How to Get the A24 Film Look: Color Grading Guide

Defining the A24 aesthetic

A24 became synonymous with a particular visual style across films like Moonlight, Lady Bird, The Lighthouse, Midsommar, and Everything Everywhere All at Once. Despite their diversity, these films share common visual DNA: muted color, natural light, embraced grain, and restraint.

The A24 look is not one look. It is an approach: prioritizing naturalism, allowing imperfection, using color to serve story rather than spectacle.

This guide gives you the exact slider values to recreate it. Skip to the recipe at the bottom if you want to copy and paste.

Color characteristics

Desaturation. A24 films rarely feature punchy color. Primaries are muted. Skin tones are natural rather than enhanced.

Limited palette. Scenes work within 2-3 color families. The image coheres rather than pops.

Cool shadows. Shadow areas lean blue-green. Subtle, not aggressive teal-and-orange.

Natural highlights. No crushed blacks, no clipped whites. Film-style gradual rolloff.

Earth tones. Browns, olives, ochres appear frequently. The palette feels organic rather than digital.

The A24 base recipe (universal)

Open the film filters editor, select Classic Chrome, then override these values:

• Preset: Classic Chrome
• Contrast: 108 (slightly less punch than the preset default)
• Saturation: 78 (further desaturate)
• Brightness: 98
• Temperature: +3 (very subtle warmth)
• Tint: -4 (push slightly green)
• Highlights: -10
• Shadows: +12 (lifted, never crushed)
• Fade: 8
• Matte: 10 (this is the secret — it lifts blacks the way film does)
• Grain: 18
• Split Tone Intensity: 24
• Split Tone Shadow Color: #283828 (olive green)
• Split Tone Highlight Color: #d4c8a0 (warm ochre)
• Split Tone Balance: 42

This produces the universal A24 baseline: lifted shadows, ochre highlights, restrained color. From here, adjust per-film.

Per-film recipes

Moonlight (Barry Jenkins, 2016) — neon-saturated nights, heavy blue cast.

• Start from the base recipe
• Temperature: -12
• Tint: +6
• Saturation: 88
• Split Tone Shadow Color: #0c2440
• Split Tone Highlight Color: #d8a880 (skin-warm against blue)
• Halation: 6, Halation Color: #ff5060
• Vignette: 18

Lady Bird (Greta Gerwig, 2017) — warm Sacramento daylight, soft nostalgia.

• Start from the base recipe
• Temperature: +10
• Saturation: 84
• Highlights: +5
• Bloom: 6
• Split Tone Highlight Color: #f0d8a8 (golden)
• Grain: 14

Midsommar (Ari Aster, 2019) — blown-out daylight, unnerving brightness.

• Start from the base recipe
• Brightness: 108
• Highlights: +18
• Saturation: 72
• Fade: 14
• Split Tone Highlight Color: #f8f0d8
• Vignette: 0 (full bright frame)
• Bloom: 10

The Lighthouse (Robert Eggers, 2019) — high-contrast B&W, 1.19:1.

• Switch preset to Acros
• Contrast: 135
• Grain: 34
• Vignette: 22
• Letterbox: pick 2.39:1 then crop tighter (the native 1.19:1 is closer to square; this is the closest available)

Everything Everywhere All at Once — varies by "universe," but the verse-jumping baseline:

• Start from the base recipe
• Saturation: 104 (slightly more than baseline)
• Bloom: 8
• Chromatic Aberration: 2
• Halation: 4

Pair with the right tools

A24 films almost never have animated kinetic captions. If you need text:

• Depth text for titles that sit inside the scene — this is the A24 move (Moonlight's "i.", "ii.", "iii." chapter cards work this way)
• Use a serif font like Instrument Serif or Crimson Text at low opacity
• Auto captions in Inter Regular, white, no background, no animation

For talking-head content cut from longer interviews, Polish the cuts so the rhythm stays slow — A24 dialog has space.

Common mistakes

Too saturated. Restraint defines the look. If colors pop, you have gone too far.

Heavy grain. A24 grain is fine — Grain at 14-20, never 30+. Chunky grain reads vintage, not A24.

Crushed shadows. Lift shadows (+8 to +15). A24 shadows are open, not blocked.

No matte. The Matte slider at 8-12 is what separates this from a generic muted grade. It lifts pure blacks slightly, mimicking film base density.

Hard letterbox on everything. Most A24 films are 1.85:1 or 2.39:1, but applying letterbox to vertical/social content looks tacked-on. Reserve for landscape footage.

Lighting cannot be fixed in post

A24 films favor natural or naturalistic light: window light, practical lamps, minimal fill, mixed temperatures left uncorrected. You cannot fully recreate this in grading, but you can support it by following the recipe above and avoiding artificial highlight recovery.

The 30-second version

If you only do three things:

1. 1Apply Classic Chrome at default
2. 2Drop Saturation to 78, push Matte to 10
3. 3Add Grain at 16

That gets you 80% of the way. The per-film tweaks above are for the last 20%.

Open the filters tool and try the recipe.

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