Senior Colorist Duncan Russell teaches
the art of color grading
This isn’t your typical neatly packaged masterclass—it’s the most unfiltered, artistic deep dive you’ll experience all year. London-based Senior Colorist Duncan Russell builds three distinct looks live, referencing paintings, photography, and stills from other films to show how great grades are often born from instinct, chaos, and visual memory. You’ll step inside his world—where the logic, the madness, the misfires, and the breakthroughs behind every decision are laid bare.
July 14
LIVE Interactive Masterclass
Get Started Here.
Watch the 1-minute class teaser
Meet your
Instructor
Duncan Russell is one of the UK’s most accomplished and versatile colorists, with a career that has defined the look of cinema, television, music, and advertising for nearly thirty years.
Since 1996, he has graded across every discipline imaginable—shaping the tone of global campaigns for Gucci, Bentley, IKEA, Sky, and more; remastering some of the greatest films ever made—Citizen Kane, Mean Streets, and The Man Who Fell to Earth; and collaborating with music icons including Coldplay, Nicki Minaj, Madonna, Kanye West, Ed Sheeran, Charli XCX, and Sigrid.
Whether crafting the dailies of major Hollywood productions (Die Another Day, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Kingdom of Heaven) or grading high-profile long-form projects like Polite Society, Our Universe, and Netflix’s global No.1 documentary Surviving Black Hawk Down, Duncan brings the same mix of bold creative instinct and technical mastery to every frame.
Currently based at London’s prestigious Halo post facility in Soho, Duncan leads color for theatrical features, prestige series, and landmark documentaries. With an eye honed by decades of storytelling and a reel that spans continents and genres, his work continues to shape how the world sees images—and how those images make us feel.
Global Ad Campaigns
Filmography
Music Collaborations
Part 1: Foundations & Framework
The class is divided into two halves: We begin by taking a deep look into Duncan’s mindset, creative values, and technical fundamentals—laying the groundwork for what comes later. Students will learn the foundational thinking, artistic instincts, and technical awareness that shape his approach to grading.
In the second half, we move into a client-style live grading session, where Duncan builds three distinct looks in real time while responding to spontaneous feedback from participants acting as mock clients. Students will learn how to navigate the chaos of a real session, make quick creative decisions under pressure, and stay inspired even when things aren’t working.
The first half opens by unpacking the ideas of talent, taste, and visual literacy—terms we throw around casually, but rarely stop to define. What do they really mean in the context of image-making? How do they shape a colorist’s instinct?
There is no color.
Duncan will use optical illusions to break this open and explain color constancy, one of the most important (and misunderstood) aspects of color perception—and how understanding that mechanism can help you guide a client’s emotional response or figure out why a grade isn’t working. Students will also learn about his complicated relationship with scopes—when to trust them, when to ignore them, and why perception—not numbers—should lead the grade.
Next, we move into the technical. A fast but focused primer on color spaces—capture space, grading space, and display space—followed by remapping, LUTs, DRTs, and how to move images from real-world light into screen-ready color with control and predictability. Students will learn to break down complex technical workflows into reliable and creative decisions.
Reading the Offline.
We move into Reading the Offline. Using the short film Ping Pong (starring Aidan Turner, the dwarf from the Hobbit movies), Duncan will demonstrate how he approaches raw material. What jumps out? What potential does he see? Students will learn how to assess footage not for what it is—but for what it could be.
Every grade starts with two things: the footage and the client. The footage has its own personality. The client comes in with expectations—ideas, hopes, sometimes confusion. Students will learn how to take both, bring their own sense of what looks good, and find a way to make something that works—for them and for the client.
Fine-Art inspiration
This is the heart of the class: Referencing fine art and photography inside DaVinci Resolve to build beautiful grades that feel like memory. This is where the paintings and photography stored in Duncan’s mind will start to shape the direction of the grade. Not as direct references, but as a kind of visual instinct—an internal compass for tone, contrast, and atmosphere.
Students will witness how inspiration doesn’t always arrive on cue, and how looks often emerge by accident—stumbling across something while chasing something else entirely.
Duncan will pull up stills from other jobs, films, paintings, and photographs in the middle of the session—to show what’s guiding his decisions as he builds a grade. The goal is not to teach mimicry, but to help students develop their own reservoir of visual memory, and to trust that instinct in the chaos of a live grade.
Hunters from the village of Chukotka | Photograph by Evgenia Arbugaeva
He will follow this with a breakdown of his node tree—node by node, decision by decision—explaining what goes where and why, and what principles guide that structure. Finally, he will dive into the personal rules he lives by: how he sees contrast, saturation, and density; why curve grading remains his greatest love; what he always starts with, and what he leaves for the end. Students will learn not textbook answers, but hard-won instincts formed over decades of grading under pressure.
Part 2: Live Grading
With the groundwork laid, we move into the most exciting part of the class—LIVE Grading. This is as close to a real grading session as you can get, where Duncan builds three distinct looks from the same footage, responding in real time to evolving creative demands and unpredictable client-style interaction. It’s fast, instinctive, and deliberately chaotic—designed to mirror the real-world energy of a working session.
In this masterclass, you’re not just a student watching a demo. You’ll take on the role of the client—throwing creative curveballs, shaping the brief in real time. Duncan will respond live, showing how to blend instinct with direction, chaos with control.
This role-reversal is more than just interactive—it’s one of the most effective ways to learn. Being a client is a powerful exercise in understanding what colorists are really solving for. It sharpens your instincts, reveals blind spots, and teaches you how to read a room, not just a waveform. Students will learn how to “self-inspire” under pressure—how to keep ideas flowing when a client is waiting and the grade isn’t working. And instead of hearing dry anecdotes, they’ll get a direct window into how Duncan thinks in the moment. Every decision, pivot, and recovery will unfold live before their eyes.
Throughout, he’ll reach for whatever sparks the process—paintings, photographs, film stills, moments from past projects. These references aren’t pre-planned; they surface as the grade takes shape, often leading the direction as much as following it. Things will go wrong. Grades will collapse. Ideas will stall. And that’s the point. Students will see how a professional works through the noise—how he resets, improvises, and finds his way back. This second half isn’t about the polished final image. It’s about the mess in the middle—the place where all great work begins.
Who Should take this Class?
This class is for colorists—aspiring or experienced—who are tired of formulaic workflows and hungry to develop a voice of their own.
If you're drawn to references from photography, painting, and cinema but don’t know how to channel them into your grade...If you’ve hit the technical ceiling but still feel creatively stuck...If you’ve ever stared at a shot, knowing something’s off but not knowing why...
Then this class is for you.
Whether you're a junior colorist looking to build strong instincts, or a seasoned professional wanting to reconnect with the artistic roots of grading, Duncan’s masterclass offers something rare: a look inside the real, imperfect, instinctive process behind beautiful grading.
It’s not about chasing perfection.
It’s about trusting your eye, embracing the chaos—and learning to build looks that feel like memory.
Invite-Only
This Masterclass is reserved exclusively for invite-holding participants and is not open for direct enrolment — If you’re genuinely interested, answer the questions at the end of this section and join our waitlist. Selected individuals will receive a personalized invite via email.
Second Round
Invites
Selected waitlist individuals will receive an invite via email on Thursday, July 10, 8:00 AM Pacific Time—Keep an eye on your inbox.
Waitlist Open.
$199 $249
Access
If you receive the invite, you will have a brief 24-hour window to claim your spot at an exclusive price of $199. Unclaimed spots will be released.
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These Terms and Conditions ("Terms") govern participation in the waitlist campaign ("Campaign") for Duncan Russell’s Masterclass: The Art of Color Grading ("Masterclass"), organized by Cinemagus’s Classroom Private Limited ("Cinemagus"), operating under the brand name "TAC" ("Organizer"). By registering for the waitlist, participants acknowledge that they have read, understood, and agreed to these Terms. Participants further agree to comply with all applicable laws and regulations.
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