Choosing the look of your brand film in Dubai , and what it does and does not cost
The look was decided before the day began. Five are published, and the pick is the same price whichever one it is.
Grolez Films publishes five named cinematography looks for a brand film in Dubai, and a client picks one of them before the shoot. If you are choosing a cinematography look for a brand film in Dubai, this article answers what that choice does to the quote. It does nothing to it. Choosing one look rather than another does not change the price, and it is the same price either way. Colour grading is still a paid stage that appears on the quote, and which of the five looks that stage is aimed at does not move the figure. What does move the figure is how many days the work is planned into and how much is planned into each of them.
The one line to hold onto
Five looks, one price. Grolez Films publishes Chiaroscuro, Obscuro, Lucida, Analogía and Spectra, and a client picks one before the shoot. Choosing one rather than another does not change the price. Colour grading is still a paid stage on the quote, and which of the five it is aimed at does not move the figure. What moves the number is how many days the work is planned into.
Choosing a cinematography look for a brand film in Dubai does not change the price
Grolez Films publishes five named looks and asks a client to pick one before the shoot. That is where the menu sits in the process.
The price answer is short. Choosing one look rather than another does not change the price, and the same job costs the same in any of the five.
One precision travels with that. Colour grading is a paid stage of the work and it appears on a quote as its own line whichever look was picked. The price answer covers the choice between the five. The stage itself is billed either way, and which of the five looks it is aimed at does not move the figure.
That still leaves a question a buyer cannot answer from the pages themselves. On 28 August 2026 we read the five look pages and searched each of them for fourteen money terms above the footer, and every term came back at zero. We then read all 130 URLs in the site's own published sitemap on the same date. Fifty-seven of the 123 that are not a look page or the quiz discuss grading, colour, palette or contrast in the body copy, and not one attaches a figure to grading, while every AED figure on that whole sitemap sits in a Journal article. Within those 130 URLs on that date, production carries figures and the grade carries none. That is most of the reason this article exists.
The five looks on the menu, in one line each
The index is headed Find Your Signature Video Look, and it opens on a line worth keeping. Every project has a temperature before it has a script. Underneath it sit five pages, one for each look. The labels below are the index's own, in its own order and its own spelling.
- Chiaroscuro, moody.
- Obscuro, black and white.
- Lucida, bright.
- Analogía, vintage.
- Spectra, mixed colours.
That is the whole menu. Five names, five pages, and no sixth option further down.
One line each is deliberate, because the long version already exists and it is one click away. Every name above links to its own page, and the looks index carries all five in one place. Each of those pages ends the same way, by inviting a reader to get in touch about a film made in that style, so the route out of a page you like sits on the page itself. The five labels above give the shape of the decision. The five pages give the long answer to anyone who wants it.
Obscuro is the black-and-white look on the menu. That is all it is here.
One thing the menu does not contain is worth saying out loud. None of the five is an animated treatment, so an animation is not a pick from this menu. That is a statement about what sits on the list and about nothing else.
What none of this asks of a marketing director is a technique. You are not being asked to describe how a picture should be made, or to arrive with a reference film, or to know what any of the five names means before you have seen one. You are being asked which of five you want the work made in, and the pages exist so the question can be answered by looking.
When the look gets decided, and the two ways into it
The pick happens before the shoot. That is where the question sits in the Grolez Films process, and it is a fact about how the company works rather than a claim about what can or cannot be done later. The answer belongs to the client. We have established no point at which a look stops being changeable.
There are two routes into that answer, and both of them are the client's to take.
The first is the five pages. Read them, and pick.
The second is the quiz at grolez.com/quiz/, which asks you to choose between two looks at a time, ten times over. Each screen puts two of the looks side by side and plays them silently, and you click the one you prefer. It runs to ten screens because five looks make ten unique pairs, so every look meets every other look exactly once.
That is the whole of what the quiz asks. It puts the choice in front of a client in advance, in moving footage rather than in a written description.
If committing to a look before a shoot sounds like being asked to settle something you have not seen yet, that is what both routes are for. The pages and the quiz are the same five looks arranged two ways, and neither requires a vocabulary you did not walk in with.
What the look does not change
Picking a look is a decision a client makes directly. Some of what surrounds it is not decided on the job at all. The reference monitor and the viewing conditions the picture is judged against, and the order the two grading steps run in, are fixed by published standards. The file YouTube accepts is fixed by YouTube.
The body that owns the delivery standard for high-definition production says so in a footnote. In typical production practice, it says, the picture is adjusted so that the final picture has the desired look, and it is judged on a reference monitor with a fixed response, in a viewing environment defined by a separate recommendation. The adjustable part is the look. The monitor, its behaviour and the room are fixed elsewhere, by Recommendation ITU-R BT.709-6 and the recommendations it points at.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences draws the same line as two named steps in a fixed order. In its published colour system the step that changes how the image appears comes first, and it applies across the whole picture rather than to one shot. The step that renders the image for a particular display and a particular set of viewing conditions comes after it. That ordering is set out in the Academy's own documentation, and the system it belongs to is a published SMPTE standard, ST 2065-1, rather than one software company's scheme.
The paperwork we read does not ask about it either. The Dubai Film and TV Commission's 27 public pages and its public script registration form, read on 28 August 2026, ask nothing about how a production will look. The form asks the genre. That is scoped to those pages on that date. The permit application itself sits behind a login and was not seen, and none of this describes any other authority in Dubai or at federal level.
On YouTube the delivery file is fixed by the platform's own specification whatever look the film was finished in. Container, codec and colour handling are the platform's to set, and it converts what it is given.
What does move the number
Four figures describe how a Grolez Films quote moves, and all four are approximations from the company's own quoting rather than published rates.
Around five finished videos come out of one shoot day, depending on the size of the projects. Batching several videos into one shoot day saves more than 30 per cent against shooting them separately. Adding a second shoot day roughly doubles the total. Post-production, the edit and the grade together, is about a third of a job.
The unit that carries cost is the day. What sits on either side of it is how much that day is briefed to produce, and how much finishing the material needs once it exists. The look is not on that list at all.
We have established no saving that comes from choosing a look early, and none is quoted here. The saving we do publish comes from batching several videos into one shoot day.
The practical version of that for a marketing lead is a calendar question. If several videos are wanted this quarter, work out early whether they can be shot on one day or whether availability forces them onto two, and raise it while the calendar can still move.
The bands are indicative and they are drawn by the size of the team. A solo videographer sits around AED 3,500 for a day, which is a market cost for a tier Grolez Films does not take, so read it as the floor of the category rather than as an entry-level option. A director of photography with a small crew runs roughly AED 25,000 to 45,000. A full production runs from AED 100,000 into the several hundred thousands. The look is chosen inside any of the three, and the band does not move because of which look it is.
Journal articles carry indicative ranges only, and an exact figure or a day rate belongs in a proposal written for one job. And regulated work, the clinic and alcohol kind, does not cost the client more.
Colour grading in plain terms, and what the pick has to do with it
Colour grading appears on a Grolez Films quote as its own line, and what a client is buying under that line can be said without any craft vocabulary. It is a paid stage of the work, named separately so it can be seen and asked about before it is approved rather than after it is delivered. Which of the five looks that stage is aimed at does not move the figure.
Its relationship to the five is on the looks index, in the site's own words. These are the five looks we shoot and grade to. Shot and graded to, both, and the pick sits ahead of both.
We have established no figure for colour grading as a share of a quote, so none appears here. Grading sits inside post-production, whose share of a job is given above, and that share covers the edit and the grade together. Splitting it to produce a number for the grade alone would be inventing one.
Colour grading is a paid stage on the quote either way, and the look you picked does not change that line.
What you end up owning, and who does the work
Two questions are worth answering before they come up late, and neither of them is about the look.
The first is what a client takes away at the end. The client owns the finished film. Raw files are supplied on request rather than as standard. The rushes are a separate ask, and the time to make it is while the job is being agreed, because whether you want them is a question about what your team will do with the material later.
The second is who is actually in the room. Grolez Films uses a mix of its own people and people brought in for a particular job, and a mix of its own kit and hire for specialist items. That is the honest general description, and there is nothing finer to give in a public article. What a mix means for a client is that who is on a job is a per-job answer, so it is worth asking about the job in front of you rather than about the company in general.
The work itself spans the categories the company's own showreel page lists, which include commercial, food, sports and action, social media, corporate and interview, web series, fashion, automotive, music video, underwater, documentary and explainer video.
If what you are commissioning is a brand film rather than a batch of content, the Journal's article on brand film production in Dubai covers the object itself and how long it is meant to last.
Common questions
Does the moody look cost more than the bright one?
No. Choosing one look rather than another does not change the price, and it is the same price either way. Chiaroscuro and Lucida sit at the same figure for the same job.
When do we have to decide what it looks like?
Before the shoot. That is where the menu sits in the Grolez Films process. There are two routes to the pick, the five look pages and the quiz.
Can we change our mind after the shoot?
We have established no point at which a look stops being changeable. The practical move is to ask. What is published here is where the question gets asked in the Grolez Films process, which is before the shoot, and not what happens to a change requested after one.
What actually happens in the quiz?
Two looks at a time, side by side and silent. You click the one you prefer, and it runs to ten screens because five looks make ten unique pairs. It sits at grolez.com/quiz/, and the five look pages carry the same five looks if you would rather read than click.
Is colour grading extra, or is it in the price?
It is a paid stage that appears on a quote as its own line, and it is there whichever look was picked. Which of the five that stage is aimed at does not move the figure. We have established no figure for colour grading as a share of a quote, so none appears here.
Is animation one of the five?
None of the five on the menu is an animated treatment, so an animation is not a pick from this menu. The choice this article covers is which of the five a filmed piece of work is made in. An animated treatment sits outside that menu and outside this article.
Does the look affect the filming permit?
On what was read on 28 August 2026, no. The Dubai Film and TV Commission's 27 public pages and its public script registration form ask nothing about how a production will look, and the form asks the genre. That is scoped to those pages on that date, and the permit application itself sits behind a login and was not seen.
What to hold onto, in one pass
Grolez Films publishes five named looks, Chiaroscuro, Obscuro, Lucida, Analogía and Spectra, and a client picks one of them before the shoot. The pick is the same price whichever one it is, and colour grading is a paid stage on the quote either way. The paperwork we checked does not ask which one was picked: the Dubai Film and TV Commission's 27 public pages and its public script form, read on 28 August 2026, ask nothing about the picture, and the permit application itself sits behind a login and was not seen. What moves the number is how many days the work is planned into. Around five finished videos come out of one shoot day, batching several into one day saves more than 30 per cent against shooting them separately, a second day roughly doubles the total, and post-production is about a third of a job. The bands are indicative, running from a market floor Grolez Films does not work at, through a director of photography with a small crew, to full production. And no point has been established at which a look stops being changeable.
Grolez Films: the looks are published, and the pick is yours
Grolez Films publishes the five looks it shoots and grades to, on five pages anyone can read. Luis Grolez, the founder, pitches every job personally. There is no Company Profile document to send. The website is the company profile, and the five look pages are part of it.
See the work. Read the five look pages, or take the quiz at grolez.com/quiz/. Get in touch about a specific list of videos and the window they have to be made in.
Sources and methodology
Every price, range and process statement here comes from Grolez Films' own confirmed record, given first hand by the founder across four passes: the three team-size bands on 15 August 2026, the four cost figures and the ownership and pitching lines on 16 August, the solo videographer figure re-scoped on 17 August 2026 as an indicative market cost for a tier Grolez Films does not sell and the answer that regulated work does not cost the client more on the same date, and the menu, the same-price answer, the grading line and the crew and kit line on 22 August. Everything said about what the site publishes was read from the pages themselves at a bare fetch on 22 and 28 August 2026, and every page returned first time. External material was retrieved from the bodies that own it, the ITU, SMPTE, the Academy, the EBU, the W3C, Kodak, Google for YouTube and the Federal Tax Authority, along with the Commission's public pages. Four paragraphs here rest on it, along with one Common questions answer, and most of the rest is deliberately unspent because the Journal already publishes five long pieces on colour grading, colour correction, exposure and lighting. The observation about money terms is scoped to the five look pages, the looks index and the quiz on 28 August 2026, and the wider observation about grading to the 130 URLs in the site's own published sitemap on that date. Four questions are left open in both directions: whether a look can be changed after the shoot and until when, what share of a quote colour grading represents, what the quiz result indicates, and whether the published criteria on text contrast reach text burned into a moving picture. The four cost figures are approximations and are not divided, multiplied or turned into a price per video. No production-company blog, agency listicle, law-firm marketing page, film-school page, market report or news item appears anywhere as evidence. This article is informational, states no legal or regulatory rule, and is not legal advice. Prepared 28 August 2026.
- Grolez Films, the cinematography looks index, for the five looks and its own line about them: grolez.com
- Grolez Films, the five look pages, for what each is called and where it is published: Chiaroscuro, Obscuro, Lucida, Analogía, Spectra
- Grolez Films, the look quiz, for what a reader is asked to do: grolez.com
- Grolez Films' own confirmed record of prices, ranges and process, given by the founder on 15, 16, 17 and 22 August 2026. No link, because it has no public URL.
- ITU-R, Recommendation BT.709-6, for production practice adjusting the picture to the desired look against a fixed monitor and room: itu.int
- Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, its colour system documentation, for the two steps in their fixed order: acescentral.com
- SMPTE, the public library entry for ST 2065-1, for the clause that this is a published standard: smpte.org
- Dubai Film and TV Commission, its 27 public pages and its public script registration form, for the finding that neither asks how a production will look: filmdubai.gov.ae
- Google, YouTube Help, for the platform's own upload specification: support.google.com