This one is going to be a fun one because it’s a face-off! This is the first time I am doing a breakdown, but this time it will be a face-off between Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon. It’s going to be my two cents and which I prefer. Color grading is subjective, so you may disagree with me and that’s fine. But let’s jump in and start off with Game of Thrones.

We are going to just go through and talk about them.

Starting off with this shot from Winterfell, which has this cool look to it. Now I am not going to be paying attention as much to the interior shots because that’s sort of determined by the lighting.

Here is an exterior, somewhere in the Dothraki world. You can see this because it’s more of a warm look.

You can see even in that colorized waveform how it’s got that warm look. And one thing I really liked about this was how believable. It didn’t feel like “looks,” but more that they were somewhere warm, so the colors are going to be more warm. This happens when you have clean blacks or anchors. These shots aren’t really stylized, but more that it’s been driven to that main quadrant.

Look at this. This shot was done in the North, so it has that “cold” feel, but it’s less blue than when we get to Winterfell. That’s the differentiator to how cold the place is.

Compared to the previous shot, this is a lot colder and we’ve entered back into Winterfell. There is more blue being pumped into this scene to show you that it’s getting colder.

A complete opposite is when you get to Meereen.

Just look at how much warmer this is. But this is the location. It’s a “warmer location.”

If you look at all the vectorscope in these, everything is meeting in the middle. That means that the blacks are pure black. So they are still getting a highly stylized look, yet the look is not senior to the story or location. The blacks are what keep things together.

That’s what I loved about Game of Thrones. The looks were just super honest, authentic and real. Every time we moved from scene to scene, I knew where we were. They didn’t have to tell me with a lower third. That’s a big job.

Now moving onto Stormlands, this almost had like a bleach bypass look.

Something like this has a big difference compared to Winterfell. Winterfell still had color and was really blue.

Moving onto King’s Landing, this one was the closest to “natural colors.” This was more of a rec.709 image, but still pushed a bit towards warmth.

And then a shot like this next one is just so true and honest.

There’s no teal seeping into the blacks, there’s no highly stylized colors going on and they just let it be.

On a shot like this, they are just being true to life. There’s no teal in the blacks to add color contrast, they keep the blacks proper and keep it honest to the way it would look with candlelight.

Again here we have Stormland. Again, very bleach bypass. Highlights are clean, steeley, and desaturated.

Then again we have King’s Landing. Not nearly as warm as Meereen, but just more balanced.

Now we are going to move beyond the wall.

Look at how unapologetically cold this is. It’s so different compared to Stormland. This has to be felt to know what looks like what.

Look at Meereen there. It has such a signature warm look. Almost like desaturated gold tones and honestly one of my favorite looks. They are just being cautious to not over-stylize it.

There you go. This is just a basic look at Game of Thrones from my perspective. Just telling you what I felt when I watched it and how the honesty in color made it very direct. It was not distracting, color didn’t get in the way of the story, we didn’t need lower thirds to tell us where we were, we could just go from one place to another and know. And finally people are understanding how important this is. This is the final step and you can’t look past it. When things are done right, it doesn’t matter. That’s how I felt when I watched it. And this was Season 5 which came out in 2015.

Now we are moving onto House of the Dragon.

So right off the bat when I watched this show, the first episode and first scene my eyebrows were raised and I was like “huh, okay I see what they did.” It’s just so stylized. Even this shot right here. The warmth is different (think of King’s Landing). It’s almost like we are in the DC world, but the teals are coming through as well.

And what that stylized look does, even with a shot like this, makes it feel more like a fantasy. Game of Thrones felt real, this feels like fantasy. The look isn’t as pushed as Lord of the Rings, but it’s just not staying true to Game of Thrones or true to color. It was just too much on the nose to complementary color schemes and pushing it too far. Even a shot like this

Everything is just leaning in this world. Everything lives in this quadrant right here. It makes it feel more like a perfume commercial, but I don’t know why I still prefer the Game of Thrones look, but to me, I don’t like this one as much.

Everything is leaning this way. Even the green is coming through, if you look at his hair. The warmth is just different from Game of Thrones. They are just creating a look and it doesn’t feel warranted.

This looks good, but again it has a very stylized look. It has other colors seeping in around the lower areas. And every shot has that which means it was a decision made with the DP and director. Even the hair is not true to life. It has some green coming through.

Even when they try to create warmth, it just falls flat. It doesn’t feel like it comes through compared to Game of Thrones in Meereen.

Even the night shots are distracting.

Here you have an African man and then you add some teal and it becomes more difficult with darker skintones because you are going to be fighting their tones. When you think of Game of Thrones Season 8 fight scene, everyone complained they couldn’t see. But yes they brought it down, but they didn’t introduce this orange and teal, they kept the blacks proper.

I feel like stylizing Game of Thrones or House of the Dragon with this orange and teal sort of thing, cheapens it. You can do that with The Witcher because it’s a new show, but here I feel like Game of Thrones already had a solid palette created that they could have built off of. Again subjective, so take it with a grain of salt. But I am just thinking out loud.

Taking something like this, it has that fantasy feel to it which can be pretty and nice, but maybe I am struggling to take away my association with Game of Thrones and separate them and maybe I won’t mind this look.

Just take a look at this and see how much midtone detail subtraction they are using. It feels like they are cranking it back and creating a glow-like effect. This was one of those things we didn’t see in Game of Thrones. Maybe they had a lower budget so the colorist couldn’t do much with it, so they took the show LUT and tweaked from there, but maybe in House of the Dragons they had a bigger budget, but I don’t know. It distracts me more than it helps me eat up the story.

There are some super epic shots like this one

It still has that complementary color scheme going on, but it looks good. Then you get a shot like this

I’m not buying it. I know everything in the background is green-screen because it’s just so modified and beautified. I think that’s not our job. Our job is to create things that you don’t have to think about. With Game of Thrones I didn’t have to think about it.

Now it’s not just the colorist doing this. You can see here the digital smoke coming through.

Everything just feels so heavy handed. Obviously it’ll get better as they get more seasons, but look at the glow on the fire. There’s a lot of stuff happening in these cut scenes that it’s almost distracting because it looks so fake.

Again you can see the teal and orange thing going on. You can even see it in the waveforms.

You can see the information in the bottom is getting choked and that’s the price you pay for an overly stylized look.

Same thing is happening here.

Again glow effect, almost minus midtone detail. It’s not supposed to be a dream or anything like that, it’s a real scene and then they are doing that. Almost like they have too much time with it and they want to throw all the things at it. The question is, “is it necessary?”

I’m not here on the hate bandwagon. I’m not sitting here and saying I can do better. It has nothing to do with that. I’m just taking two shows and comparing them. That’s the title of the video. Color grading is and always will be subjective. I simply took you through my thought-process and why I think what I think.

With that, I hope to see you in the next one! Remember, work hard, get obsessed and get possessed.