Cuarón, Lubezki and Delbonnel Apple TV+ series “Disclaimer” uses ACES Pipeline.

“Disclaimer,” the seven-part Apple TV+ drama directed by Alfonso Cuarón and shot by cinematographers Emmanuel Lubezki, ASC, AMC (‘Chivo’) and Bruno Delbonnel, ASC, AFC, recently used ACES to manage their color pipeline and maintain the uniqueness or ‘signature’ of each DoP’s look throughout the series. Colorist Peter Doyle describes to Televisual how they accomplished the pipeline.

It was a fully compliant ACES pipeline, using a custom IDT to go from ARRI’s color space, AWG4, to ACES. Dailies included windows and secondary dynamics, which was considered the first pass of the final grade.

“We used BLG files for VFX, to emulate the dailies grade and returns to editorial and VFX,” recalls Doyle. “Some sequences needed a second pass at the grade after dailies – for matching time of day and weather from the shoot – before turning over to VFX.

“By using the BLG format we were able to give VFX graded sequences close to final grade without having to bake it in,” adds Doyle. “This gave us great freedom to then refine the grade once VFX were rendered.”

Thanks to the entire creative and technical team for deploying ACES on this ambitious project.  You can read the entire article here.