually, but in ensuring their transitions felt narratively driven,” adds Chynoweth. “Each version had to serve the story, not distract from it. We also had to take care that elements matched across departments, making sure the level of affectation matched across both sound and picture.”
Grading a film within a film
Since the black and white film appears throughout the episode on various diegetic screens – monitors, projectors, and digital interfaces – it was crucial that it felt like a complete, authentic film in its own right.
“This meant giving it the same attention and structure as a period feature,” says Chynoweth. “Carefully sculpted lighting, era-specific contrast, and a controlled grain profile that resembled a 1940s film stock.”
This resulted in Chynoweth grading the Hotel Reverie film like its own standalone feature.
“I worked closely with Haolu and Phil on enhancing lighting effects, like the ‘spot-lit’ aesthetic typical of the era, making key areas pop with theatrical contrast,” adds Chynoweth. “Close-ups of the female leads were given a softer, brighter treatment, true to classic glamour cinematography, while wider shots and male characters retained a more neutral contrast and sharpness. It was very important to Haolu and Phil to be as authentic as possible.”
Another challenge was maintaining visual consistency across all the different in-story playback devices.
“By pre-grading the film as a unified piece, we could lock in the grain, damage, and overall texture so it remained cohesive regardless of where or how it was displayed,” says Chynoweth. “This also gave the VFX team a reliable base to work from when compositing the film into the different environments, whether it was projected on a vintage screen or playing on a futuristic Streamberry interface.
“Ultimately, grading it as a self-contained film gave us more control and allowed every in-story presentation to feel intentional, preserving the integrity of the look no matter the context,” adds Chynoweth.
Toolset
For Chynoweth, Baselight was a key part of the workflow on this episode, offering both the flexibility and power he needed to handle the complex demands of Hotel Reverie.
“Beyond its robust colour tools, we made strong use of Baselight’s support for OFX plugins and title compositing, allowing us to build more complex looks directly in the timeline without needing to bounce back and forth between platforms,” comments Chynoweth.
“One of the biggest advantages was Baselight’s ability to play back heavy grade stacks in real time. With so many layers of grain, damage, glows, and custom LUTs, being able to view and refine those looks interactively made the grading process much more efficient and responsive, especially as we adjusted fine details like scratch and dust placement across the various versions of the film.”
Baselight also streamlined the pipeline for VFX plate delivery.
“The scene management and export tools in Baselight made it easy to track, version, and share graded plates with the VFX team – helping maintain consistency and speed up communication between departments,” says Chynoweth. “The clean exchange of scenes meant we could work in tandem with other teams, without ever losing sight of the creative intent or visual continuity.”
“Rather than a single, static black and white look, the challenge was to design and differentiate multiple versions that each served a different conceptual or narrative purpose.”
Senior Colourist Sam Chynoweth
