Felipe Martínez U. is the founder and lead colorist at WeMakeColor, a representation agency for colorists and a boutique color grading studio. WeMakeColor provides color grading, look development and finishing for film, music videos and streaming, working remotely or in person in Latin America and beyond. The company has rooms in Mexico City and Bogotá and works with a small, carefully chosen roster of talent.

“Being both a studio and an agency means we can put together the right team for each project instead of forcing every project into the same shape,” Martínez U. says. “Technically, we work on both Baselight and DaVinci Resolve. That matters to us because it lets us adapt to what each production actually needs instead of asking productions to adapt to us. Whether it’s a single music video or a 10-episode international series, the workflow follows the project.”

Let’s hear more…

As a colorist, what would surprise people the most about what falls under that title?
Honestly, what would surprise most people is the human side of this job. The creative and technical parts are real, but what nobody really imagines is that being a colorist — especially in in-person sessions — turns you into a kind of therapist.

Clients walk into the suite carrying a lot. There are expectations, sure, but there are also frustrations they’ve been collecting from somewhere up the pipeline. Fatigue. Doubts. Pressure from above. And you’re trying to navigate all of that while you push a red toward the red they’re dreaming of. The catch is that the red is never one red. The DP sees one. The director sees another. The producer is seeing a third. And they’re all sitting in the same room with you. A big part of the job becomes reading that room, finding the place where those visions overlap and translating all of it into a single vision.

That surprised me the most when I started, and it still surprises me. You think you’re going to spend the day making color decisions, and you do, but you’re also making emotional decisions all day — when to push, when to let go and when to just stay quiet and let the image do the talking.

Are you sometimes asked to do more than just color on projects? Has your job evolved at all beyond color?
Yes, all the time. For some people in the industry, “color” seems to cover everything, VFX included. The line between color and VFX is getting more and more blurred — cleanups, heavy beauty retouch, sometimes even edit changes on things that were supposed to be locked.

My background helps with this. I went through a lot of different roles before becoming a colorist, so I tend to take every new ask as a challenge. I try it, learn what I need to learn and do my best to give the client what they want. When something is really outside what I can do in the suite, I lean on my close circle of VFX vendors — people I trust to handle the kind of work that lives more in the finishing world than in color.

What are some recent projects you’ve worked on?
Three years ago, I took on the role of post and color supervisor on One Hundred Years of Solitude (Netflix) alongside the team at FenixPost. It’s been an enormous challenge — and most of it isn’t really about color. It’s about managing people, emotions, expectations, timelines. That’s taught me a lot, and it’s made me grow as a colorist too.

On the pure color side, I’d love to mention a recent piece I did for the photographer Justin Bettman in LA  He just opened a photo exhibition called “Weight of Stillness,” and he wanted to accompany it with a film piece, beautifully shot by cinematographer Tammy Santos. They came to me with the challenge of getting as close as possible to Justin’s stills. I admire his work a lot — it’s bold, with a presence that isn’t easy to translate into moving image. I took it on, and from what I hear, the result lived well alongside the prints in the gallery. It was also my return to Baselight, which made it even more special.

Can you describe a challenging scene from one of them?
Going back to the project with Justin and Tammy — when I first saw the references, which were Justin’s own stills already graded for the exhibition, I really didn’t know how I was going to get there with moving image. The volume he’d achieved in the prints was striking. In some of them, the highlights were almost clipping, sitting just past what scopes would call “acceptable” — but that’s where the magic was. And that’s what I went after from Day 1.

They were very clear about what they wanted, and we ended up doing three rounds. My first pass wasn’t good. I held back too much and let the technical side take over, and the images ended up flat. On the next round, I let go, and I think that’s when I found the way to bring the moving image to a place that actually did justice to the stills.

How do you prefer to work with the DP/director?
What I love most, when I can have it, is being involved early — a real creative ping-pong with the DP and the director, designing the look together and defining LUTs for set. When that’s possible, color stops being a rescue in post and becomes part of the project from Day 1. But that “happy world” isn’t always available, so I flow with whatever the project allows.
Honestly, in-person sessions give me some anxiety, especially in advertising, where you have a lot of voices in the same room at once. But I still prefer having the DP and director next to me. We get to where everyone wants to be faster, and there’s something about being in the same physical space that no Frame.io thread can really replicate.

Most of my day-to-day is remote, though, especially on smaller projects, so a lot of the work happens in back and forth: Frame.io notes, stills, asynchronous rounds. It works, and sometimes it works quite well. But the in-person sessions are where I learn the most about how a director or a DP actually thinks.

How do you prefer the DP or director to describe the look they want? Physical examples, film to emulate, etc.?
My experience says references are always a good thing — stills, video, anything that helps us land on a shared starting point. For film emulation in particular, I prefer references over conversations about specific stocks because talking about stocks tends to create confusion. With a clear reference in front of me, I can dig into the technical side and figure out what camera, what stock, what kind of light produced that image.

That said, references can also be dangerous. Sometimes the lighting on-set has nothing to do with the reference, but people still expect the image to land in the same place. Other times, what they love about the reference is just one element — the contrast, the tint in the shadows, the warmth of a face — and they think it’s the whole thing. So part of my job is figuring out which part of the reference is the part they actually want.

And there’s a third one I find fascinating, something I actually want to write about at some point. Most of what we look at every day is on the internet — Instagram, frame grabs, ShotDeck — and compression is doing some of the magic there. So when people send me references, they’re sometimes in love with the compression too: that very defined, sharp, almost crunchy look that comes from heavy web processing. It’s a strange thing to chase in a high-res master, but it’s real. And once you notice it, you start seeing it everywhere.

Any suggestions for getting the most out of a project from a color perspective?
Honestly, my biggest suggestion is to involve the colorist as early as possible — ideally before the shoot. Talking with the DP about the look, defining LUTs for set, having that creative back and forth I mentioned earlier. When color is part of the conversation from preproduction, the project breathes differently in post. The image arrives in the suite already pointing in the right direction.

But early involvement isn’t always possible. Schedules, budgets, the way some productions are structured — sometimes the colorist only comes in when the edit is locked, and that’s just the reality. So while I’ll always advocate for early involvement, I’ve also learned to make the most of whatever moment we do get.

A few other things that make a real difference, in no particular order:

• Protect the image at the source. Proper exposure, or improper, if that’s the look the project is going after. What matters isn’t hitting some technical ideal; it’s that the decisions on-set were made consciously, with intention, knowing where the image wants to go. Color starts in the camera, not at the grading panel — and that doesn’t always mean staying inside the scopes.
• Give the process time. Trust the colorist to propose, not just execute. Some of my best results come from a director saying, “Show me what you’d do.”
• Talk about emotion before tools. The technical part is the easy part. The harder part is knowing what the image is supposed to feel like.
• Think about deliverables from Day 1. HDR, SDR, Dolby Vision, cinema — they all live differently, and planning for them early changes the whole grade.
• Be careful with references, not because they’re bad — they’re essential — but because what people fall in love with in a reference isn’t always what they think.

None of this is really a checklist, though. The real suggestion behind all these ideas is just one thing: Make space for the color process. The image always knows when it was taken seriously.

Do you provide LUTs for on-set?
Yes, I do, mostly on long-format projects where I’m brought in early as a look developer. And there are a couple of cinematographers I collaborate with regularly who ask me for LUTs for their commercials and music videos.

It’s something I really love doing — sometimes even more than grading the whole project. There’s something about look development that I find fascinating. You’re shaping the visual identity of a project before a single frame is shot, working from ideas, references and intuition until it all crystallizes into something the camera can carry into the shoot.

How does your process change when working on a film versus episodics versus commercials, etc.?
A lot of it comes down to time. I’ll be honest. I prefer food cooked slowly on low heat. And the same thing applies to my work. Cooking a commercial slowly is almost impossible. Same with a music video. When that rare exception does happen, it’s beautiful, but it’s not common.

On a feature film or a series, I actually get to do some of that slow cooking. Look development, getting involved in the early creative conversations, having time to sit with the image and let it breathe between rounds. I’m not saying there’s no rush — there’s always some rush — but the timing is different, and you feel it.

So I adapt my process and my pace to the kind of project I’m in. Let’s say I have fast recipes and slow recipes. Both can be good; they’re just different kinds of cooking.

What system do you work on?
I’ve been a Resolve user for about 12 years. After working on Apple Color and Assimilate Scratch earlier in my career, Resolve was the system that really got me into the industry as a colorist — partly because of how widespread it became and partly because it’s so accessible.

These days I’m using Baselight more than Resolve. I’d call myself a hybrid colorist — I move between both systems comfortably, although lately I lean toward Baselight.

What’s your favorite part of color grading?
I think my favorite part isn’t the color itself — it’s everything that happens around the color while I’m doing it. The conversations, the silences, the moment when an image clicks into place and the room goes quiet for a second.

The look development stage has some of that too, in a different way. There’s something fascinating about shaping the visual identity of a project from nothing but ideas and references, watching it slowly take form. That, and the moment of arrival in the suite, are probably the two things I love most.

Do you have a least favorite? If so, what?
Definitely the rush. When projects come in without time but with the expectation of a great result. It’s the hardest part of the job for me. Not because I can’t work fast — I can, you have to, that’s part of the craft — but because something gets lost when there’s no room to breathe. The image doesn’t get to settle, you don’t get to come back to it with fresh eyes, and the conversation with the DP or the director becomes more about decisions and less about discoveries. Going back to the cooking metaphor — you can make something quickly, and it can be good, but it’s never the same as something cooked slowly. That’s the part I struggle with the most.

Why did you choose this profession? How early on did you know this would be your path?
I don’t have a clean answer for this. I did a lot of different things before getting here. Web design, web programming, graphic design. I was the DP on a few small projects in my hometown, Cali (Colombia). I directed maybe 10 or so short films. I edited. I failed at a handful of online ventures along the way.

Then I went to study digital cinematography in Cuba, when I was still dreaming of becoming a DP. And that’s where I realized this was something I really loved. There was a short introduction to color correction in Apple Color during one of the courses, and something just opened up in my head. From that moment on, I didn’t want to do anything else.

If you didn’t have this job, what would you be doing instead?
I think I’d be traveling the world taking photographs. Photography has always been a hobby of mine, and I love the idea of just following light wherever it takes you. Or — and this is the other version of the dream — I’d have a small café in Mexico City, where I live now, serving traditional bread and pastries from Colombia.

What is the project that you are most proud of?
There are several I have a lot of love for, but there are two or three smaller projects from around 2022 that I’m especially proud of. Back then I had just started from scratch in Mexico City, and my color setup was pretty minimal — a 16-inch MacBook Pro i9, an UltraStudio Mini Monitor, an Eizo that’s been with me since 2011, and a 55-inch LG C1 TV… all of it in an almost empty apartment.

One of them was a music video for Kygo.  It’s still a project people send me as reference for other work, even now. On that one I used a shot-by-shot film grain technique that nearly killed my poor laptop at the time.

Another was a short film from around the same period that lives on Nowness. I still get sent this one as reference too, and people often think it was shot on film; it wasn’t. It was shot using a Blackmagic Pocket 6K.

And then there’s this music video, made under those same conditions. For that one, the DP and I did a whole deep dive into the film stocks Tarkovsky used in his movies and tried to emulate something of that feeling.

Looking back, I’m proud of those three projects not because of the gear or the conditions but because they came out of a moment when I had almost nothing and was rebuilding from the ground up. The fact that people still send them to me as references says something about how much soul can come out of very little.

Where do you find inspiration? Art? Photography? Instagram?
Instagram is a big source of inspiration for me. I have a lot of things saved there. ShotDeck too. But beyond the screens, I try to spend time with photography books and visit photo exhibitions whenever I can. Still photography, in particular, has always been a huge source of inspiration. There’s something about a single frame that must do everything on its own — light, color, composition, emotion — without movement to lean on. I find a lot of color ideas there.

Two photographers I keep coming back to are Harry Gruyaert and Graciela Iturbide. Gruyaert for the way he treats color almost like a language of its own, and Iturbide for the depth and texture of her black and white — proof that even when you take color away, the image can still carry everything.

Is there a film or show that sticks out to you as an example of great color?
Yes, definitely. On the TV side, The End of the F***ing World — I’m a big fan of Toby Tomkins’ work in general — and The Studio. On the film side, One Battle After Another. There are many more I could name, but those are the ones that come to mind right now. What I love about these examples isn’t just the look itself but the consistency — the way the color holds an emotional tone across an entire project. That’s the hardest part of the craft, and these are pieces where I can really feel it.

Any tips or tricks you would like to offer up?
One of the most common questions I get from fellow colorists is how I emulate film. Honestly, I’m no expert, but in terms of texture, I always mention that I have a technique that I call a “grain sandwich.”

First, I try to emulate the negative grain, the one from capture. I do that very early in the process. Then, at the very end, I try to emulate what a 35mm print would do or what happens when a project goes to film out That’s the top layer of the sandwich. The combination of those two layers, with a little bit of play in between, is what usually yields what people call “film texture.” I’m not claiming this is the truth — it’s just my way.

The other piece of advice I always give, especially when I’m teaching: Don’t be afraid. Break everything. Experiment whenever you can. That’s what helped me find my own ways of approaching the image. Sometimes you have to be a little disrespectful with the image to really understand its limits.

What about tips for the clients you are working with? Any best practices you’d like to share?
Whenever it’s possible, work with a good post production supervisor, someone who really understands the workflows and can help you put a solid plan together. That usually applies more to bigger projects, but it never hurts on smaller ones either, when there’s room for it.

And as I’ve been saying throughout this interview, involve the colorist from the start. It sets a much stronger foundation for everything that comes after.

Can you name some technology you can’t live without?
It might sound obvious, but I couldn’t live without the internet. I’m a traveling colorist. I move a lot between my studios in Mexico and Colombia, and I usually keep certain processes going, even on the go. The internet is at the heart of all of that, along with a good cloud storage service.

Lately I’ve also been testing a couple of live-sync services that I think will be a real game-changer — no more dragging hard drives between places. I won’t name them yet, just to avoid sounding like an ad :). But yes — maybe cliché, but without the internet, a lot of what I do would be much harder.

This is a high-stress job with deadlines and client expectations. What do you do to de-stress from it all?
It’s also important to say that this is a job that takes you through periods of frustration. Stretches where things don’t go the way you’d hoped. Where the client isn’t happy with what they receive. I really like this question because everyone tends to talk about the gear, the awards, the Instagram side of things — but no one really stops to think about this part: how stressful and frustrating the work can be, alongside how beautiful it is.

People around me tend to say I’m a calm person. What helps me is to keep in mind that we’re not doing open-heart surgery here. No one is going to die if we deliver an hour late or if the client isn’t happy. Obviously, we always want to meet expectations — that’s the job — but it’s important to put that in perspective. Expectations are just that: things people carry, sometimes things people don’t even fully understand themselves.

The other things that help me are pretty simple. Listening to my breathing. Going around the block. Pausing for a coffee. Sometimes switching to a different project for a little while just to clear my head. Small things, but they really do make a difference.