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Matices: inside the patient’s mind 

Luis Ochoa and Elena Humanes unpack the post production journey behind Matices, from on-set DIT through to the grade, online, and finish

Matices is an eight-part psychological thriller produced by Secuoya Studios and Stellarmedia, which debuts on SkyShowtime on 5th June. Set in Spain, the story follows a group of patients with mental disorders who gather in a remote country house to undergo experimental therapy led by a charismatic and well-known psychiatrist. After a mysterious event, a tense and suspenseful search for the truth begins.

Created by Sergio Cánovas, Javier Naya, and Álex Meriweather, the series is directed by Cánovas and lensed by cinematographer Miguel Roldán. Filmed on a large format camera, Matices generated around 3TB of rushes each day.

Luis Ochoa, head of picture post production at xPost Studios, part of the Secuoya Content Group, describes Matices as an ambitious project both technically and creatively. “For the director of photography, the challenge was translating a psychological space into visual terms, through colour, contrast, and texture while coordinating a team of DITs spread across Madrid, Zamora, and the Canary Islands,” he explained. The DoP, Miguel Roldán, gave us a clear dossier during preproduction that established the look of the series from the start.”

With an ACES-compliant workflow and CDLs generated as backup, the team operated within a unified DaVinci Resolve Studio environment, with a master project generated from pre-production and shared through a remote cloud database across all phases of production. 

“After successfully testing this approach on a previous production, we developed a 15-page internal technical guide to standardise each phase of the picture post workflow and avoid bottlenecks,” Ochoa said. 

This structure allowed the DoP and DIT teams to apply grades, masks and looks directly on set, while the art department could access the previews in real time, enabling more informed decisions on colour palette, textures, costume and production design. “Being able to dial in the look on set made a huge difference. It streamlined the whole DI process and meant we could move more quickly through post,” he noted. 

“We adopted an HDR first workflow from day one,” Ochoa continued. “Monitors calibrated for SDR and HDR gave the director and DoP immediate feedback on the final image on set. When the visual intent is clearly defined during the shoot and carried forward organically, grading becomes an extension of the cinematography, not a revision of it,” revealed Ochoa.

Colour as emotional structure

Each episode of Matices was built around a different character’s flashbacks, which reveal buried traumas. Colourist Elena Humanes brought her talent and ideas, and together with DoP Miguel Roldán, contributed to the final colour language of the series

“The overall identity is inspired by a photochemical look: controlled saturation, strong contrast, and a subtle cool cast in the shadows meant to evoke a sense of memory,” Humanes explained. “We wanted viewers to feel, right from the start, that they were entering a mental space of each of the patients, but without exaggerating on colour treatments.”

While the series maintains a cohesive style, each episode introduces slight chromatic shifts tailored to the characters’ emotions. “We treated some flashbacks with warmer tones, others with some cooler or greenish nuances, some more desaturated, but always in a calculated way,” she added. “The goal was to guide the viewer through a memory without breaking the storytelling visual flow.”

The director and DoP opted for a 2.39:1 anamorphic aspect ratio, using its wide frame and oval bokeh to reinforce the psychological narrative.

The visual tone is set from the opening episode, which unfolds during a group therapy session. “The therapy scenes were built on a photochemical-inspired base, with restrained contrast and subtle blue-green tones in the shadows added with the help of DaVinci Resolve’s log tools. The Color Warper was used to refine hue and saturation, reinforcing psychological tension without overt stylisation,” Humanes said.

To enhance the anamorphic aesthetic, a soft digital lens blur was applied to the highlights using Resolve’s Lens Blur. “It’s barely noticeable, but it adds a texture that deepens the sense of instability building across the series,” she explained. “It was especially evocative in night scenes with diegetic lighting.”

Episode five, centred on a couple’s relationship, introduces a more nostalgic palette: lifted blacks, a soft red-brown shift in the midtones, and desaturation blended with blue accents. “It’s the most deliberately retro aesthetic in the entire series,” Humanes explains. “We used the Color Wheels, Log Wheels, the Color Warper, and Curves to achieve a faded-memory effect, with a careful bleach bypass.”

Episode six stands out for its more daring visual choices. “That episode is a visual exception,” she says. “”At times, we drew inspiration from Joker, not literally, but in the tonal duality used to convey the mind’s games.”

Set between France and Algeria, the episode plays with striking colour contrasts: the DoP envisioned Algerian scenes with a palette of intense greens and oranges, while French hospital interiors shift toward sickly cool tones. Backlit sequences were refined using tools like Glow, Texture Pop, and Contrast Pop, which also helped preserve detail in HDR highlights. “It’s the boldest chapter visually, almost noir,” noted Humanes.

“When people talk about colour, they often mean style,” she concludes. “But in Matices, colour is emotional structure.”

All episodes were mastered in Dolby Vision, with SDR versions derived directly from the HDR timeline, ensuring complete image control and colour fidelity across all deliveries.

Matices premieres on SkyShowtime Original on June 5th.