Colorist brought in late with no LUT: How do you build a look?

Hey everyone,

I'm Kevin, an AD primarily on indie features and commercials. We always hear that colorists should be involved from pre-production, helping establish show LUTs and overseeing DIT. In theory, that's great. But in my experience, especially on tighter budget projects, the colorist often gets the footage late in post, long after principal photography wrapped. There's no DIT-created show LUT to start from, just log footage.

Recently, on a short film shot on a KOMODO-X and an AMIRA, our colorist received all the material without any established look. They had to effectively build the entire aesthetic from scratch, which felt like a lot of pressure and time. I'm trying to understand how colorists tackle this.

For those of you who frequently jump into a project late in the game with no pre-defined look, what's your process for establishing the visual style and getting client approval efficiently?