Panelists
Transcripts from Talk
Sarah Marince:
Hello, everyone. Happy Wednesday. Welcome to crew talk brought to you by shoots.video. Today, we have a large panel with us and we are going to be learning all about color grading and everything there is to know as always, if you have questions during the webinar, feel free to drop them in the Q and a box down there. And we will get to them as soon as we can, but I’m excited to introduce my panel today. We have Warren, Jason, Patrick, and Oliver with us. Hello everyone. Thank you for being here. And I just want to kind of go down the line of how I see you guys in order and just say your name where you are and kind of what you do. Just like a brief little explanation for you. So Warren, you were up first. Welcome.
Warren Eagles:
Hi, thanks for having me. I’m based in Brisbane, Australia. I’m a colorist here originally from UK, been here 20 years now and I color all sorts of genres, everything from YouTube clips up to, up to movies. That’s me.
Sarah Marince:
Well, thank you for being here and next we have Jason. Hey Jason.
Jason Bowdach:
My name is Jason Bodak and I’m a colorist and finishing artist based in Los Angeles, California. And I run a company called pixel tools and I’m also a color and finishing artist at Fox studios.
Sarah Marince:
Wonderful. Well, we are glad to have you here. And next up we have Patrick. Hey Patrick.
Patrick Inhofer:
Hello. Thank you very much for inviting me here. My name is Patrick [inaudible]. I am a professional colorist. I also teach and train and have been doing this for many, many decades at this point and based in Orlando, Florida.
Sarah Marince:
Wonderful. Well, thank you and Oliver, your last but not least.
Oliver Peters:
Hi, I’m Oliver Peters. I’m in Orlando, Florida as well. And I’m kind of the hyphenated guy here on the panel. I do creative editing as well as color correction, whatever the client needs.
Sarah Marince:
Wonderful. You’ll probably be able to answer a lot of our questions today. So as always, I have my list of questions here. If you guys have any that are watching, drop them in the Q and a box, but I’m going to just ask the basic question because I’m not familiar with it at all. What is color grading? Feel free to jump in and give the explanation to anyone, but don’t all jump at once to answer the question. I’ll go, I’ll go.
Warren Eagles:
There’s often the question on what’s the difference between say color correction and color grading and people have different views, but my sort of take on it. If you went and shot something in different conditions with different cameras, different times of the day, obviously different color temperatures, different times of the day, different cameras, you got to balance them and make them all look normal. So you’re trying to make them as if they all happened at the same point of time. That’s more color correction. You’re correcting things to be a normal, but a grade is probably more of a creative process where you’re trying to help a direct to tell a story with your color grading, to make it more scary or more happy. And you’re doing that a bit like a composer does with sound. So that’s pretty much my take on it.
Sarah Marince:
Okay. And what kind of software do you use for something like that?
Oliver Peters:
I would say it’s all over the, all over the landscape these days resolve is obviously been the one that gets the most press, but certainly in the high end world baseline film light is you know, a pretty strong contender obviously on the pricey side. If you’re an avid editor and you do avid finishing, especially in the reality TV world avid symphony, which is built in tool set is you know, still pretty much the go-to just because of the speed and no need for, you know, kind of a round trip between the edit and so on.
Patrick Inhofer:
Yeah, I’d love to add to that probably between all the different, any software that allows you to adjust brightness contrast saturation hue. Basically those are the fundamental tools that any of us are working off of. And so almost any application that deals with moving digital images that allows you to make those adjustments can be used for color correction and color grading, just to kind of riff off of what Warren said a moment ago, about the difference between the two. I mean, this was a big discussion maybe 10 years ago, 15 years ago when digital color correction was really becoming known as a thing you can actually do. And it was accessible through tools like final cut. I mean, I started you know, I was color correcting and color grading and final cut three with their brand new three-way color corrector right before that was avid symphony in the 19 at the end of the 1990s. So you know, color correction in my view is the initial process of balancing images, making them match technical, like Warren said technical. And then when you get to story expression, that becomes color grading that’s, but it’s a really loose delineation. Now. I don’t think if any of us here heard someone give a slightly different version of that. I don’t think any of us would object it’s a in the end color grading is like the all encompassing thing and divvy it up between the two, however you want.
Sarah Marince:
Oh, awesome explanation. Thank you. Jason question for you when coloring, how do you determine when and what to use?
Jason Bowdach:
So this is a question that is one that I actually struggled with when I was first starting out, because I was looking for the right tool or the correct tool to use. And the answer is it doesn’t really matter which tool you use as long as you’re getting the right result. I think as I’ve become a better colorist, I’ve learned more tools and I’ve learned the right time to use them as opposed to reaching for a tool that works really well, but using it in the wrong circumstance. So I encourage people to vary their tool sets. So for instance, a great story, I used to be very afraid of curves. In fact, I just didn’t get them every time I touch them. I just didn’t understand what was happening. And so I think the second year I was a professional color said, finally, I’m going to figure these out. I’m going to start using them more. And then all of a sudden it started to make more sense. And now they’re one of my favorite tools. I don’t always reach for them, but when I reach for them, I know how to use them. So there there’s this constant search for the best or the number one tool. And it’s just, there is no number one tool, same thing with the software. It’s more like when you’re cooking in the kitchen, what is the best tool it’s specifically you’ll find cooks that work with one tool and another one that works with another one.
Sarah Marince:
So is it kind of based on like location or feel just kind of like what you’re feeling?
Jason Bowdach:
It’s a combination of my style. I may like the feel of a certain control and an effect that I’m getting with it and Patrick or Warren may like the feel of another one. And if we can both get the same results from it. That’s great.
Oliver Peters:
I think you have to differentiate just, just so we’re clear for the audience, that tool could mean this application versus a different application, or it can mean whatever P module within a given application, right? So resolve has bunches of different places. You can go to do most of the basic corrections. But then if you’re talking about applications of software, there may be a reason to do the color correction in the built in capability of avid or premiere or final cut 10 versus going outside to a color correction software. And sometimes that gets down to just turnaround time. You know, there is, there is a, a round trip workflow, and that takes time in a lot of cases. And some projects simply don’t allow that or it can be the nature of the production, right? If, if everything was shot fairly decently and you just want a nice overall good look, you could probably do that in the tools that exist in any application. But if you want, I tend to call it more of a surgical correction where you’re sitting with the DP and you’re really effectively relining the scene, the color correction that’s where something like DaVinci resolve or FilmLight Baselight or Mystica or any of those higher end tools really shine.
Sarah Marince:
Wonderful. Patrick Warren, do you have anything you’d like to add?
Warren Eagles:
The, I was, I was going to say the same thing as what Oliver said. I mean, I get, I got a question for you guys. Can you ever look at anything and go, I know what software color corrected that show. I know what I know.
Jason Bowdach:
I can never tell. The only way that I know is if I personally know that person and know that house or that person happens to use that tool, but never based off a blind.
Warren Eagles:
No, no, because you can get to anywhere with most of these softwares. And I often say there’s a certain amount of pain to get there in some of them as opposed to others, but you can sort of get there. They just all do it in different ways. And then it’s down to the user, what they like to use. And like Jason’s either using curves or you like the track balls or there’s lots of ways to do things. And that’s sort of a choice that you get with experience.
Patrick Inhofer:
Yeah. I have to agree with that. And, and again, I think when we’re talking about applications, I think most of us, the application is going to be determined oftentimes by whoever’s employing us, right? So if you work at a shop that is centered around premiere or final cut or resolve, then that’s going to kind of set the baseline as to what you have to adapt to. And then once you’re in one of those apps, the tool it’ll determine the tool set that’s available to you. And then you’ll start developing preferences as to, okay, what part of the color correction workflow on my end and which tool do I prefer to solve particular problems. And then, so then you can start kind of narrowing it down in that part, but unless you’re working in your own space and you get to dictate, and then it’s a personal preference,
Sarah Marince:
One destination, many ways to get there, just whatever you prefer. Yeah. Nice. So we do have a question in the Q and a box already. It’s from Ben Taft. Hey Ben, thank you for joining us today. He says, hello panelists. My name is Ben. I’m a 19 year old trying to start an internship in the industry. What is some advice that you think I would need to learn to give me an upper hand or unique skillset that would set me apart from the other competition?
Oliver Peters:
I guess I’ll jump in. I advise a number of colleges and I’ve worked with students and stuff like that. So when you’re talking about a formal internship that usually needs to go through a school because a production company, a facility, you know, has to deal with how they handle employees. So you can’t say, Hey, I’ll donate my time for free and come in because then they’ve got some HR issues that are become a problem. So you want to go through an official internship program based on whatever college you’re going to. And then at that time, you know, your skillset is whatever you’ve got to offer. You know, if if you’re strong on the production side and you, you really like cameras and dealing with that stuff, look for an internship where that is going to utilize your abilities or at least let you sit in on stuff.
Oliver Peters:
Most of the time, if you’re an intern, you know, face it, you’re going to do the junk work, right? You’re going to make copies. You’re going to get, you know get coffee for people, that sort of thing. But it’s the opportunity to observe how the industry works. And that’s, there’s a lot of value to that down the road. But on the other hand, if your inclination is graphics or if it’s audio mixing or color correction, seek that out and see where they can be placed. When I worked at a facility, we would frequently have interns and on occasion they were allowed to sit in on edit sessions and basically be quiet, sit in the back of the room and just observe. And you know, a lot of them got a lot out of it.
Sarah Marince:
We have so many questions filling up the chat and Q and a box, which is great. I love it. So our next question is and I am, I’m going to mispronounce the first name, so I’m so sorry. It’s, Vira Diana w what is the best way to find work post university graduation? Patrick, what would you say to that? Yeah,
Patrick Inhofer:
I mean, my answer to that is take, take a job that gets you into the business, right? I mean I, I often say that the best job I ever got was the very first job I got, because it allowed me to do a little bit of everything. It was a really small shop. They were, they were shooting, they were editing you know, we, we had our own, you know, like animatic stand back in the day when, you know, this is 30 years ago, but the point was is I was doing everything as Oliver said, from cleaning air filters and cleaning the, the monitors on the professional displays to I was running the camera on the shoots. And then I was editing and there were several editing rooms and smaller jobs happened over here. Bigger jobs happened with the experienced guy. And the main point of that, of the first job I got was to figure out what I don’t want to do.
Patrick Inhofer:
Right. Oftentimes, cause our business is so big and there’s so many different crafts and arts and you think you want to be a DP. And that’s what I thought. I thought I was going to be a camera guy. I did a bunch of these corporate shoots where I had an hour to throw up the lights. I had 30 minutes to like, get everything set up. I was put in these terrible environments that we somehow had to make look good. And it drove me nuts because I wanted more of a filmmaker type of experience that work wasn’t available to me, where I lived at the time, this was in New York. So New York was pretty much commercials at the time and I just couldn’t find that in. But I just discovered I loved the editorial process. I love the post-production process. So it was able to on my next job kind of narrow it in a little bit more. Right. And then once you narrow it in, then you can start, you know, kind of fine tuning where exactly where do you fit in all of this and what really gets you up in the morning and makes you happy to go into a work every day.
Sarah Marince:
That’s great. I mean, it’s great to experience all areas of the fields. Like you said, you know what you want to do and what you don’t want. Yeah.
Patrick Inhofer:
And even do you want to be on set or do you want to be in post two very different experiences, two very different career tracks. And you may think you want one until you’ve spent some time doing it as a job, a job. And then you suddenly realize I can’t do this every day. And I ended to go in the other direction,
Warren Eagles:
Right? Yeah. Oh, that to that sort of what you need before you even go knocking on the doors. So you wanted to be an editorial or she, you need some sort of show reel. Now, obviously, if you’ve been through for a university, you will have shot some stuff. You will have some stuff, but you may only get one chance at one company. So you need a show as simple as it could be, which can just sit on Vimeo or YouTube of your work. And obviously a bit of a, we used to call them CVS, but no one calls them that anymore. Do they buy what you’ve done? And just present yourself in a way. And don’t be afraid of knocking on doors. I find a lot of young people don’t want to knock on doors. They go, oh, you just send it online. Just yourself,
Patrick Inhofer:
Pick up the telephone. I find a lot of young people we don’t,
Warren Eagles:
And we’re all guilty and not ringing don’t we? We send a text, we’re all guilty of that. But you got to be really pushy. If you want to get into this industry, it’s not going to come and find you.
Jason Bowdach:
So I want to echo what everybody else is saying. It seems like information that you’ve read on a website or it’s I’ve okay. I get it. I have to go out there and do the crap work. But so I started at the Disney channel doing, I was starting my own YouTube channel on the side. I thought I was going to be a camera guy and do after effects on the side. And I did two or three internships there. I reorganized every single tape at the Disney channel. And I was ironically at the time I went through the tape to file transition. And in that I learned a lot of crucial information that I use every single day now. And it was an incredible experience. I didn’t stay there for years and years after that, but I was to take in a really important amount of information and I learned how to work in post-production.
Jason Bowdach:
I learned the relationships that are really important to forge and the way that you should not work with people, which I would not have been able to learn on my own in the same way than working with large vendors, like 0.3 60 and deluxe and photo cam. So that’s a really great experience. And so just going to any local post house, and if you don’t work, if you don’t have access to a local post house, then there are virtual post houses now. So see if you can try to get into those. There’s a lot of them using Trello to just try and get some experience to work under somebody it’s even for a short period of time, it is a, an incredible experience and you’ll walk away with something.
Oliver Peters:
Well, one of the things I, I just jump in real quick and that is in the last few years, getting in is a lot harder than it used to be 10, 15, 20 years ago. There are fewer staff positions. Post houses have gone down the tubes in many cases, and it’s a much more diversified, but also democratized industry and fewer and fewer employees, but more and more gig workers. Right? I work freelance. I work in a shop where we’ve got several different freelance editors that are virtually there the whole time, but they’re definitely not staff. So you got to double your efforts on the plus side where everybody’s going with a lot of media, especially marketing is social media related. And if you’re coming out of school right now you probably have a much better handle on how to do effective social media in terms of video content than the production company itself may have. So that may be as simple as offering your services for doing some sort of behind the scenes coverage of production that they’re doing, or, Hey, we’re going to do a quick, you know, one minute, you know, Facebook thing or Instagram or whatever, just to kind of be the marketing arm of that. So there are, you know, good news, bad news kind of thing. Sarah,
Patrick Inhofer:
If I can just riff off of what Oliver just said which is there is never been a better time to create content. Everyone has a camera on their phone. Everyone can tell stories and you don’t have to go to college to learn how to tell stories. You can just do it. Just tell stories, right? You do go to college. What you’re gonna learn is so, so you go to college to take three or four years of learning off that learning curve, right? So you can, you can spend five years making a bunch of mistakes or you go to school for a couple of years and you, and you compress that down. Instead of five years of mistakes, we’ll spend one year mistakes. Then you get an internship at an established post house. The advantage of that is it takes four or five years of learning and eliminates that from having to do it on your own.
Patrick Inhofer:
Because part of the value of an internship is learning what not to do, what mistakes not to make, how not to talk to clients is as important as learning what to say, how to communicate, right? And so the advantage of working at an established shop and with established established professionals is learning those routines that you should avoid without having to go through the pain of learning that mistake. Right? And so that’s the advantage there, but at the same time that that if you don’t have access to those avenues, tell stories, help find people who have stories that are, that need to be told and they need assistance in particular skillsets and then offer your assistance in those skillsets. And that’s another way of building up your reel and being able to say, Hey, I’ve worked on this short. And I worked on that short and you know, I did these different jobs, right?
Patrick Inhofer:
Don’t be afraid, these kinds of no-low stuff, you know, no pay, low pay stuff. Don’t be afraid of that. You’re as long as you’re getting something out of it than there, and you’re not being used at that point, if you’re getting something out of it, then they’re not they’re not abusing that relationship. It only becomes abusive is if you feel coerced into taking that job at a price and a price point, doing a job, you think you can do and you should be paid for. Right. So, so that’s kind of my way of also approaching the ubiquity of storytelling. And I think Oliver was straight on, there are a lot of non-traditional places to look, corporations have their own communications divisions. They’ve got, you know, Instagram feeds to fill and Tik TOK feeds to fill and your ability to then say, Hey, let me do that. Let me take what I’ve been doing with my iPhone and do that for you, for your business. I think, you know, thinking outside the box like that, like Oliver just suggested, I think.
Sarah Marince:
Yeah. And that kind of goes along with the questions that have been asked, somebody asked, is there work to be found on the internet? Like what method would you go about using the internet to find work? And then Ben had a two-part question. Do you think applying for a company as an unpaid internship is a bad idea and then going to university or college the best route, but I guess it really is kind of what works for you. There’s no, yes or no answer. Right.
Jason Bowdach:
Can I start on that one real quick? Yeah, for sure. So I, I am going to say that I am 100% against the unpaid internships simply because there is always somebody looking to abuse, new people that are looking to make it in the industry. This is especially true in LA, in New York and there’s, there’s this nostalgia of making it. So there is always going to be someone that’s, you know, I’ll pay you $25 an hour, but you got to use your equipment and your camera, and you got to bring your actors and actresses. And I want three cuts by two weeks from now. So what I would say is give somebody an equal trade, give somebody a good deal. Maybe it’s for a hundred dollars, but don’t do it unpaid. There has to be some transfer of something to make it a professional. Otherwise it’s just some kid or somebody doing something and I’m getting it for free. But if you can put a little bit of money where your mouth is, it becomes a professional obligation, a professional relationship.
Patrick Inhofer:
Yeah. And as the guy who, who pulled out the no low thing let me, let me also agree with Jason on that. I mean, I will, occasionally I haven’t done it in a couple of years. I’ve just been too busy, but I will occasionally when I have downtime, take a very, essentially for me, it’s a free job, but even free jobs, I have it like a baseline, like 400 bucks, right. I don’t care what it is. I’m getting my 400 bucks. And not because that $400 means anything to me other than it establishes that I’m either a professional or if I was just starting out my career and aspiring professional. And if, you know, if I was just starting out, I might be 50 bucks would be my minimum thing. But if they can’t come up with 50 bucks for me to edit their film, and by the way, you’re going to do it on my schedule because you’re not paying me. Right. Or you pay me 50 bucks, you’re going to give me latitude to fit it into my schedule. That’s what you get for basically low pay. The point is that money exchange changes the relationship and it helps you weed out those people who were there just to abuse you. So I’ll take my previous comment and kind of modify it with what Jason said. Yeah.
Warren Eagles:
Yeah. I can, I can add to that. We’ve sort of jumped and getting pike. I had a phone call a couple of weeks ago and a guy said, oh, I saw the last movie you did. And I’d love you to color correct. This. I, I had to try to color it myself. No, I have. It’s an indie feature. Yeah. Yup. Fine. I said, send me a little work in progress of the car, which I always asked. And I said, yeah, the film was good. I, I always quote 10 days to grade a feature film. Whether it’s going to be 10, I always start at 10. And the guy then started talking about deferred payments and you know, you get paid when we make money. I was interested. I said, well, not really. I’ve been down that road a few times on a few movies and never seen anything. So I said, oh, I like your film. I like what you shot. I like what you do. I’ll do it for half. Right. And I heard nothing crickets. And it might be people that would have said yes. So I suppose if he keeps asking around it, probably get someone who will, will do it. But I, I won’t, I won’t, I won with Patrick, you know, you set a benchmark with a rate and that gives them discipline as well.
Patrick Inhofer:
Were you disappointed that you didn’t get that set your benchmark?
Warren Eagles:
You know, it may come back in, it may be that the guy’s been shopping around and that’s who I is. I sat out the store and I think, well, if it comes in and it’s good and I’m also looking at it from what can be good for my real, you know, if it’s interesting and there’s some really good stuff in there, and I know I can use stuff for real, then, then great. That’s the other angle for me as well. But big thing for me is, and when we’re talking about guys pitch things to me and I get a lot of stuff where it’s just not page properly, like short films. And I get even people would come up to nothing wrong with Instagram, but they will pitch it with a little one line and a smiley emoji. And I’m sure you don’t want to color this film with no money and things, but just, just really pitched things with stills or mood boards of what you want or what you’ve done before. And if you’re asking someone to help you maybe color your film or whatever, and just be a bit more organized and professional about things. Cause I do see a lot of stuff coming into me and it’s not, not the best pitch.
Jason Bowdach:
You want them to make it easy for you to take the job, right? Yeah. It’s make it easy for me to want to help you if you’re going to make a good deal for them.
Warren Eagles:
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Jason, you know, they’d come in asking me to do probably let’s say half, right? Sometimes it might even be less and you’ve got, gotta be really on the ball and cycle to sell it to me. I want them to sell it to me, not just, you know, a few lines and there’s a little Vimeo of what I did last year.
Oliver Peters:
I was just going to say from the internship, just to kind of tie things up for Ben is internships are usually official things through a college and you’re getting college credit in return for that. Right? So it’s an internship tied to a video production class or a film class or something like that. That’s completely different than going to somebody without a college association and saying, Hey, can I work for you for free as an intern, different different ball game there,
Sarah Marince:
Warren, you spoke about rates. And I know in the voiceover world, there’s a standard of, you know, what the rates are, what they should be. And you know, there’s a website where we can go look at it and you know, agencies know it for your line of work. Are there, is there like an established rate guide or are you just setting it yourself or if you’re new, how do you learn what you should be charging?
Warren Eagles:
It’s a very good question, Sarah. And one of the things with the CSI, which the color of society, this is the first time any colors have ever tried to get together. Any sort of organization on civil society is to maybe try and standardize things a little bit in terms of rights. Now we’re doing this down in Australia. We had a zoom call last week with 20 of the chapter members of Australia and New Zealand. And like we have a roughly sort of benchmarks of where you’re going to be for a day along foam. What you may charge you an hour if you’re doing commercials. And so everybody’s pretty much on the same page. And then if we get junior members come in, we encourage them to be the same, not to go in there with really low rates because that’s not good for anybody, but that’s a good thing. We’re trying to sort of standardize it. Being answered a question there’s nothing official written down anywhere. There’s no union rate for color.
Patrick Inhofer:
Yeah. I think if someone wants to figure out so much of this is based on where you live, right? I mean, the notion that someone living in San Francisco is gonna charge the same hourly rate as someone living in a suburb of Louisiana, where the standards, where the costs of living are so dramatically, different tax structures are really different. It’s really hard to say that the rate that I get in in San Diego is the rate I should get when I live outside in a suburb of you know, of new Orleans, right? And, or I live out in Orlando, it’s going to be different than where I originally started from. I started in New York. I spent, you know, 25 years working in New York city. So my rate structure is going to be different down here in Orlando and given our connected world, I can even make that work to my advantage.
Patrick Inhofer:
But at the same time, I need to be cognizant of the standard rates and some of the big cities so that I can work off of that. So I’m not really undermining the overall rate structure in a great place to look for this the blue collar post. What is it, a blue collar, blue collar post collective BCPC collective Katie Hinson who helps organize that. She’s been running a survey of post-production salaries all over the world and she publishes those. I mean, they’re, they’re free to download, you can download the spreadsheets and you can look in your city, not only for colors, but for editor, assistant editor, DP grip, right? So she has the breakdowns for all of these different key skills. And she also shows based on your experience, right? The notion that me as a one-year experience, colorist is going to bill the same rate as a 20 year experience. Colorist is probably not realistic. And so when you look at these salary ranges, you probably want to have an understanding of who’s charging what based on their experience in that particular skill. And so I would encourage anybody interested in that definitely find them on the BP CC out on Facebook. I think if you do a Google search on that website
Sarah Marince:
Yeah. Jason just linked it. Is that what you mean?
Jason Bowdach:
Yeah. I was actually gonna mention that too. It’s an enormously helpful study.
Sarah Marince:
Perfect. Thanks so much for that.
Oliver Peters:
I Would just point out rates for color correction are going to be a little bit different because unlike editors, editors pretty much can survive on a laptop and some software if they had to. Right. Whereas colorists have a much greater investment in hardware. So if you’re talking about, you know, a decent grading monitor, a color correction panel, a decent room environment, even if you’re working on your own, that’s a different benchmark in terms of just your operating costs than it is. If you’re a freelance editor and then so much of color correction is still done in professional post houses, right. It’s, it’s still sort of the, the last vestige of a big iron post. Right? And so if you’re bidding for a job with that kind of facility versus an independent colorist, it can be night and day different in terms of the rates. And then it also depends on the deliverables, right? If, if you’re delivering a finished product for, let’s say a high end marketing video, that’s primarily for the web, that’s different than if you’re delivering a feature film or something to Netflix or whatever, where you’ve got umpteen sub deliverables, right. Between the various masters, HDR, SDR, that sort of thing. So there’s, there are a lot of aspects to it and to simply go, okay, this is the day rate, or this is the hourly rate. Doesn’t, you know, it doesn’t really give you a comprehensive picture of you’re trying to evaluate the cost on a job.
Patrick Inhofer:
You know, it’s interesting. One of the, one of the things I’ve always found because I was an editor for a decade before I fully went into color correction and probably the biggest difference between the two careers besides the skillset. The biggest difference between the two careers is as an editor, I, you get booked on a job for three or four months at a time. I mean, I only had to find three jobs a year and because they were bulk buying me as an editor, I could discount my rate because I knew I was getting paid five days a week for the next 15 weeks as the colorist jobs. You know, your calendar is this beast that has to constantly be fed. You know, Warren talked about of feature taking 10, right? But the editor cutting that feature spend six to eight months on it.
Patrick Inhofer:
So are the people on this call for color grading? Our rate structure reflects the fact that there’s, we don’t build in that discount for the long term of the job, right? And we are constantly having to find new work and constantly having to find new clients. And so for that reason, that’s one reason why you’ll find colorists on an hourly rate, even as freelancers working in other people’s facilities, using their equipment tend to make a premium over editors of similar experience. Largely because those editors are being hired from much longer periods of time.
Sarah Marince:
We do have a question from Martha, Hey, Martha, she says, hi. I come from the print world, doing color correction from magazines and books. Have you crossed paths with colorists who moved from still photography to video? And do you feel like the skills are transferable? She knows curves inside and out.
Warren Eagles:
I’ll take that one. I’d say in icolorist training classes. We get quite a few people have come as being retouchers or they shooters. They’re still shooters and they want to move into more a DP world. It could be that they’re already shooting the retouching and the client says, oh, we want to do this little one line campaign. Can you do it? And obviously they want to do it. But the grading side of it puts them a little bit out of their comfort zone, but I’ll be honest. Normally those people have a really good eye and you can walk around. If you’ve got six shoots in a room, you could probably walk around and you can tell the people that have been grading stills. Cause a lot of very similar things. It’s just, you’ve got to remember the hip PI and the steel guys don’t want to hit play. There are, they’re afraid of the noise or the grain or the tracking, but I would say yes. Yeah, you’ve definitely got a headstart and you can probably make a good pitch.
Oliver Peters:
The only thing I’d counter there a little bit. And, and the reason I do is every now and then you encounter the DP. Who’s just taken a reference shot and just gone to town in Lightroom or Photoshop or whatever, and says here, I want it to look like this. And, and as a colorist, you look at that and go, gosh, that’s great. But given the budget a time to do that now on every shot and have it be consistent you know, it’s a whole different world. So aside from having the eye, which is the good part of it, part of being a colorist is also managing the flow and being able to make the shots consistent from shot to shot, to shot. Whereas if you’re doing a bunch of fashion stills, they can be all over.
Warren Eagles:
Yeah, totally. Yeah. That’s the part of hitting play. Isn’t it? You play and it runs into another, which is a different angle showing a different day with a GoPro that was the producer’s son was using. So that’s a, that’s a, that’s a big challenge in the you you’re right. Oliver, when you say, I mean Photoshop and Lightroom, you can spend a lot of time on one, you know, you can spend a day, good news retouching one still we obviously don’t have that time. So speed does come into it and you sort of get faster as you get more experiences, it’s sort of a, you keep going on a level like that, but that’s an important thing as well. Yeah.
Jason Bowdach:
Grading video has a lot more of a, an importance placed on workflow because obviously at least on stills, I found workflow is important. You might be able to do something backwards and you can get back to what you want it to do, but you’re going to do it much slower, but because you only have one image, it’s not that big of a deal, but you do that on video. And that might be seven more days of having to do this. And so that mistake like that is going to cost you a lot more time and time equals money. And all of a sudden you tell a producer that, and that’s like, no, that’s not going to work. We can’t do that. So it’s very important to know the workflow and what that’s going to mean and explaining that to the client, not just, what does it look on screen?
Patrick Inhofer:
And I’ll just add that. I happen to know in New York city, some a couple of really top-notch colors. I mean the best of the best have a strong stills background, a strong art background. And so it definitely gives you a leg up. You just have to break some of those habits of trying to get everything to the nth degree of perfection. You have to, you have to break that habit out and be willing to kind of, I call it working in passes. I think most of us probably you know, do some version of that approach of finding a base level, getting to the end of the job and then circling back. And now you understand the scope, you know, where the problems are. You can see, you know, zoom in on those problems, solve those. And then you start over again. Now you can start refining and really like as an artist, start applying that artistic eye, watching how it travels around the image as you move from shot to shot within each shot. So you just have to kind of learn not to try to get it right the first time, because you’re either going to run out of time or run out of money before you get to the end of the job.
Sarah Marince:
John threw this question in the chat box for you guys. And he said that he is a mixing light paid member, and he’s been learning coloring for two years. What reference monitors do you suggest for color work that are under to do Grande for Rec. 709 and decent HDR? Is that rec seven? I don’t know. Okay. Okay. Okay, cool. Yeah. So he currently has an X right eye one display Cola pro color meter.
Patrick Inhofer:
Yeah. So he’s doing calibration, you know, I’d actually like to, I’m interested Oliver, when you deal with your students, how do you answer this question?
Oliver Peters:
Well yeah, cost is a big factor. So for most people these days, a decent LG is probably the go-to. And then, you know, work from there. It’s an evolving thing because the truth of the matter is high-end consumer displays are getting better and better. And if HDR is kind of the rub and all of that pretty much these days, anything that’s Rec. 709 Is probably gonna look pretty good if you’ve got a stable display that can be reasonably well calibrated. But then you got the issue of what are you delivering for so much of what we deliver for is the web. And when you get down to it, okay, if you’re working off of an iMac display, you know, who’s to say that’s not more accurate for a web deliverable than, you know, a high end Flanders or something like that. So there is no real simple answer for that. But it really is a matter of budget. And I’d say LG is probably the go-to these days for the most cost-effective and then I think the ASUS Pro something. I forgot what that, yeah, that, that seems to be getting a lot of kudos from folks.
Warren Eagles:
Really for HDR, unfortunately for serious HDRs you said, oh, you said these nice. Are you still looking at your Flanders, Eizo, Sony sort of money, which is stuck there $30,000. I think still you can get like the Zeus, the pro our Dell and making one at around the Sikhs 5,000 sort of mark, which you can, I call it sort of play HDR, but that’s where I would probably go. As all of us said, we wanted the LG, we’re talking about probably the 55, the domestic type one, but you’re going to need to calibrate it. It will not come out of the box. You mentioned you got the calibration that great for SDR, not ideal for HDR delivering, but if you want to start experimenting and shooting or playing with HDR, then by all means that would be a good go-to.
Patrick Inhofer:
What I would add to this conversation is one of the big things I’m you know, whenever I teach and this question, invariably comes up and it’s come up on mixing light. Many times you can listen to our podcasts for our member podcasts. We’ve answered various forms of this question many times. The thing that I always start with is understanding what’s the point of the reference monitor behind me here on your left. And, and the answer is it’s to give me an accurate represent representation of the ones and zeros that are on the hard drive, those ones and zeros have a very specific meaning. And if you want to get into a reference grade HDR grading, you have to spend $25,000 for that monitor to accurately represent those ones in zeros, on your hard drive. But you could go for the LG over my other shoulder here, which is like a C7.
Patrick Inhofer:
I think it’s several years old at this point, I can put, you know, a, a $1,000 box in front of it calibrated. So it’s a perceptual match to the reference display. And I’m getting a large portion in rec 7 0 9, which is just standard high definition television. Then you’re going to get, this is good enough to pretty much match the reference monitor. But when you start talking HDR, it’s going to start exhibiting behaviors that modify what those ones and zeros are. So the question comes down, are you billing for that HDR reference grade? If you’re just looking for something that gets you to start playing with it, experimenting with it, get a feel for it then. Yeah. Any of these lower cost solutions that you can get your hands on that are well reviewed. I’m down with that. But the moment you start billing as if you’re doing it in HDR reference grade, then it gets into truth and advertising. And at that point you really need to start stepping up your game. And that’s how I delineate as to what point do you really need to spend that extra money to get into that? Yeah.
Warren Eagles:
Yeah, but that’s the same for SDR as well. Isn’t it really? I mean, if you are billing for your color correction services and you don’t have a color calibrated monitor, then that’s the same thing really isn’t it?
Patrick Inhofer:
It is. And so, yeah, and the, and the questionnaire did have like an X, right? Which is, you know, a little probe that you can put on the display here and it’ll, you put a color patches and you can, you can calibrate your monitor. So even in SDR, if you’re starting, if you’re really, if you’re, if you’re trying to get the rates that you’re finding on the blue collar post collective salary thing, and you’re saying, I am, I am going to do this in a reference environment. Then it’s the onus is on you, that your display is properly calibrated just in rec 7 0 9. I think Warren, you would agree that rec 7 0 9, that LG will work for you as long as your caliber. Yeah.
Warren Eagles:
Yes. Yeah, definitely.
Jason Bowdach:
Here’s one other thought that I encounter, I think more often than the necessity of am I charging correctly, I encounter issues in the display pipeline or that’s happened earlier than posts. And for me, the, the reliance that my monitor is correctly calibrated. I mean, human eyes, white balance. That’s what we do that I can go to my client and say, this is what the image is. And I cannot tell you how many times in the short career that I’ve had in a professional color. So I know you guys have had this or the client goes, are you sure? And I go, I guarantee you, this is what your image looks like. And they go, didn’t look like that. And avid, and I go, I promise you, this is the way that it looks. And then all the first laughing, because maybe there was a wrong render setting.
Jason Bowdach:
Maybe the aftereffects artists clicked at this, and then we can go back and go, okay, don’t panic. Let’s go figure this out. And then we can go and figure out whatever the problem was. But for me, I don’t have to think going, is it my monitor? Is it my configuration settings? I just, I already know. And the same thing with the calibration, part of the reason I pay so much for the FSI is I send it back once a year and just have them calibrate it. So it’s not that I can’t do it myself. It’s just, I choose not to. And it’s just a convenience factor. I can definitely go out and buy an LG and have Dave Abrams, one of our local calibrators here in LA, come and do that. And that’s definitely a valid way of doing it. But once you get to a certain way, it’s really nice to be able to say, this is out of the box, how it should be. And I can count on that. Yeah. But, well,
Oliver Peters:
The other thing that’s always an issue is, is the client approval and getting the client to review it on something that’s trustworthy. And even if you had two people in two different rooms with the identical image, they’re going to perceive it differently. So, you know, when you’re doing color correction there’s no way to really, to get around having the person in the room with the colorist, at least at the end of the game, when there’s a trim pass or something. So that if there’s a discrepancy and he says, well, to me, it looks like this. And you say, well, okay, it’s not what I’m seeing. If you’re both looking at the same display, at least there’s communication going on that say, okay, well, let’s understand what the difference is here. Whereas if it’s a remote operation or you’re just posting files to frame or some other review and approval service, sometimes you can be pretty far off because people simply have different displays or they perceive color differently.
Sarah Marince:
Oh, sorry. Go ahead, sir. Oh, no. I was going to say, I have a business question because you all have been doing this for awhile. You’re pros and you know, when you freelance, you’re taking care of everything, you’re doing the job, you’re also doing the business side. So what kind of, what kind of advice or piece of advice do you have for people who are starting out in terms of keeping your business in order invoicing, clients and all of that?
Patrick Inhofer:
Nobody like you gotta, you have to keep track of your time. I mean, you know, number one, you need to keep track of your time. Number two, there are a lot of great online resources for that. There are a lot of apps that will plug into your browsers or onto your watch. I mean, on my watch, I’ve actually have an app that I tap and it starts my billing on that particular job. And I can load it up with a bunch of different jobs. If I’m switching, I stop one job, I start the next job. Right. And then at the end of the day, that actually syncs up with online where I can actually generate an invoice, you know? So there are things you can do that will help you track your time, make use of billing software, online software QuickBooks I used xero.com here in the United States.
Patrick Inhofer:
I’m sure. In Australia, probably Warren has some other bits of software that he uses in Europe. There are probably some other software solutions that they use. And so, you know, I try to, my job as a solo guy is to make myself seen as large as I can. And one way I do that is when I invoice, they can pay by check. They can pay by credit card, they can do a direct bank transfer. I set those different payment methods up in that software. And that gives them the confidence that, you know, I know what I’m doing. Like I can bill, right? So that’s one aspect of that.
Oliver Peters:
Well, but also running a business is, you know, you got to know what the tax situation is in the place that you live, both federal, state city, what sort of permitting. And if that’s not where your head’s at, then get together either with an accountant or somebody that you hire. Sometimes you can find other freelancers, obviously in this business. There are people who do production accounting as a freelance gig. Maybe it makes sense for you to partner up with somebody like that as a client of theirs, for them to take care of your books and make sure you’re legal in all the areas. I
Jason Bowdach:
Think it took me a while to learn that you do not need to be good at business to run your own business. You can absolutely outsource the stuff that you’re not necessarily good at. I’m terrible at accounting. And in fact I hate doing it. It’s just not something I’m not naturally good at, and that’s perfectly fine. There are people that are never good at accounting. That’s something that I outsource. I automate as much of my business as possible and that’s something that I encourage all freelancers to do. I automate my health insurance. I automate my savings. I automate as much as possible, so I don’t need to deal with it. And then I touch it every couple of weeks or months when it’s needed.
Warren Eagles:
Yeah. Yeah. It sounds a bit like my wife,
Patrick Inhofer:
But some of us have spouses that’ll do that. I mean, if you’ve got a significant other, that’s good at that type of stuff, that’s all. Yeah, because
Warren Eagles:
I was going to ask you guys, it’s hard chasing money, isn’t it? Because you’ve got the relationship on a creative basis. You don’t really want to be then emailing them going, Hey, you really should have paid this. So it’s good. Like Jason says to outsource that or have a different email address, you know, accounts weren’t Eagles color or whatever. So they think is not coming directly from you. That’s quite a good tip as well. And I don’t know what payment terms are like in the US but things are starting to drag a little bit. And, you know, I find the bigger companies are the worst by they drag into 60 days easily.
Jason Bowdach:
Someone asked me for 90 and I was just like, that’s not going to work. What will it take for you to pay right now?
Oliver Peters:
Yeah. Well, sometimes you have, you know, it’s hard to negotiate this, but a certain amount up front, right? I want a third upfront. And the balance when I deliver the master and if I don’t get paid, you don’t get your master. Now, you can’t do that with every client, but a lot of them are very understanding and will agree to that. Obviously, if you’re doing a job for a big corporation, you have no options there, right? You either accept their terms or don’t do the job. Well, actually, one of the best
Patrick Inhofer:
Pieces of advice I was given, especially with like fortune 100 companies or fortune 500 companies, publicly traded companies is offer an early payment discount of like one and a half percent because oftentimes many publicly traded companies have it written into their charter that if, and, and you offer that one and a half discount, if paid within 10 days and their charters require them to prioritize any invoice that they get a discount on when paying early and they will pay that early. Right? So a lot of these big companies by taking a little bit off the top, putting a timeframe on it, pay in 10 days, take a percent and a half off, and you’re going to get paid in 10 days. I do that. I do that with several of my big clients that works great. I will say, if you are uncomfortable having this discussion, you either have to force yourself to have this discussion or work for a company who does it on your behalf, because you will end up going broke if you’re not comfortable at the beginning of the job talking about terms of payment and that type of thing.
Patrick Inhofer:
I have a mixing light. You do do a search on our website for net 30, and I have a re and it’s, this is free. It’s in front of the paywall. It’s I have a really strong argument there about not accepting net 30 that net 30 is what the big boys do when they deal with each other, when they deal with you, they use that to manage their cash flow, not yours, right? So you become their cashflow management strategy. And I’ve seen this ridiculous abuse of that net 30, that turns it into net 60 net 90. And the next thing you know, you’re in small claims court. So yeah, we’ve all been through it. And so my big thing is if you can get 50% upfront or, and 50% on delivery or some sort of milestone, if I work on a series where I’m getting 10 or 12 episodes, I’ll say right, 10% to, to lock this job in and lock in the quote, you have to pay me 10% upfront.
Patrick Inhofer:
Then you’re going to pay me, you know, 20% when we’re 20% of the way through. And then another 20% after another 20%. And you do the milestone payment thing. And again, but this is all negotiation where I tend to do is in my initial quote, I’ll put in my preferred payment method, which is usually 50 50. And then I’ll when I send the quote, I follow with an email and say, Hey, look at the payment terms. I call it out. I say, it’s in the fine print, read the payment terms. Let me know if we have a problem and then we can have the discussion.
Sarah Marince:
That’s great advice. That’s awesome. We, I can’t believe how fast this hour went. We have time for one more question. I feel like we could go like another hour. This is awesome, but it is from Vierra Diana again, hope to set it right. She said, what’s the best way to keep learning, coloring and video editing even after university, like, are there courses online or where can people go, Patrick? I mean, I think
Patrick Inhofer:
You’ve got a bit of a dream team here. You know, Oliver has, he has a website that he’s constantly writing about new plugins, new tools, new workflows. I have a free color correction newsletter taoofcolor.com. And so I link out to tutorials. I like to scour the internet every week and you know, basically 42 Sundays a year, I’m sending out a newsletter that links to all of these details, interviews with colorists gear that might be interested to the color correction community war you know, Warren, I guess I’ll let you pitch your stuff, but you know, mixinglight.com is an online website. It’s a membership based website where we have multiple colors. Jason is a contributor to the website and we’re constantly sharing what we learn on the job as a way of mentoring, right? I mean, again, our job on mixinglight is to shrink your learning curve and allow you to not make the same mistakes we make. And and that’s a big part of that. So it mixinglight.com, taoofcolor.com are the things that kind of encircle me.
Sarah Marince:
Sure. And I actually am going to go down the line again and have everyone just kind of pitch yourselves. If you have a website or courses to take just, this is where you can tell us all about it, and you can also drop any information links to your websites, Instagram into the chat box as well for people to grab there. So, Warren, I’m going to start with you again because you’re first on my screen. So just where people can find you
Warren Eagles:
You can find me a Warren Eagles on Instagram and Twitter. And I put the, icolorist is my training company. We recently run classroom training where you get people in a room, which is the best way to learn anything. Obviously current climate is a bit tricky, so we’re doing some things on zoom. But in answer to the question, really, I’d set yourself a few hours every week just for learning and researching and learning new stuff. And I still do that now, you know, if I’m not busy and I’ve got a dyad structure in my day, I’m going to look into a few new cameras and see what’s new, or I’m going to do a bit of practicing on HDR, or I’m going to learn a new tool. So just set that into your structure for your week, I think is a, is a good way to do that because we never stop learning every day, every week we’ll get something new, which is fun.
Sarah Marince:
That’s great advice. Thank you so much, Jason. You’re next? So
Jason Bowdach:
I first off, I want to mention that I’m actually a student of Warren and Patrick’s, and I highly recommend both their courses on well, I actually learned on taoofcolor. That course is not available anymore, but I highly, highly recommend you check out mixing light. If you’re looking for continued color education, and Warren has a huge amount of courses, I’ve lost track of how many you have at this point, but I literally have gone through all of them. And I just recommend that everybody, if you’re looking or you’re interested in learning more about color, should just keep practicing. As Warren mentioned. If you’re interested, you see a look that you like in a movie or a TV show, go online, download a still of it, bring it into resolve, look at it on the scopes. I run a website called pixel tools, post.com, where we post basically tools for DaVinci resolve that, make it a little bit easier and hopefully faster for you to get to the end destination. If you want to follow me on social, you can follow me at @Jbodacious on Twitter, on Instagram, on Facebook, on all that fun stuff, but just keep practicing and watch other people you’ll pick up techniques. And whether you like them or not. It’s interesting for you to learn from other people. I still watch tutorials every single week from new people. Whether it’s Warren or Patrick or even people that have never heard it before. Cause I learned interesting techniques.
Sarah Marince:
Awesome, Patrick.
Patrick Inhofer:
Yes. I just typed in the link to my free newsletter because I link out everyone on this call. I’ve linked out to them. And so that might be one place where you can just kind of sign up and then every week it flows into you. Well, I’m in kind of summer mode right now. It’s about every other week, every third week. I will say that cause I, I’ve already pitched my wares. I want to recommend both what Jason and Warren said, which is, you know, have some footage on your laptop when you’re, you know, if you’re sitting in front of the TV and you have generally have your laptop around whatever software it is, you’re using premier final cut, avid resolve, whatever it is, have some footage loaded up that you may be downloaded from red and from black magic’s website, they have camera original footage from their cameras and Canon right, and have a timeline on there.
Patrick Inhofer:
And if you see a commercial, you like mimic it, right? Mimicking is how all artists start their career. You take a look at someone who’s doing great work. And if you’re watching, you know, a national television show and there’s a national spot, a commercial that’s on there, then mimic that. Look, if you like that, look, see if you can come up with it and, and recreate it. So that’s a great way of just in your downtime kind of skilling up and experimenting and stretching your muscles in ways that you haven’t been asked to do. So
Sarah Marince:
That’s, that’s awesome. And that’s a great exercise for people to do for sure. Oliver.
Oliver Peters:
Okay. Well you can reach me @ oliverpeters.com. And I also have a blog that is a digitalfilms.wordpress.com and that’s kind of product reviews, tips and tricks, things like that. As far as, you know, sort of the question obviously YouTube is the place where a lot of people go and search stuff. And right now, because resolve is kind of the, the hot go-to for everybody, just because it’s such an all in one application, there are a zillion tutorials on resolve. Some of them official from the black magic folks particularly audio like Mary Plummer does like great in-depth thing on the fair light side but also different colorist posts. You know, you want the orange and teal look, you can probably find 400 videos that show you their take on how to do that. So lots of ways to do it. And you know, pretty much everybody has a smartphone these days with some camera capability along the lines of practice, go out and shoot, load the stuff in play with it, look at it and go, gosh, why does it look so terrible, go online and research? You know, how can I make this better? What did I do wrong?
Patrick Inhofer:
I will add to what Oliver said. I’m looking for training resources, another great one. If you’re happened to be on resolve or want to learn resolve, they have PDF training courses, books that have downloadable practice files. And they’re pretty fantastic. I mean Mary plumber’s book on fair light is just absolutely killer. The book on the fusion page, which is harder to find information even today on YouTube or even on mixinglight. I mean, we try, but there just, aren’t a lot of great artists out there who are out there in sharing mode. And that book is pretty fantastic on learning some of those tools, as well as the, you know, there’s a color page book, there’s several two editing books and just a general book. So go, those are free. Download them free assets, go through them and then play with those assets in front of the TV when you’re done.
Sarah Marince:
Awesome. I can’t thank you guys enough for being here today and for just spilling all the info that you have spilled over the past hour. I know this was super informative and helpful to everyone who has been tuning in. Thank you again and that’s it for today. Everyone for everything voiceover, you can go to my website, SarahMarince.com and ceremony on Instagram. And we will see you guys next time. Thanks.
Sarah Marince:
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