JamieG Analysis

Recently I was listening to “Digital Production Buzz” and specifically THIS podcast.

The host, Philip in the previous week, described how “Color” the new Tool in “Final Cut Studio” was near useless to the average user of Final Cut Studio.

In this podcast, it appear he came under fire for these comments. And he was back peddling a little..

I would like to let all my cannons fly in his direction over this topic, and as a person who has worked in the industry, point out some of my observations.

It is true that being a “Colorist” is quite a boutique position. Now, to understand a colorist and its black magic, one should look at how this position has become such a “black magic art”.

Typically, apart from films, colour graders are usually working on high budget commercials. So real time feed back and a form of “performance” developed around the job.

I say this as, working in post production houses, you learn that, the agency producers, spending other peoples money, prefer to do it in style. As such, to get the work, the more impressive and expensive it is… generally the better. This is, to me, where the myth of needing the balls and knobs comes from. As much as it is helpful, it is more performance and “black Magic” to wow the person who decided where the money gets spent. (Usually not the same person who is spending the money).

In my opinion, an experienced mouse user can be reasonable proficient at using a tool like color. Sure, it may be a few percent slower, but its more then a few percent cheaper and versatile.

Philip went on about how you need, not only a good color actuate monitor, but walls painted this color, lights that, etc. Sure, all these items help the process. But like anyone using a tools that is not exactly right for the job, these issues can be taken into consideration. And usually a very good result can still be archived. (Still, at the least, you need a monitor/display which is designed for doing color grading.)

Now lets look at some of the other tasks color is designed for…
Color is more then just a single shot grader. Its designed to grade a film. Color match different shots, applying looks across sections of content to make them look right. It does this very well, and this is a big part of grading. And really, having a color accurate monitor is not even important to this task.

And finally, I would like to debunk the myth that color grading is a profession that takes years of work etc. Colorists are hard to find as, its hard for some one to get time on a multi million dollar balls and wheels setup to train how to use them. Apple Color will be bundled with Final Cut, giving the “would be color grader” all the time they need to learn the tools.

Grading, more then anything is “Talent” based. Like we are finding some amazingly talented editors springing up all around us as the tools become redilly available to everyone. So will we find Colorists. And they will probably even start moving away from the knobs and wheels. They learn on a mouse, they stick to a mouse. The mouse interface is standardised. Knobs and wheels.. Are always setup to the colorists liking. And as you can sit at any FCP station and grade… It become all to hard to bother with knobs and wheels.. I’ll just use the mouse..