Colourists Thomas Urbye and Grace Weston at The Look discuss the multi-dimensional role of a colourist while going behind the scenes of grading “Rivals” season two.
Disney+ adaptation “Rivals” received its second season, where audiences were thrusted back into the colourful and dramatic world of Dame Jilly Cooper’s Rutshire Choronicals. However, beneath the vibrance, season two introduces a more emotionally complex landscape, moving beyond the lighter energy of the first season and into a darker territory while still embracing the wit and visual richness that made the show successful.
For colourists Thomas Urbye and Grace Weston at The Look, the challenge was how to navigate this shift while working across twelve episodes split between multiple directors, DPs and creative teams.
Working in DaVinci Resolve Studio, they became custodians of the show’s evolving identity, balancing creative ambition, technical problem solving and collaboration between filmmakers in an effort to ensure that “Rivals” remained visually cohesive while allowing each block to showcase its own personality.
Evolving From the Foundations
Produced by Happy Prince, “Rivals,” unlike many multi-season television dramas, brought back key creatives from season one, including directors Elliot Hegarty Jamie Jay Johnson, DPs John Lynch ISC and Ashley Barron, and series producer Eliza Mellor. While the continuity and established relationships provided a strong foundation for the next instalment, Urbye was determined to avoid recreating the same visual identity.
The first season was incredibly successful visually, but I always think a series should evolve,” he explains. “You want it to feel familiar, but progressive.”
Season two takes place later in the decade and the team used Martin Scorsese’s ‘Casino’ as a shooting reference. Driving factors were dynamic camera movement, music driven storytelling and a heightened sense of energy. “We revisited earlier film emulation techniques and then rebuilt the show’s look from the ground up,” Urbye recalls.
“Looking back at season one with fresh eyes, there are parts that were a little too warm, with a tobacco wash, which dominated other colours in the palette. I wanted to introduce more chroma contrast and colour separation with season two,” he begins. “Using [DaVinci] Resolve’s newer toolset, including the subtractive colour tools and updated colour warpers, I was able to revisit LUTs based on film stocks I’d used 20 years ago and create a richer palette with stronger chroma contrast and deeper reds and blues.”
While Urbye evolved the look, it was still recognisably “Rivals.” A sequence that became particularly important in defining the visual direction was a sprawling polo match that takes place in the opening episodes.
“There was something very Martin Parr about it,” Urbye says. “The colours, the picnics, the folding chairs, the Union Jacks. It felt very British, and we wanted to embrace that rather than letting it all wash together.”
Shared Vision
Consistency is a common challenge in producing long-form television and “Rivals” season two was no exception. While the camera package remained largely the same through production, different directors and DPs inevitably brought their own visual preferences to each block.
“One thing Happy Prince and producer Eliza Mellor were very clear about was that they wanted us, as colourists, to be the continuity across the series. They didn’t want the audience to feel a visual jump between episodes.”
Weston became involved in the second part of the season, where she was tasked with maintaining continuity while working alongside DP Ashley Barron ACS, with her own ideas about the show’s evolution. “The challenge was that season two has more chroma contrast and vibrant aesthetics. We had deliberately moved away from the more warmed-washed palette, and it took some time for everyone to be on board,” Weston says.
Having defined the visual language in the early stages for season two, maintaining it required careful negotiation. Both Weston and Urbye describe their roles as partially creative, technical and diplomatic, helping all parties find common ground when individual preferences diverged.
Grading a World of Change
The earlier episodes of season two embraced the bright, playful energy that audiences have come to expect from “Rivals.” However, later episodes move into a more emotionally challenging space. For Weston, who graded episode six, preserving the show’s identity while supporting that tonal change became the central focus.
“We suddenly move into a world that’s much darker,” she explains. “More than half of the episode takes place at night, which is something we hadn’t really seen before.”
The idea wasn’t simply to make scenes darker. Instead, it was about directing the audience’s attention. “Using [DaVinci] Resolve’s Depth Map, Selective Shaping on actors and background elements, and carefully controlled highlight roll-offs, the aim was to keep viewers connected to performances while maintaining the atmosphere of the narrative,” Weston describes.
The grading evolved alongside the storytelling, mirroring the gradual transition from summer to autumn. “As is often the case with long-running productions, there are episodes that take place in autumn, but new pickup material arrives that was shot in summer, we have to match those images into the current episode’s season,” begins Urbye.
“[DaVinci] Resolve gave us the tracking and keying precision needed to make those adjustments convincingly. We could manipulate foliage, rebalance colours and help the scenes feel as though they were all captured at the same point in time. Sometimes we’re just trying to preserve the audience’s sense of consistency.”
Solving Problems Beyond Colour
While creative grading remains crucial to the role, both colourists believe the modern grading suite has become something broader.
Much of “Rivals” season two required problem solving that might once have fallen to other departments. “One of the biggest challenges involved integrating footage captured on vintage Ikegami broadcast cameras, which were used to recreate period television coverage. The footage looked convincing on set but became significantly more problematic once viewed in HDR on modern displays,” Urbye explains.
Compared to the principal footage shot, the Ikegami material was heavily compressed, interlaced and with extremely limited dynamic range. “Rather than treating it as a simple restoration task, we developed a complex colour managed workflow that allowed the footage to be denoised, deinterlaced and graded while preserving its period character,” Urbye details. Adding, “It wasn’t enough to make it look better. It had to feel like it belonged in the same scene.”
As productions become more ambitious and expectations around image quality continue to grow, the grading suite is increasingly becoming a place where creative, technical and practical challenges meet, including sky replacements, stabilisations and in-depth pixel work happening live with directors, DPs, producers and executive producers all in attendance, keen to sign off the episode in one place.
“Having all of these creative and correctional tools in one software means that everyone can sit in the same room and make decisions in real time,” Weston enthuses. “It gives colourists tremendous flexibility and control without making the process feel complicated.”
Staff Reporter
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