Replay: Terence Curren's extremely popular piece on grading, first published in 2016. When it comes to setting the look, colorists and DPs need to talk early and talk often as working together results in the best images with the least pain and expense.
Ed's note: Plenty has changed since this article was first published. The core principles still hold, otherwise we wouldn't be considering republishing it in the first place, but there have been changes in workflow, tools, and many of the expectations surrounding the grading process that need to be at least acknowledged. We've got a companion piece underway that will detail them which we'll link to here as soon as it's done.
If you haven't worked out with post ahead of time how you want the images handled, then you will have little to no control over how they will look throughout the editorial process.
Back in the days of film, the DoP ran tests with the lab before production started. Film stocks were settled upon, developing processes and printing of dailies were worked out. Then along came videotape and what you shot was pretty much what you got; the look changed little during post.
Today, the workflow has returned closer to the film model. Shooting RAW leaves post-production with critical decisions about how that material should be processed for editorial. Problems arise when temporary grades created during the edit become the reference look, even if neither the DoP nor the colorist agrees with it, simply because other creatives have grown accustomed to it.
We strongly encourage preproduction meetings to help set the best workflows and formalize how color decisions will be made (to please you, me and the director) and to even save the production money (to please the producers).
The more information we have, the better.
Here I go again with a film analogy. We used to have sound and picture recorded separately on unlocked devices. And film negative rolls were not used in the edit; we cut a workprint. This required a lot of coordination to track, combine, sync and eventually conform the various visual and audio materials. Camera assistants, script persons, the film lab, assistant editors and sound editors all had solid and integrated procedures for tracking everything and maintaining consistency.
Then shooting with videotape came along and put all the elements in one place with tape name and timecode – all the camera department had to worry about was writing the proper tape name on the cassette.
Now we're back to the old days with audio often being recorded separately, media that is copied off of the original media cards so the cards can be reused; all this causes naming and tracking issues, low-resolution proxies generated from that media, etc. Keeping all of this straight needs a coordinated system. If you want to get it right, talk to us before you shoot.
So what metadata matters? For most of the editing process, Time & Date, Scene, Take Number, Card Label (if cards are kept and not reused, in which case Drive Name), Sound Roll, any LUTs that were used — and it would also be helpful to note if take 'three' is actually five takes because the director never yelled cut.
There is nothing worse than fighting level changes due to auto-exposure, auto-focus or auto-balance being engaged on a camera. We can fix a lot of things in post, but chasing changes within a shot is a real pain.
If you change iris, white or black balance, focus, etc. in the middle of a take that gets used, it is a problem for us.
One of the most painful examples is the sit-down interview that keeps changing exposure or color balance, even though the shot is locked off.
If something is just a little off, we can usually fix it. If a setting keeps changing over the course of a shot, we have to try to compensate for those changes.
Once highlights are clipped or blacks are crushed, that information is gone.
While HDR is improving the issue of modern camera being able to capture more dynamic range than we can see on our monitors, post-production still relies on having usable image data to work with.
We have the ability to decide where to place exposures of various parts of the shot in post. But all that stops if there is no detail there to work with. I would rather have a flatter image with nothing cut off which allows me to make the decision in post on how to shape the exposure curves to maximize the image for the intended display format.
The best chance to lock in your look is at the shoot. I have had DPs come in and say that since they knew the project was making a digital intermediate (DI), they lit everything flat. That's fine if you have a Cameronian budget. But, if you don't, capture the look during your shoot as close as you can to what you want.
In the modern color correction bay, we have amazing tools at our disposal. However, the more we have to use those tools, the more time we spend. Since budgets are always limited, something has to give. As a colorist, I truly want to make you – the DoP – happy. But the person signing the check is ultimately in charge. If you leave too much color work for post, it may not all get done. That is the reality of the business.
There is a second reason to get your look on set. As I pointed out above, producers and directors will get used to seeing their film look a certain way through the long editing process. In one painful example, I was forced to match the horrible look that a DIT set when he incorrectly created dailies for editorial, because the producer said he received compliments during test screenings with friends.
At the end of the day, we are all working towards the same goal: making the finished project look as good as possible. Keeping the lines of communication open will help all of us achieve that goal.
Terence Curran is an experienced CEO and accomplished editor, colorist, and author with strong understanding and experience in content delivery to digital, broadcast, and social platforms. He is also Founder of AlphaDogs Inc, Digital Service Station, Editors’ Lounge, The Terence and Philip Show, and Biotone Productions.