How I 'Fixed' The Hobbit - Color Grade

It wasn't about undoing what was done, simply nudging and sweetening.

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[georgeharrison]

So much better. People often blame “CGI” for the fake feeling of the hobbit but it’s more than that, and I think this is one example. E.g they added this horrible glow effect all over the battle of the 5 armies which just....ew. But I think bringing down the saturation really helped this feel like lotr, good work

[Sipu]

I love the colouring in the first Hobbit film, it feels so magical and bright and warm. It also gives us a nice contrast between The Hobbit and LOTR; how the world was brighter and not as dark during The Hobbit, but also how the story gets darker in The Hobbit as the films go by. But this colour grading makes it line more with LOTR.

[amirsaad]

wow your version looks amazing! it fits the LOTR trilogy much better

[thescreengeek]

I KNEW IT! I thought something looked ever so slightly different

[sweaspurdoddd]

We need the fan edit with this color grade

[RainMinded]

It’s always driven me crazy the way they colour graded the second two! The milky filter that strips red out of the actors faces. I might be going crazy but I streamed some of my iTunes version of Battle of the Five Armies tonight, and I was shocked to see the colour grading has changed! The colours are significantly stronger than my blu ray, which I brought out to make sure I wasn’t going crazy. Be curious if they’ve done anything to the second one, but it bodes well for the 4K releases if they’ve finally fixed this!

[TGCFilmz]

I think that looks perfect! The only thing I could suggest to fix the bloom/softness would be a film grain overlay, but I know that can take a lot of work to make it look authentic.

[guyr]

Thank you thank you thank you, this looks amazing! The different look of the Shire in the Hobbit films always made me sad, and your new grading feels SO much more familiar and nostalgic. More "real", too. Incredible work!

And if you'd want to apply it to your theatrical cuts, too, I'd be very interested :)

[dardobartoli]

Just wow... can't wait for the link to these films. In the meantime, will be reviewing all your hard work

[StpFlaming]

your color grade looks much better :9
i also enjoyed your theatrical cuts, looking forward to your extended cuts.

[dev]

Looks great, thanks as well at a peak into your process.

[DutchMilkMaid]

This is the reason I've never re-watched any of the hobbit movies, despite being quite the LOTR fan. It all feels so insta-filtered, and definitely not like the original LOTR films. Whish I could watch the movies with your color grading! 😩

[tiamzy]

Nice! I'm all the more excited for the extended cut! I'm pretty sure the final scene of AUJ will benefit from your color grading. I know that the filmmakers deliberately changed the color saturation of the gold coins in Erebor for DoS but I find it annoying that they didn't fix that in the extended edition of AUJ to match with DoS.

[kaankaraca]

I completely understand this change. Personally though I love the colorful look and vibrance of AUJ. I even did the opposite of what you did and added saturation and fixed the sickly green grade the film had. That’s just my preference though

[azufelll]

Man... I wish you made the color grade of the Hobbit for the 4k remaster this looks soo much better...
Peter Jackson was talking about that the remaster will make the two trilogies look consistent and yet the Hobbit color grade still looks bad in my opinion.

[rovhalt]

Turning down the vibrant colors in the Shire was originally what Peter Jackson did with the LotR trilogy.
I think he simply forgot to do it with The Hobbit, so it looked very different in those movies to what we were used to.

[Jonas_æ]

The softness is most likely due to a physical lens filter and not a post process effect, like a black pro-mist filter. Definitely not something you'd be able to fix yourself in DaVinci Resolve, hehe.

[leowolftvjoshuadauzat]

Make smaug actually red in the movie instead of that grey crap

[cavalierdecoupe]

Desaturation does NOT make your grade better. It just removes the dreamy quality from this movies. You surely must love Snyder s cut.