Lowepost

I n this color grading session, Tyler Roth is working together with the director and client to set a look for a TV commercial. The look that is created in this recording does not necessarily reflect the final result and is without audio. All images and clips copyright © Company 3

I n this screen-capture, which runs at 4x speed, you can see me working on a scene of a feature film. The scene was shot in the morning, and I also graded it for morning. Later the clients decided that it would be better if this scene was set at night. So I had a little more than a day to transfer the scene of about 5 min into night. It goes like this: A woman leaves a club and walks into a man with whom she starts a fight. When approaching such a task, it makes sense to imagine how it would have looked if it was really shot at night and how the DoP would have helped with lights, if he had known already on set. Night is usually very dark and grading everything low level might be a realistic choice, but in terms of an artistic, photographic approach it can be nicer to create a night filled with a bunch of light sources. I decided to have a big moon as my main light source and a bunch of tungsten practicals to make it more believable. In natural darkness the cones of our eyes are less sensitive, which means that our chromatic vision is limited when light is rare. According to that you can desaturate the image quite heavily. A bit of a bluish tint may be appropriate as well. Strong highlights, typical for daylight, can be attacked with keyers and shapes. The first task is to make it a lot darker without crushing anything. When your eyes are adapted to the dark you can see a lot of details in the shadows. Because this scene was shot in daylight we have tons of information. We just have to keep it. The second task is to darken all the sky and the reflections of sky in the scene. Here, the great dynamic range of the Alexa helps. That involves a mixture of keying and tracking shapes. The next step is to look for areas which might be affected by the moonlight and isolate those to apply a special moonlight bounce to them. In one shot, I decided to make the hair of the guy a bit warmer as he stands not far away from a real tungsten light source. On other shots, I created tungsten light sources, which were not actually in the scene, but make a lot of sense, as the DoP would have created something similar to this. The tungsten lights and the bluish moonlight create a nice complementary color contrast. This is a kind of extreme example of a task but the technique used can also be applied for more subtle changes in normal grading scenarios. Tobias Wiedmer Lead Colorist, Cine Chromatix KB

W hile I was at Columbia College Chicago, I got an internship at Whitehouse Post in Chicago. Towards the end of the internship, I spoke with one of the producers there asking about the next steps to getting into the industry. I had spent quite a bit of time shadowing the senior colorist at The Mill and knew I had a passion for color grading. She said that the senior colorist over at Company 3 Chicago had interned there awhile back and that I could use her as reference. I messaged him on LinkedIn, asking if he would be willing to answer some questions I had about what he does, the industry, and Company 3. After our conversation, he invited me in to the office to talk more. We hit it off, and it turned out they were looking at bringing on another assistant colorist. A couple months later, I was working there part time as a freelance assistant colorist for 3 months. I had to learn quickly. The other assistant was going on vacation the following week so I needed to at least have a good working knowledge of their workflow. I would shadow the senior colorist and the other assistant and re-prep projects to get enough hands-on experience before doing it on my own. The day after I graduated college, I was brought on full-time. It was definitely one of those "right place at the right time" situations. Assistant colorist's responsibilites An assistant colorist’s primary job is to make the senior colorist’s job easier. The senior colorist should be grading with clients in the suite as much as possible. For that to happen, the assistant handles a variety of tasks including preparing projects fully for the session, contacting editorial and handling any conform/workflow issues that arise, communicating with the producer to ensure jobs are completed on time, and finalizing projects and rendering in whichever format the client needs. As you gain the trust of the senior colorist, an assistant may start to be trusted with match grading. A lot of the times, the senior colorist is in session so if another client comes back with revisions on a pending job or there are pick-up shots, it will fall on the assistant to make those revs or match grade the pick-ups. As you continue to build that trust, those responsibilities increase. In my situation, for example, in addition to client revs and match grading pick-ups, I may match long form versions of commercials, short films, and features. For some features, the senior colorist sets looks on key shots and scenes throughout and then it's my job to match the remaining shots of the film to have it ready for the senior colorist to review before they screen it with the client. Technical knowledge, experience and a good personality Some color grading software is not as accessible as others, but with programs like Resolve having a free version to learn from, a general understanding of the tools within a program like Resolve is definitely helpful. The color tools are a great place to start but equally important are the project setup, conform and render portions of the software. An assistant will be given the media, EDLs/XMLs and reference pictures to conform the project. It’s then their job to handle the various media formats provided and use the EDL and/or XML to conform the project. It’s also important to work well under pressure. There’s a constantly changing list of tasks throughout the day that must be handled in a way that ensures everything is completed on time and nothing is missed. While having technical knowledge and experience is great, I feel like the most important skill necessary for working as an assistant colorist is having a good personality. You’re going to be working closely with the senior colorist and producers so it’s important that you’re easy to work with and can be a trusted partner in getting jobs done efficiently and correctly. The relationship with the team The assistant colorist has a very close relationship with the senior colorist and producers. In order to provide the best possible client experience, everyone must trust each other and have excellent communication. If there are issues with prep or anything that may affect the senior colorist’s ability to grade a job with clients, it must be brought to everyone’s attention, specifically the producers, so that it can get sorted out before the session. It’s also important that when the time comes to QC and render a job, that the assistant communicates with the producers to make sure the project can be delivered in the format the client needs and on time. Issues come up all the time so being able to trust your team members is extremely important. In general, the relationship the assistant colorist has with all team members including other assistants, client services, editorial, VFX, etc. is just as important. Whether it’s helping other assistants with issues or completing a job on time, communicating with editorial to figure out conform issues, or maintaining a clean VFX pipeline, an assistant needs to be able to effectively communicate with all team members to do their job well. At the end of the day, everyone is working towards the same goal, providing the client with exceptional service and product that exceeds their expectations. My own client base As the senior assist, in addition to the time I spend match grading, I am also given the opportunity to build my own client base. There are times where the senior colorist is too busy to take on another job given the deadline, so they will recommend the client work with me. It's my job to continue that relationship the company has with that client and provide my own style and expertise that ideally exceeds their expectations. While that is a small part of my client base, I also build relationships with clients on my own and will collaborate on commercials, social spots, music videos, short films, and features. It’s a really great experience to essentially do a micro version of what the senior colorist does. I’m building a growing list of clients, doing my own sales, and continuing to improve my color grading skills. The next step In my experience, there is not necessarily a situation where “once you hit this amount of billings, you become a colorist.” Yes, you must be able to bill enough to justify running a color suite, but reputation is also important. You must have a good reputation in the industry for clients to trust you’re the right person for the job and can increase the value of their work. That starts with maintaining a good relationship with the clients you have because often times, they will be the ones that get you the next job. I’m still working at this and figuring it out as I go, but I have been lucky enough to work for one of the top companies in the industry and work with an exceptional senior colorist and see how it’s done successfully at the highest level. My advice I would recommend reaching out to a colorist or post-house you admire and show your interest in their company and the craft. Be persistent but not annoying; It’s great to show your enthusiasm but people get busy and it’s important to recognize that. Try and get in any way you can. Often times, that may mean starting in client services but work hard at any task you’re given and it will show. Once you work your way up to assistant, work your ass off and build a good relationship with the senior colorist. They will notice your hard work and will want to mentor you and learning from someone with that type of experience is a key part to becoming a colorist. Parker Jarvie Senior Assistant Colorist, Company 3 New York All images and clips copyright © Company 3 are colored by Parker Jarvie

The post and grade on ‘BOB’ (That’s what we called it.) was achieved with a team of around 10 people and a pool of talented colourists and assistants. This was using bleeding edge technology at the time and probably millions of U.S. and U.K. Dollars & Pounds. It set the template for how films and TV are done as standard now, but at the time it was very time consuming and very, very touch and go. From camera negative to final HD Delivery it took longer than the period from the Allied invasion of France to end of the Second World War in Europe. Work for the Spirit So, best start at the beginning. My involvement began thus. It was 1999. I was employed at the BBC in Post Production. Back then it was an age where the BBC actually ran their own resources. It was a big department. It had grading, telecine, videotape, lots of offline- and online suites and lots of people running around and actually making television programmes. I was in the telecine department and was busy on various projects. The grading kit was ‘Pandora Pogle’ with a few antique ‘Digigrade’ systems amongst some of the telecine bays. We had just purchased a brand spanking new Spirit Telecine. This was after quite a heated debate whether to go with a Spirit or a Cintel C-Reality, (a conversation for the Pub if ever there was one.) But the Spirit was chosen and the march was on to find some work to actually use it on. Our marketing department at the time thought it would be a great hook to send out an invite to a launch with the promise of bottle of Malt Whiskey. Glasses with ‘BBC Resources - get some Spirit’ engraved on the tumbler were duly posted out in jiffy bags to all the post supervisors in the film and TV community. We had the launch event, the booze was consumed and a post production producer, Bruce Everett, attended. At the time, Bruce was engaged in building a team for the oncoming ‘BOB’ project and by chance he came across the engraved invite. Never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, he turned up. He had some new ideas regarding dailies rushes and he obviously saw something he could exploit (As well as getting a free bottle of malt). We were then chosen to provide dailies for the upcoming series ‘Band of Brothers.’ This has taught me two things: never underestimate the power of good marketing, no matter how bizarre, and never underestimate the power of free booze. Test period Contracts were signed and we then spent a few months testing. As HBO did not know exactly what their delivery requirements were, we had to build in as many options as possible. The series was shot on 35mm film for 1:78 Hi definition. Now, bear in mind that this was very early for Hi-def. Not many standards were established and the migration for analogue to digital was still not standardized by far. The 35mm negative was transferred on the Spirit to various formats simultaneously. The library master was a clean un-clipped feed out of the Spirit in full height anamorphic ratio. Each Lab roll (up to 2000 ft of film) had its own digi beta SD Tape at 25fps. At the same time, a feed out of the Spirit through to the Pandora Colour corrector via an Aspect ratio corrector and Aaton Keylink unit provided letterboxed graded images with the timecode/keycode burnt in for the editing room. This all had an offset of 2 frames. Luckily, the Pogle could handle different decks with different timecodes. This was ingested onto an Avid with a removable hard drive. A further digibeta copy was used in case the hard drive got screwed up and was also for the cutting room. Audio was synced by the edit dept. So, to recap, we had a set up that was like spinning 20 plates in the air at the same time and over a million feet to transfer. The ‘clean’ digi-beta was used as a fall back if the further finishing post went horribly wrong (I’ll get to that in a minute.). The idea was that a clean technical grade frame-for-frame copy could be used for final grade and conforms. It could also be up-rezed to HD in a pinch. And to be fair, a lot of this material was used for promotional purposes like trailers. What we did find was that, once the ducks were all in a row, the cookie cutter was set. We could realistically get through with our professional dignity still intact. It’s one of those things where checking and re-checking could not be done enough. One miscoded preset frame meant the whole thing needed to be done again. The trickiest thing I remember was that the Avid drive would often fall over. Recording when it wasn’t supposed to be etc. These were early MAC based systems and very flaky. So, imagine we have 2000 feet of very precious expensive negative on the Spirit and we’re ready to grade. The idea was to provide graded rushes that were in line with the Director of Photography’s intent. Many night scenes required balancing, and multiple cameras required matching. The brief was to make them look as good as possible. We had direct contact with the DOP’s. Any problems and we called them straight away. This could be anything from a camera scratch to lens problems. These guys wanted to know everything before the executives were watching the dailies back at base camp. This is where your relationship with the DOP begins as it is built on trust. They often don’t get to view it until end of day so they really need to trust your word that it is all ok. Our shift was from 4:30 to 9:30, six days a week. We had 2 teams of 2. A colourist and assistant. This gave us a shift pattern and also covered sick leave and emergencies. The first dailies arrived The first day of actual dailies arrived. It was 5 in the morning and we went to the film dispatch area to see how much had arrived. There were 12 cans of 2000ft of film. That’s about 4 hrs worth. That was when I realized the scale of this thing. There had been an aerial shoot the previous day. Two camera units were filming actual WWII aircraft in the air. And this was the first day of dailies. Up until that point, my experience of TV drama was cozy, intimate BBC stuff shot on super 16mm, often close up to hide the limitations of the sets. This was full on big budget Hollywood filmmaking. I certainly was not in Kansas anymore, and I better not fuck this up. We did find though that as it settled down the amount of film reduced and would average 3-4 lab rolls. Only if there was a big battle scene did the footage get crazy. A,B,C,D cameras covering the same stunt for example. Another trick we learned was that the Telecine could be shuttled on fast forward. The image was consistent and we could add grading cues using this ‘spin grade’ technique. As much as they wanted it done right, they wanted it done 10 minutes ago. Once the grading cues were in, we would hit the go button and it played out in real time to the decks. A dispatch runner would then take it up to the studio in Hatfield. This was pretty much how it was for me for at least 5 months. A new DI system was built In parallel with this, the grading system that was going to do the final grade was being built. A full DI department was being constructed at Cinesite in London. This was to be one of the first DI systems outside Hollywood. It consisted of a Spirit telecine, just like the one at the BBC, and a new device called a Specter. (A Spirit with hard drives). These would run in 2K mode and grade through a POGLE Mega-def grading system also at 2K resolution. (Well, not quite 2K, it was actually 1920x1440 pixels.) Cinesite in Hollywood had just completed the movie ‘Oh, Brother Where Art Thou’ as a full digital grade with a similar setup so they were keen to establish this further. This is where, for me, opportunity met circumstance. Probably because I hadn’t screwed up with the rushes, I was offered a role in this department. I grabbed the chance to see the project beyond the dailies stage. I had been at the BBC ten years and this was a perfect time to move on. (If you ever get breaks like this yourselves, my advice would be to always go for it even if it's a bit of a gamble. You will always regret it if you don’t. Asking yourself ‘what if?’ , that will drive you crazy.) I then took up the post as Colourist at Cinesite, in the brand new shiny Soho based DI department. The pipeline was to grade the negative in linear video colour space, similar to the ‘clean feed’ used in the rushes. This would then transfer at 3 frames per second to hard drives. The Spirit was flexible enough to output data in this mode. (You can still come across these machines labeled as a ‘Datacine’.) It was one of the first hybrid scanner devices out at the time. The colour corrector was a POGLE Mega def. Once the virtual neg rolls were on disk, they were copied onto the Specter. This was basically a Spirit without the moving parts. Again, a POGLE Megadef was at the end of it. It had an Edit timeline with multi-timeline functionality. Each grading room had a 32” Sony multi-format monitor. No projection was used. Now, bear in mind: this stuff was all hardware based. If you wanted to upgrade to six layers of colour correction, the cards were 6 grand a pop. The software amounted to a GUI that controlled the hardware. Want to soften the key channel? That will be an upgrade option. All this technology was expensive, required a lot of cooling, and was running at the limits of what was available at the time. Data transfers were often slow connections, often on parallel ports. It also required a lot of TLC by some top class engineers. As for storage, we had a whopping 3 TeraBytes, enough to hold an episode and a half. This was 15 years ago. I can now do all this on my laptop. Luke Rainey I was one of three colourists who graded Band of Brothers. My role in all of this was to handle the cut negative and grade it to match, then transfer it to the Specter where I would perform any other grading services. This is where Luke Rainey comes in. Luke was by far one of the best colourists in the country at the time. He was the guy who graded the show that gave each episode its look and feel. This was kind of a new departure for me as I was used to doing this myself, but the deal was that I was staff and he was under short-term contract from HBO. This set up of ‘lead colourist’ is kind of standard now, especially in big effects shows. These projects are often way too much for someone to do alone. It also gave me an opportunity to see how someone else worked. Every colourist has their own approach and you are never too experienced to pick up tips. The day you stop learning is the day to give up. As I said, the system was hardware based. This gave us a primary correction layer, six layers of secondary grading including a basic shape layer, and a further layer of broad secondaries. This was way before a Baselight with its infinite stacks of colour keys. As I was involved from the beginning, I was around the various conversations regarding the look. ‘Band of Brothers’ is a 10-part one hour show about a group of soldiers as they advance over Germany in the Second World War. The series is broader in scope than ‘Saving Private Ryan’. That film was shot a few years previously. It also had a very specific look. I won’t go into it now but that was achieved photochemically and in-camera. The same technique was considered for ‘BOB’ but on reflection it was deemed too risky. (Other options were considered such as shooting on 16mm but the visual effects department insisted on 35mm for their VFX work.) There were multiple directors and two directors of photography so the style was tested and approved by the producers including Steven Spielberg. For ‘BOB,’ it was decided to achieve a look digitally. This preserved all the options for change, especially if they wanted to rethink the direction. This was a TV series that had a lot of big producers like Spielberg involved. So Luke came up with a ‘recipe’ for the show. One influence was early colour reproduction in print. We had an early WWII colour picture book from the 50’s as a reference. Also the arc of the story meant the colour could become more drained as we followed the soldiers on their journey as they were getting more and more exhausted. For me this was an insight to grading as an integral part of the storytelling. It’s not just about ‘colour correction,’ which assumes that the images are somehow ‘incorrect’ to start with, but also a new tool in telling the story. The job is not about rocking up at the chair on day one and making it up. You need a conversation beforehand as to how to approach it. So on the Pandora it was broken down into channels. The channels work like a stack or layer in other systems. They are really just numbers of priority, and can be reordered. The channels are always active. On the panel there were 6 buttons: R G B Y C M. These could be assigned any colour but the starting point was the home colour. In our template, the first channel adjusted a luminance key in the black parts (a gamma curve was added to bend the dark parts into the black with de-saturation.) The next channel was the same but in the highlights. This left the middle range, which was adjusted as a primary. Another channel was assigned to specific objects such as gun flashes, skylines, etc. One was used to target specific tones like uniforms so they matched shot to shot. A final channel at the end was used as a global tweak. All of this was the base setting. The key mask of each channel showed up in each respective colour. So the green button had a green ‘show mask’ on the screen, red showed up in red, etc. A combination of the above achieved something that hadn’t been seen before. Again, this was hardware based so there was no tracking, no drawing shapes around things, none of that. I always thought that the success of this approach was pretty much copied on every World War film and commercial afterwards. Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery after all. (Saying that, I used it myself on a WWI series last year. The director wanted that ‘Band of Brothers feeling’….) In the background of all of this the DI team was running ragged getting the episodes ready. Many were recut. Team members were dust busting and fixing in a FIRE edit-suite. (I seem to remember a lot of the team doing shifts manually dust-busting.) It was not all done in episode order. The data workflow creaked under the strain. We could only keep one and a half episodes online so there was a lot of backing up to DTF2 data tapes. There were lots of late shifts churning data around and a lot of visual effects delivery. We used a giant white board to track visual effects for each episode. It was insane. Final delivery Luckily the show had momentum and at least we all knew that it was something special. I remember a visit from Tom Hanks. We got to shake his hand but were told specifically by management - ‘No small talk!’. He loved what he was seeing as he was also a producer on the show. A visiting employee from the States butted in as he entered the elevator and asked for his autograph. Tom obliged. The senior post producer had a fit afterwards and I suspect his fate was probably similar to that reserved for one of Kim Jong-Un’s generals….. When Luke finished, I was busy match grading VFX, grading and regrading shots fixing the QC. We were delivering on the Panasonic D-5 format for HD 1920/1080 at 24 psf. The play-outs were done in real time and would often fall over and require pickups. You couldn’t take your eyes off the screen as the grading would glitch and sparkle. There was no rendering as such, just the hardware working in real time. Another colourist was working on the 4x3 ‘pan and scan’ in the evening, as one of the delivery requirements was for 4x3 standard def television. I still see that happening on shows now. The sooner that format dies, the better for all humanity. The final show was delivered in Sept. 2001. I went to Jamaica on holiday when Episode One went on the air. The world was still in shock from the 9/11 attacks. I watched some of it on a 4x3 NTSC TV in my hotel room. Weird… Sadly, Luke Rainey passed away a few years ago. Some of the old team were at his service. It was good to catch up and we discussed how crazy it all was. The sheer scale of the thing. I remember being on set a few times and just being blown away by the size of it all. Luke went on to grade a lot of wildlife programmes from his home in Bristol. As ever, they looked stunning. Have things moved on? Sure they have. The grading platforms are way more powerful, with storage we could only dream about, with multiple grading layers, keys, etc. But saying that, some of the best looking films ever made were graded in a lab with Red, Green and Blue contrast settings. Non-linear grading is now the standard. If film is used, it is scanned in LOG space using the Lab rolls pulling the shots directly from an EDL. Film dust-busting is much more automated. The kit is now a fraction of the price. I reckon the build cost alone for the Cinesite Department came to 5 million dollars. The Budget for ‘Band of Brothers’ was 130 million dollars. I’ve been lucky that I have worked with some of the crew behind and in front of the camera since. They all have similar impressions of the experience. I still have a little memento: Stuart Fyvie All images and clips copyright © 2003 HBO Read about how to achieve the bleach bypass look in our Creative Looks in DaVinci Resolve course.

I had worked with the director Miles Jay before and also the DP Steve Annis numerous times when I was based in London. Miles attended the color sessions here in NY and we had a live remote going back to MPC London where the agency creatives were in attendance. The DP Steve wasn’t directly involved in supervising the color session. However, I was already familiar with his approach to lighting, exposure and aesthetics from previous collaborations. This was a job where the color grade actually played a significant part in the storytelling process as we used color to highlight and enhance the differences between the two stories on either side of the split screen. As the film progressed, we gradually increased the difference in the color balance from one side of the split screen to the other. We also made numerous small enhancements and adjustments to specific parts of each side in order to highlight the relevant differences. The film was shot on 35mm 4perf and graded at 2K from a Log scan using Baselight. We wanted to make sure that it didn’t feel too polished or perfect and retained all of the texture and character inherent in the 35mm negative. Real, moody and somewhat understated would probably sum the final look up. In the early part of the film, on the bus, the color balance is the same from one side of the screen to the other. However, even here we started to introduce subtle differences. For example, on the left side of the frame I reduced the shadows under the girl’s eyes using a tracked mask whilst on the right side I did the opposite - increasing the shadows under her eyes to make her appear slightly more tired and rundown. In the scene in the bedroom, I picked out and enhanced details such as the stain on the wall and continued to lighten/darken under the girl’s eyes. Later in the film, the color difference is much more pronounced. In the final shots we shifted the color balance of the right side towards a more cool and subdued palette - a fairly simple approach that could be executed with broad brushstrokes The biggest challenge was judging how far to push the difference between left and right. It was essential to keep the adjustments feeling realistic and true to the naturalistic 35mm tone of the film but still sufficiently noticeable to have a cumulative effect on the viewer. On some shots we went through a few different versions and revisions, and for the director’s cut we ended up having a less noticeable shift from left to right side than for the agency edit that went to air. Like most colorists, I have a toolbox of techniques learned over the years from watching and working with other colorists and experimenting on my own. I won’t always approach the setting of the first balance in exactly the same way. Generally, if working from a raw scan or Log image, I use a combination of curves and video grade in Baselight to set the initial contrast and then use a film grade layer to adjust the exposure and color balance. If I’m using a LUT or some other means of ‘de-logging’ the image then most often a film grade layer will be sufficient to get the image to a decent starting point. Having a good base to work from with an accurate and clean color balance is important because it provides an anchor for all subsequent corrections. If the final look ends up being highly stylized or pushed in a certain direction it will certainly look better if it’s constructed from a solid starting point. It’s easy to get yourself into a mess if you approach this in the wrong way. The more experience I get doing this job, the more I appreciate the benefits of doing things simply. I’m a fan of the Film Grade in Baselight and find that I can often create strong looks quickly simply by pushing the RGB color balance in a particular direction and then using the highlight and shadow controls to normalize the image. I use the Hue Angle keyer in Baselight almost exclusively for all my keying needs. Sometimes I’ll separate out the highlights and shadows using the Hue Angle and make targeted adjustments in order to help sculpt the image. I also make frequent use of shapes to enhance a shot and make it feel balanced, or to direct the viewer’s attention to a specific part of the frame. Skin tones Ideally, your initial balance should get the skin tones into a good and natural looking starting point and any further additional work specific to the skin should be subtle enhancements. If you find yourself having to make big adjustments to skin tones within a key then you should probably revisit your base layer or other layers and look for a cleaner and more efficient way to construct the grade. One typical challenge is when you are given poorly exposed footage in mixed and/or uncontrolled lighting. The same principle applies here too though - try to get the skin looking as good as you can using primaries and then if necessary key into other areas of the image to clean up the frame. Final Words It often helps to visualize in your mind the look that you want to impart onto the footage before you start making adjustments. In other words - have a clear idea of your intended destination before you set out. This way your adjustments are more likely to be focused and efficient. Even if you subsequently take a detour or head off in a different direction the same principle applies. Also much of the time the adjustments we make, at least once an initial balance is set, are actually about reducing the range of colors in the image - for example keying into specific colors or areas in the frame and either desaturating or swinging the hue in a direction that creates are more contained and harmonious color palette. We completed the film over the course of 3 or 4 sessions, which is more time than would typically be taken for a commercial. This was partly due to ongoing edit revisions and partly to a fair amount of tweaking of the grade. James Tillett All images and clips copyright © MPC

T here’s a saying in the industry, “You know your film is complete when you run out of money”. If you’re a colorist performing the final grade on a film, you witness this saying become a reality. By the time a film hits the DI stage, many of the project's departments have already maxed their budgets so there isn't much money left for DI overages. Therefore, you have to be both a creative partner and a pace setter. The films I grade most often are modest budget Independent films that finish in time for festival delivery deadlines. The established timeframe for grading these projects is 1 week or more precisely 40 hours over 5 consecutive weekdays. This fits neatly on the calendar when the projects are booked a month or two in advance and allows producers to avoid weekend hotel bills for traveling creatives by starting color on a Monday and wrapping on a Friday. This schedule works well for the 80 minute projects I grade, however, for films between 90 and 100 minutes, 40 hours of grading may not be enough. That's when time management becomes essential. Preparations For me, time management of a DI begins well before our first day in the theater. As soon as the project is booked, I ask to see the latest cut of the film to get a sense of the visual scope of the project. After I watch the offline, I set up a call or email exchange with the director and DP. This is a creative call. We discuss looks and inspirations for their film, LUTs, look books, VFX, etc. I avoid discussing time concerns until after I hear their creative goals for the film. If I feel that we cannot achieve their goals within the budgeted time I will propose these options. Ask the producers to schedule more time. This can mean adding a day at the beginning or end of the schedule, working longer days, or booking a day or two of unsupervised pre-grading so I can smooth out continuity and set looks in advance of Day 1. Ask the creatives to prioritize their visual goals for the film in case we run out of time or are unable to secure more time in the schedule. The first day The morning of Day 1 is the icebreaker. I arrive well in advance of the clients so that I'm caffeinated and the room is ready to go. I like to have the film's title card or a striking image from the film up on the screen when the clients arrive. This serves as inspiration and motivation, "look, you're finally in the home stretch, now let's do this!". Most often, the creative team hasn't seen their movie on the big screen until this point, and the director and DP haven't been in the same room since the production wrapped months earlier, so it takes a couple of hours for everyone to settle in. I'll spend the first morning recapping our creative conversation, and testing looks on keys scenes. I don't mention the clock while we are in the early stages of our collaboration; I wait until we're ready to shift gears before setting our time goals. That's when simple math comes in handy: "We have 5 days to grade your 96 minute movie but let's set aside the last day for a full review and a second pass so we need to grade 24 minutes per day over the next 4 days on this first pass". After setting looks on key scenes, I prefer to work chronologically. The audience will watch the film chronologically, so we should see it from their perspective. At the end of Day 1, we check the timecode to see where we're at. We won't hit the 24 minute mark because we spent the morning setting looks, so I'll apply the balance across the remaining 4 "first pass" days. As the week progresses, if I feel our pace is too slow, I'll do time updates at lunchtime. That usually helps pick up the afternoon pace. Lists Speaking of lunchtime, I find lunch breaks to be flow killers. I always work through lunch. Even if the clients step out of the theater to eat, I keep working unsupervised. Throughout the sessions, I flag shots that will take more time to finesse, usually shots that need qualifier clean-up or complicated shape tracking. I don't let this more detailed work slow the pace of the session so I announce to the clients that I'll add that shot to my "lunch list" and then we move forward. I still eat during lunch but usually something I can eat with a fork so I can use my other hand to grade. If a client keeps asking me to address elements of the frame that are not the central focus of the image, I'll employ a "wish list". For example: "Hey, you've been focusing on tiny details that take time address, we should stick to broad strokes on our first pass, can we put these shots on your wish list and address them during our second pass?". Another approach is to make clients aware of the requests that tend to slow down sessions, mainly tricky qualifiers and window tracking. I'll suggest we try more general solutions to these requests or just put these requests on my lunch list or the client wish list. You can't always defer finesse work. When something will affect the audience perception of a shot or scene you have to address it now. Everyone will agree that actors faces are the key element to most every shot so it's worth spending extra time on face work of the lead performers. I usually have a skin qualifier set to the complexion of the female lead that sits in my node tree ready to go in the event I need to quickly dodge a face. Still behind schedule? If, after utilizing these strategies, we're still behind schedule, I'll confer with my DI Producer. It's important that I remain on the side of the creatives during this process so the DI Producer and the Post Supervisor get to play bad cop when time is a concern. While we're in our creative bubble inside the theater, the DI Producer can find more time in the schedule and the Post Super can find more money for the extra time or can motivate the creatives to finish within the established timeframe, sometimes by suggesting that a distributor might pick up the tab for an extra day of color if they get picked up after the festival. On my end, I can suggest ways to make more efficient use of our time by objectively evaluating our work up to this point. I don't like to tell a client "no", so when time is critical, I remind them that we're ultimately grading for an audience and we should focus our remaining time on enhancing the audience experience of their film. We can always push our first pass review to the second half of the last day but that gives very little time for a second pass, only time for priority notes. Usually a combination of these final options does the trick. This is the approach I've developed for the type of work I do most often but every project is unique. Grading a commercial with a team of agency creatives will be different. Grading a documentary with filmmakers who've been tethered to their project for years will be different. Grading an episodic television show under a tight delivery schedule will be different. The goals remain the same, ensure the creative team's desires are satisfied and do so within the parameters arranged by the producers. Do that reliably and consistently and you'll be a busy colorist, even during lunch breaks.. Sam Daley Senior Colorist, NYC The node tree illustration is the base starting point on Sam Daleys' projects