Colour Grading
I am Matteo Curcio, a Melbourne-based colourist working remotely with agencies, producers and studios. Commercial grading, film emulation, beauty and skin-tone work, and sequence-level balancing across every deliverable a campaign actually ships. Australian clients write colourist and colour grading; international ones write colorist and color grading — same work.
Every grade starts with what the picture is supposed to feel like and what it will be judged against — the brand's existing work, the director's references, the platform it lands on. Deciding that first is what stops a grade drifting over three rounds of notes.
A campaign is rarely one film. Hero cut, cutdowns, socials, stills, versions per market — they all have to read as the same piece of work. I build the look so it survives being re-cut and re-framed rather than being hand-matched each time.
Most grades live or die on skin tone. I protect texture and the natural behaviour of light on faces while still moving the image where the brand needs it, because the moment skin looks manufactured the viewer stops believing the rest.
Colour management from camera original to master, correct transfer and primaries, legal levels for broadcast, and a grade that holds up on a phone as well as a calibrated display. The nice image is the easy half.
By Genre
Each of these asks something specific of a grade. The reels below go into what that is, with the work attached.
Ad work moves fast, changes direction often, and involves a lot of people with strong opinions and tight deadlines. The craft challenge isn't doing the work - it's protecting visual consistency while translating rounds of feedback into practical post decisions without the timeline blowing out. I focus on controlled adaptation: knowing what can flex and what can't, keeping versioning clean, and making sure the fifteenth revision still looks like it belongs to the same campaign as the first. Reactive panic is not a post-production methodology.
Good retouching is invisible. The moment skin looks plastic or lighting looks manufactured, you've lost the viewer's trust and probably the brand's credibility along with it. I work to preserve texture, tone, and the natural behaviour of light on skin while meeting the brand's visual expectations. Standards get defined upfront - what gets cleaned, what stays, how far is too far - so hero images and cutdowns stay consistent across formats and revision rounds without someone having to re-litigate the approach every time a new crop comes through.
Fashion work is a conversation between stylisation and product truth. Push the grade too far and the fabric doesn't read correctly - that silk looks like satin, that navy reads black. Pull back too much and the brand identity disappears. I work in the space between those two problems: controlling colour language and texture behaviour so skin tones stay credible, fabrics stay recognisable, and the overall image still carries the visual identity the brand is after. Consistency across a full campaign matters more than any single hero shot.
Food that looks too perfect stops looking edible. There's a point where saturation tips from appetising into artificial, where highlights blow out and texture flattens, and the whole image starts feeling like a stock photo instead of something you'd actually want to eat. I manage highlight behaviour, texture separation, and brand colour accuracy so close-ups stay believable across packaging, digital, social, and print. The brief is usually simple - make it look good - but the execution requires more restraint than most people expect.
Sport content lives and dies on energy, but energy without control just looks like a mess. Fast cuts, high contrast, saturated colour - it all works until it doesn't, and the line between dynamic and chaotic is thinner than most people think. I shape contrast, pacing, and colour continuity so the intensity reads clearly instead of overwhelming the viewer. The emotion is already in the footage. The job is to amplify it through discipline - knowing when to push and when to let the moment do the work on its own.
Architecture deserves honest representation. Overcook the grade and the penthouse looks like a render. Underdo it and the agency gets calls about why the bathroom looks grey. I enhance mood and light while respecting the actual materials, structure, and mixed-lighting reality of built spaces. Deliverables are standardised across hero stills, walkthrough video, portal uploads, and print - so developers and agencies get dependable, consistent output regardless of which platform it ends up on. No surprises at the printer.
Send the cut, the references, and the delivery spec — or just the problem, if the brief is still forming. I work in person across Melbourne and remotely everywhere else.