I found a quote of his from 2017, I think, talking about changing the color grading of "Heat:"
EW: When it came to remastering the film for the Blu-ray, were there specific sequences you focused on?Yeah, the whole film! When you go into Blu-ray, and you go to 4K, you're in a different color space. Meaning that what was magenta doesn't translate exactly. There's no logarithm you could use to make "magenta" still stay magenta, with that exact color. So you have to imagine everything, from contrast, to how black blacks are, to what the color palette is. The ambition here was: If I was shooting the film two or three years ago, what would it look like? That was really it. So we went into every shot.
EW: Your style in your more recent films has evolved from when you made Heat. Did that affect how you looked at this film?
Let me put this rather precisely. When you see an emotion on a human's face, how much of the face do you see? What constitutes fear? What constitutes apprehension? What constitutes suspicion?
Yes, I evolved, but also, audience perception evolves, and media evolves, year to year. If I shot this film two or three years ago, this particular film would be less chromatic. And the sense of tension would become more pronounced with greater contrast and kind of a more blue-black palette, than the film as I wanted it to be when I shot it in '94-'95.
EW: Are there any moments in particular that bring up what you're talking about, that as you're working with the 4K, any sequence in the film that you think is seen anew on this definitive edition?
The one that comes to mind is when Hanna is chasing Neil McCauley at the end of the film past the airport. All that is a lot darker. Primary reds are stripped out. The reflections in the metal—everything is substantially darker, if I showed you the before and after. They're big steps, they're not subtleties.
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 5 January 2024 21:37 (four months ago) link