What's the Difference Between a Dailies Grade and Full Color Finishing?
What's the Difference Between a Dailies Grade and Full Color Finishing?
A dailies grade is a fast, broad-strokes color pass applied during production so editors and directors can review footage that already looks reasonably close to the intended tone. Color finishing is the slower, shot-by-shot creative pass applied to the locked edit. They serve different purposes at different stages of a project, not two versions of the same job.
What Is a Dailies Grade?
Dailies grading happens during or immediately after a shoot day, usually applying a single look or LUT-based starting point across all the footage from that day. Speed is the priority — editors need usable footage quickly, not a polished final image, so a dailies grade trades precision for turnaround time by design.
How Is Color Finishing Different From Dailies?
Finishing happens once the edit is locked, and it's built shot by shot rather than applied uniformly. Every cut gets individual attention — matching exposure and color temperature between angles, correcting for lighting differences between takes, and making the final creative decisions that a fast dailies pass was never meant to carry.
Why Does a Production Need Both?
Skipping dailies grading and asking editors to cut with raw, ungraded footage makes it hard to judge how a scene will actually feel once finished. Skipping full finishing and shipping a dailies-level grade as a final deliverable leaves inconsistencies between shots that a broad, fast pass was never built to catch. Each stage protects a different part of the process.
When Does the Shift From Dailies to Finishing Happen?
Right when the edit locks — see what's the difference between a colorist and a video editor for why finishing waits until that point. Grading before a cut is final means redoing work every time a shot changes, which is exactly what the dailies-to-finishing handoff is designed to avoid.
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*Coloring Book is a Los Angeles–based color finishing studio founded by cinematographer and colorist Alexander Lakin. Learn more at wearecoloringbook.com.*