A Kōrero with Colourist Damian McDonnell
DEGANZ’s Izzi Hoskyn sat down with award-winning Colourist Damian McDonnell to take a peek behind the curtain of the craft of colour grading.
Damian has over twenty years’ experience as a colourist and editor in both Hollywood and Aotearoa. He began his career as an assistant colourist on The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and The Return of the King. From there, he worked as a colourist at Laser Pacific and Technicolour Hollywood in LA for six years, working on blockbusters such as Life of Pi, TRON Legacy, and multiple Avengers films. When he returned to Aotearoa, he worked at Park Road Post for eight years, having a hand in various projects and taking on the role of on-set colourist and supervising colourist for Mortal Engines. His recent work includes Ti West’s X and Pearl and Taika Waititi’s Our Flag Means Death and Time Bandits. In 2024, Damian won the prestigious Hollywood Professional Association (HPA) award for ‘Outstanding Colour Grading – Live Action Episode or Non-Theatrical Feature’ for his work on Time Bandits.
In this first iteration of our new blog series, A Kōrero With…, Izzi and Damian discuss a colourist’s role and how the colour grade is the final piece of the puzzle on a project, taking it to the next level.
Izzi: In fairly simple terms, what does a colourist do?
Damian: A colourist’s intent, at its most simple, is to put the filmmaker’s vision on screen. So whatever the director’s or cinematographer’s intent is, I help them achieve that look.
Izzi: Who else in the production do you work closely with?
Damian: When working with clients, the most important relationship is with whoever makes the creative calls in the room. Sometimes there are a lot of people in the suite, sometimes there’s just a director or a cinematographer. Whoever it is, that relationship is paramount. When a client gets to know you and how you work, then it becomes a fun environment and one where they can just trust you to work.
Izzi: And on the more technical side, you’re working closely with an online editor?
Damian: Yeah, the technical relationship with an online editor is also very important. Their main function is to translate the timeline into the grading system. There’s crossover with what they and a colourist do, so it’s important to work out what areas you each cover. That can be things like stabilisation or basic effects like paint-outs.
The online editor that I work with at the moment is a guy called Antonis who lives in Greece. He onlines for me overnight, and then I wake up in the morning, have a chat with him, and get underway. He’s a creative editor, but he’s also technically very, very good. And so we’ve got a great working relationship; it’s very efficient. And we use the time difference to our advantage.
Some of the productions Damian has colour graded.
Izzi: What’s your creative process in the role, and what do you bring to each project?
Damian: Every film is different when you grade it. I don’t like to say I’m a certain type of colourist, because I’m responding to the demands of the client. I believe you can grade creatively for any genre or any type of film. I’ve worked on everything from tiny budget films to some of the biggest blockbusters in the world. But I approach them all roughly the same.
Firstly, you watch the film, do a continuity pass, and spot any issues. Then you do a creative pass. And then I do what I call a windows pass or a secondary pass where you start isolating various parts of the image. But at that stage, you’re improving the film bit by bit. I like to work on the whole film rather than get bogged down in tiny details at the start and leave that towards the end.
Left: Damian at work / Right: Damian’s suite while working on Kirsty Cameron’s ‘The Garden Room’
Izzi: Do you feel that you can bring your expertise in colour into the conversation from the get-go or do you leave it up to the director or DOP to first bring their thoughts forward?
Damian: It depends on the relationship with the clients. But I always think that people are hiring me for my artistic ability, not just my technical ability.
I like to put my point of view forward, but ultimately, I always understand that these aren’t my images. These are the director’s or cinematographer’s images and I’m there to help them achieve their look. But it’s best when it’s collaborative.
And I like to make it an enjoyable experience. You’re at the end of a very long road when you get to the colour grading suite, and it’s the last stage before your film is distributed for everyone to see. I like to try and take that stress away from the final delivery and so people can finally see their film in its completion.
Izzi: It’s like the last piece of the puzzle. You can finally step back and see it all as one cohesive work.
Damian: I’m gonna steal that. It’s a really great stage of the process; it’s really fun.
Izzi: What has been a career high for you?
Damian: There have been a few!
My very first film was The Two Towers, and that’s how I learnt to colour grade. Digital intermediate (DI) was a new process, so there was no manual for the software and initially no one to teach me. I literally sat down, pushed buttons, and wrote down what it did. It was such an exciting time being part of something that you knew was going to be an important film.
More recently, I worked with Ti West on X and Pearl, which were shot in Wanganui. They were shot on the same camera three weeks apart, same main actress, same location, but they looked wildly different. Which mostly comes down to the grade. Ti wanted X to look like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Pearl was meant to emulate the Technicolour 3-strip look, and our reference was The Wizard of Oz. So our starting point was similar, but the end products were very different. I’m very proud of those two films. And I think it’s a good example of what you can do as a colourist. You can really bring a strong creative look to a film.
Side-by-side comparison of the colour grade of ‘X’ (left) and ‘Pearl’ (right).
Last year, I won an HPA award for colour grading the TV series Time Bandits. There aren’t many colour grading awards around. It’s an overlooked profession, so it was really nice to be there. I was sitting next to Dave Cole, who taught me to colour grade, and he won for his film. So that was a particular highlight, both of us being in LA and both winning awards.
Izzi: Congrats! That’s a massive achievement.
Damian: It was neat working on Time Bandits. Every time the characters went through a portal, it had to look quite different from the previous world that they’d been in. And so creatively, I was always being pushed to create more and more looks. As a colourist, it was kind of a dream job in that way. It was difficult because we were working on ten episodes at the same time, but it was an exceptionally fun show to work on.
Damian accepting his HPA Award for Outstanding Colour Grading for ‘Time Bandits’
Izzi: What’s something you wish collaborators knew when working with a colourist?
Damian: One of the most important things a collaborator should know is the importance of being decisive. Colourists can develop and put forward looks, but if you change your mind a lot, you waste a lot of time redoing work.
By that, I mean, you never really finish a film, you just run out of time. So using your time wisely, even though that sounds boring, is really important. I always work out a schedule of targets for my passes so I know how long to spend on each one. Being able to make decisions upfront helps a lot.
The other thing is allowing me time to do something. It’s not a magic button. So, knowing that if I say it’s going to take a certain amount of time to do something, it’s going to take that amount of time.
Izzi: In terms of being decisive from the beginning, what can directors do to prepare for that?
Damian: It helps when people come along with a preconceived idea of what they want. I will often ask people to bring in their lookbooks if they want and try to use their ideas as a starting point. But being open to other ideas is great and fun. And they might be surprised by what I can do and what I bring to it.
Izzi: There’s that artistic touch to it. The colour grade is one of the parts of the film where it can elevate your film and take it to the next level.
Damian: I think that you touched on something important.
It probably took me like three or four years before I felt comfortable being a colourist. It’s not just a technical skill; it’s a creative skill. And that’s what draws me to it. It’s sort of a merging of the two, but it is a discipline that you really have to learn, and it takes practice. There’s a lot more to it than just knowing how to use the software.
A good colourist can really add an amazing amount of value to a project, especially on low-budget films. It can take it from looking like a sitcom to looking like a piece of cinema.
Izzi: Thank you so much for taking the time to share your knowledge of colour grading. It was super insightful and can hopefully prompt our members to seek out a strong colour grade in their own projects.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Last updated on 1 September 2025
