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Team Mixing Light interviews colorists, color engineers, hardware vendors, and anyone else who can help you better understand the craft and business of digital color grading.
[MUSIC]
Hi, it's Kali Bateman
here for Mixing Light,
and today I'm talking to
Christian Ganea Reitmeier.
He's the senior colorist at DNEG.
He's based in Montreal,
and we know one another from working
together a while ago.
Very excited to have him
here talking to me today about
the kind of unknown world
of visual effects coloring.
He had a background
prior to working for DNEG in
all kinds of finishing
color in different contexts.
But since moving into
visual effects color,
he's become the senior
colorist for DNEG and
knows all of the
workflows and all of the things.
It's quite a technical role
that also combines a lot of
creativity and understanding of
the workflow over the whole process.
It's an absolute thrill
to have you here today to
explain this pretty
unknown area of coloring.
Well, thank you very much, Kali.
Those words are
flattering me and they are,
well, far from the reality sometimes.
But yes, the VFX coloring world is
something of a
mystery for a lot of people.
Like you said, I was jumping
ship from finishing an online
grading and color correction if we want,
on different web series, TV series.
I used to work in the public
TV here and freelancing for
various documentaries and co-productions
and all kinds of things.
When this opportunity of going into
the VFX world presented itself and well,
you know me a little bit so
I'm a little crazy and I jump,
an opportunity to learn different things
and different aspects of
our world of grading if
you want. So I took it.
Little did I know what I jumped into.
That's right because it is so unknown
from the outside and you go,
well, this will be
interesting, let's see.
And you've taken to it like an absolute
fish to water and you really understand
all of the technical aspects of the job
in a way that I think some colorists go,
well, I don't
necessarily need to know that,
I just need to know that it works.
Whereas you have kind of taken that color
science and that workflow
and you've really run with it.
I mean, I was very excited,
but I was a little bit
worried about the technicalities.
The color science aspect of it.
However, I like to get my teeth into the
details of what's going under the hood.
Because in Resolve we are lucky.
If you properly set up your session and
you know how to color manage your project
the proper way, everything falls into
places relatively well.
That part was a little bit of a mystery
because we, in a VFX company,
we use a lot of Nuke and we
use a lot of OCIO configurations
and we use some integration with Resolve.
But all those took a while to get our
head around some very
specific color management,
linear, log.
Yes, yes.
You know, all those aspects of the image.
Color space transformations.
We have so many options.
So that side actually, after a few years, now it's
sinked in and I really like it.
I just want to ask the first question
that I get asked all
the time by people is,
what is VFX colouring? What is it?
I would say without
hurting anyone's feelings,
sometimes I associate
it a little bit with DI,
but without all the intricate creative
aspects of a DI first pass.
So first and foremost,
VFX grading is most
important for balance and neutrals.
So we call them balance grades or neutral
grades inside of VFX world,
because once all the plates are coming,
be them in ACES, AP0, be
them linear ARRI, etc, etc,
they are getting this common space.
All VFX companies are
working differently,
but there is a kind of a consensus that
we tend to work in this ACES-CG space,
which is the
equivalent of ACES in Resolve,
but with some technical differences.
So once we have this inside the space,
Obviously, like any other shoot or film,
TV series, et cetera, et
cetera, you have imbalances,
right?
Because you had a few days with sunny
days, a few days with,
well, less sunny days.
And in a sequence, obviously, the DI
process already went and
balanced and did a creative
look.
But since we are not working with those
grades being baked into
the EXRs we receive, well,
we need to start from
scratch if you want.
So we just have the various images.
We just need to bring them
in a common space if you want.
Right.
Right.
So just to clarify, so you're saying
you've got the rushes
that have been shot and there
might be lighting changes because of the
sun coming in or going
out if you've got exteriors
or even different angles, different
lenses can have differences between them.
And you take those rushes
and you turn them into ACES CG.
So you're linearizing them and mapping
those primaries to the ACES CG primaries.
And that's handled sort of in a way
that's the same for everything.
It's all kind of homogenized.
If there are different camera formats,
they all end up in the
same space for a show.
And then from there, you need to balance
them all and match them all
so that they work together.
So is that roughly
capturing the process there?
That is exactly the ins...
It captures the process because us coming
from the DI, so from
DI or final color
or finishing color, we don't have to deal
with what's being
added in the background.
We just received the
final images if you want.
Me being on the other side of the fence
now in the VFX world,
well, when all my friends
were doing magic in comps and layout and
creature and set
extensions, whenever they
are adding, let's say, some set
extensions in the
background, if we do not have those
balanced and neutral images,
well, they have to work more.
They have to work harder to integrate the
same asset if we
want, so the same building
or the same creature that's going to be
presented in various angles.
So if we don't have the neutrals, then
they have to work more to
integrate their elements
into the shots.
So the compositors then are going, "I
have my element, I have
my creature, and I have
my lighting pass, and that's been created
sort of globally in a CG world."
And so that's going to be the same
everywhere, but, "Oh, my
footage is different shot to
shot."
So by smoothing out those differences and
utilizing, do you pick
a hero shot or something
and say, "Everything's going to match
that one," and maybe they've
done their look development
or something on that master shot, so
getting everything else to
match helps the composite.
Exactly.
So you're opening a parenthesis there
because you mentioned
hero shot and you mentioned
look development, and the way we work is
the way we work in a
grading session, right?
So I do like to pick a hero shot like we
would do in a regular
sequence if you do DI or if
you start.
you know grading the sequence and that's
usually a shot that
includes let's hope more characters
in that sequence it's not too wider of a
shot it's not too much of
a close-up and you know we
start from there then the clients are
start from there then the clients are
giving us the the primary
grade so that the client look if
you want that was previously created in
DI and we have
those and we always aim to go
towards that direction just because I
give you well a very
general example if the plates are
super warm and super orangey but the
final client look is a
very cold very contrasty very
very shadowy contrasty dense look then
there is no point for us to
balance the sequence and go
against that look so i don't want to go
hip hyper warm if the
final look is hyper blue
so we can give and help the compositors
and the other departments
lighting and creature and
layout to go towards that less saturated
less contrasty image to help their work
right so the the neutral and the balance
then it's subjective is
that right like you're
creative within that like you're not
simply lining up red green
and blue and we're balanced
well it's that's what I thought at the
beginning. I was like well
this is fairly straightforward
right a technical grade so we have the
mcbeth chart usually we
have the gray balls and the the
shiny light for the lighting the
reflection balls and I was
like that's pretty easy we are
just comparing three patches of gray we
are lining up the values
and that's it job done well
little did i know it's not
not like that easy. And I'm saying it's not easy.
It's fun because it
introduces a creative aspect to it.
So in some shows, yes, those patches
are working perfectly nice and fine.
All the cameras align and
it's amazing. And it's cool.
However, our clients inside the VFX world
are maybe not the external clients,
but they are the VFX
supervisor and the comp supervisor.
So sometimes they have preferences.
They know what they can do down the road
or with the pixel manipulation that they are doing.
So they are like, no, I
don't like a technical balance.
Push it towards whatever the primary client look
or give me a little bit more warmth.
Because you know, we always look for skin
tones. We like pleasing skin tones.
We always look for a
common element in a shot and
in order to achieve that balance,
sometimes it's not the character.
Sometimes it's the car, the red car or
we did a
well famous movie and
there were several cars
involved. So those needed to be very
matched and very close in the sequence
because well, they were
building on top of that. So
sometimes it can be a technical grade.
Sometimes it can be a
little bit more creative.
So I might jump in here and just say
Christian has been very coy
when he says a famous show.
And I should have possibly mentioned this
during the introduction
that I'll mention it now.
If you want to see the kinds of shows
that Christian's worked
on, just check out his IMDB.
They're all there and
have a look at what DNEG do.
It's the absolute gold standard work in
visual effects, but we won't be
discussing any shows today in
detail, but most people have no idea what
a VFX colorist does.
Lots of people who ask me, what is this
VFX coloring grading?
You know, yes, it involves this technical
aspect, but what I really like is
we always work in a big team, right? So
even though I cannot show anything
basically because we do not have the
final ownership of the
grading on that show,
it happens sometimes that
we need to propose a creative
grade on that sequence because
it will better serve the work of the VFX
artist. Obviously, we will never ever
step against the created look or the
defined look that was done in the eye
with the DOP and the DI colorist.
So we have to be very,
well careful about that. We can't just go
wild, but that's where
I find there is a fine,
fine step.
Yes, it is creative. Yes, it's very fine,
and you can't go crazy,
and yet it can be fun because
an example I can give, we did
some colors on a trailer and
if I was not mistaken, I didn't compare
pixel for pixel, but what I've seen, the
first image on that
trailer, was what we propose.
And of course that creates a little bit
of warm and fuzzy
feeling. It's not just a credit.
You can see your images on
the screen and it's amazing.
Yeah, I mean that creative side of it,
you're part of the image development and
the color development
process. So the kinds of films that you
work on might be in visual effects for a
year or two years and
during that time,
there might be parts of the DI going on,
there might still be grades
being revised even editorially.
But you are like the
conduit in visual effects between
these onset colorists and the DI
colorists and the editorial changes that
might be happening and
you're kind of
guiding that image and
moving it through as the image starts to
take shape. And I think
you may see that mostly in
sequences that have a
lot of blue screens.
Can you talk to me about grading blue
screens because that's a real challenge.
So
grading blue screen and green screen
initially, I like to key the blue screen
or the green screen out and
put a gray patch in the back.
So that helps me.
At least my eyes will not be tricked all
the time by the green
screen or the blue screen.
And I can concentrate on the faces, the
skin tones, the objects or
whatever is in those green screens. Of
course, we have the scopes
or we have the histograms, but
when you look at an image and that gray
is in the background,
it's also helping me
if I grade on top of it.
Well, it tells me this gray looks a
little bit tinted. You're
doing something back off, you know.
So
that's just me. So I brought this in the
VFX world whenever I show
some of the sequences with the blue
screen, green screens.
And they are like, yes,
can you tweak a little bit
this or can we tweak
a little bit this? And
we're like, the lighting is a little bit
different. We have a white
shirt, we have a close-up.
Let's put this gray background in the
background and let's compare
then because a lot of people are
well, they are aware, but it's
unconscious, it's subconscious, right?
They are looking at the images. They're
like, I feel like this is like this.
When
you take that green and blue screen away,
the images are falling into the place
they are supposed to be.
That's right. And even when you know that
because our eyes white
balance after time, even though
you know that that's happening, you can't
really do anything about it.
So the longer that you look at a blue
screen, the more you're
going to adjust for the blue.
And so you're going
to see it more neutral.
And then that's going to affect the
warmth or the coolness of
the shot quite dramatically.
But like you say, once you take that out
and when you put in that, that, that
gray, are you looking
at an 18 percent gray?
Are you looking at a really like that
classic neutral patch, right?
I'm trying to put the 18. Well, actually
the 15, yeah, the 18 percent gray, which
is 50 usually on the scopes.
So yes, 18 percent in
linear, 50 on the screen.
That is it. I try to put that because
that's I would say that's the gray patch
that we are mostly used to.
And it gets ingrained in your, well, in
your, I can't say mechanical memory, I
can say visual memory.
But adding that in there, it just it's an
ease of mind for the VFX Sups, comp
sups, because they can see.
in a more neutral environment.
30 seconds or more, you're
just looking at an image,
your eyes are balancing, like they are...
(laughs)
They are tricking you, basically.
So that's why the gray,
that's why I always say,
let's have a look at the scopes,
let's have a look at the
histogram at some point,
because it's easy to...
get carried away in the little values in
the black, the little
values in the whites, the
little values here, we can measure so
many things now in Nuke
or in Baselight and even
in Resolve, right?
But sometimes it's a perception and
sometimes it's, well, it's a
tricky, it's a tricky color.
The eye is tricked actually by the
surrounding colors into
thinking that this is, well,
this is not what you actually see.
Yeah, I have a rule that I live by even
in a really time
sensitive context in DI that
if you make a really crazy decision at
5pm, it's probably the wrong one.
You know, the morning is the time when
you've got the fresh eyes.
So do you have any other tricks that you
use for that sort of material?
Because I'm familiar with, you know, if
I'm trying to get a
balance on a shot and it's
really difficult, sometimes I'll flip it
into black and white and
I do that in a finishing
color context just to reset my eyes.
After I come back out of black and white,
I see the colors as they are again for at
least a moment and I
can trust that moment.
It's also really good for gauging
contrast, of course.
Do you have any other little tricks that
you might be able to share with us?
That's the best trick that I was taught
by a colorist as well.
The story goes, when you balance the
sequence, you can try and
do the first pass in black
and white.
You're going to get your contrast there.
And especially when we balance, to go
back a little bit to a
technical step, these balance
neutrals in Nuke or however we use it, we
can't have access to all the operators we
usually have in a grade in Resolve.
Good point, good point.
So it's a little bit limited.
But like we usually say, from a limited
point of view, it pushes
you to find just from RGB
balancing a point where
everything meets in the middle.
So even if you don't have access to
contrast, saturation, et
cetera, et cetera, it pushes
you to force yourself.
And the black and white
pass, that's a good pass.
If we have very complicated sequences, I
like to put them in
black and white and I like
to see if my contrast levels are there.
And then another, well, another, except
the wipes that we can do
between images, that's,
well, of course, comparing to the hero
shots all the time and not
forgetting the hero shots
that we picked in the beginning, which
happened to me on a few cases.
And we continue to do a different shot.
So you are just slightly,
well, going on a sideline.
Line just a tiny bit still.
But it is important though, I think even
in final color, when
you pick your heroes, you
continue to go back to the same reference
because every shot is
going to have a small
amount of difference between them.
You can't help that, right?
But you're saying how the importance is
to go back to that
first initial chosen hero,
right?
Always.
Otherwise you're introducing a small
amount of difference
every time you refer.
Absolutely.
It's the...
This is how I learned in the beginning
when I was in the VFX world, right?
Because of the limitations of the
operators we use, either
in Nuke or Resolve, you
just have to stick to that hero shot
because it is so easy with the
limitations to introduce
a slightly...
Well, a tint, right?
Somewhere.
It doesn't matter which direction it is.
And then you have a new shot.
And it's really nice and you're in a very
good spot in a very good position.
And you like that shot.
And you're like, "Oh, from now on, I'm
just going to check with this shot."
Well, no.
We should always go back to the hero.
At least from a time to time, more often
than less, go back to the hero shot.
We can compare between the new one that
we like, but the hero,
it's the Bible and it
helps us not to diverge too
much from the center line.
Especially when you're talking about
sequences and films like
when DENG's the main vendor
for a film, like you might be dealing
with, correct me if I'm
wrong, but like thousands
of shots.
And because all those sequences in a
movie, they can be different places,
different locations,
even if we come back
to them, time of days.
So it's very important not to say, "These
are similar angles."
I'm going to refer to the same hero from
the other sequence
because that was nice because
maybe that was in the new sequence.
It's a different time of day.
The intention is different.
So all the tiny details are becoming...
very important when you can't rely on our favorite
tools. Seconadaries... let's
put a little vignette there let's do a huge shift
Please, please, yes,
please talk to me about this.
So you've mentioned having
a very particular toolset
of operators.
Can you tell me what those operators are?
- Most of the VFX
companies, I would say...
They work with the
standard CDL SOP values,
slope offset and power.
That's the standard
means of transportation
of exchange of the grades
between DI and the VFX houses.
That was the case.
- And there's I think a
few reasons for that, right?
And I just wanna jump in
and explain something here.
So that was a standard
that was put together
by the ASC early on.
And that was done between a collaboration
with color scientists and DPs,
when you were moving from film to digital
to talk about what kinds
of parameters, colorists,
and especially dailies
colorists should have,
like how much control they
should have over the images.
And one of the reasons why
that's such an elegant system
is that you can do a
lot with those 10 values.
You get three for
slope, three for offset,
three for power, and then
one more for saturation,
which leads you to 10 values.
You can do a lot with that.
Like it's really powerful,
but it's still simple enough
for you to be able to look at and say,
oh, I can see from these 10 numbers,
what's changed in this shot?
Like a DP might look at it and say,
oh, they've really
had to push that a lot.
Maybe my balances are off, or,
oh, they haven't moved that much.
It must be, we're pretty
well balanced in the camera.
And then one of the cool
things for VFX
is that it's mathematically accurate.
So you can go forwards and backwards,
you can add and remove,
and you don't, it's lossless.
Is that right?
You're not losing?
- I think my understanding of the
mathematic behind it, and I may be wrong,
but my color science
friends could correct us.
It's an easy, simple enough operator
that does not require a
lot of power, machine power,
if you want, to apply
it in the Quicktimes,
in the, you know,
compared to a cube, for example.
- And a cube is also potentially a lossy,
compressed, destructive operation, right?
1D, maybe not, but 3D, definitely.
- Exactly.
So I think the main consensus was,
CDLs in the SOP values
were the simplest tool
with a broad stroke, simple enough,
but powerful enough to
give you looks and grades
that are, or can be, powerful.
I can give you an
example where I had the chance,
at the beginning of the project,
to talk to the colorist
that was on the final side.
And that's one of the perks that
sometimes we may have,
so we can talk to the final colorist.
And actually discussing how CDLs
compared to a full power
Baselight or Resolve grade,
differs and how sometimes a CDL grade
is a very good tool, an effective one.
And sometimes it's
maybe not the best tool
because it has limits.
And in the case we were discussing,
it was a film film,
so film stock project.
And to get the DOP looks with a CDL,
that was, well, maybe not possible.
So they decided to go
with the different Baselight
or Resolve full grade.
But for the most
projects, when I would say
everything is well thought from the
beginning and planned,
and the show LUTs are in place and used,
and the DI process has time
to go through the sequences,
a CDL does a great job.
- In that case, it sounds as though
they were trying to achieve things
that a primary grade
couldn't necessarily do, right?
Like, perhaps you would
need curves, secondaries,
operations that
aren't so easily invertible
or perhaps impossible to invert.
And one of the important things about
where VFX sits in the pipeline is
you don't wanna be doing something
that's gonna change
the look of the plate.
Because when you deliver to DI,
is it, no color choices
should be baked in, should they?
- Absolutely, so the
most important thing that,
well, sometimes there are
exceptions to the rules,
but we should never
grade the plates per se,
unless it's
adjustments or tiny adjustments
to the specific hue or, you know.
But if we are talking
about grades and general grades
applied over the whole image,
then we are coming into play.
So we're using the client ones
or we are proposing new ones,
but those are never destructive.
- Always metadata, aren't they?
- They're never in the EXRs,
they're always given as a metadata.
So when you are in DI...
you just apply them
and you have the same result as you've
seen before in the DI,
with the effects added.
And the difference is
inherent to what I mentioned before,
smoke, atmosphere, rays,
tiny hue shifts in costumes
to maintain the
continuity of the sequence,
et cetera, et cetera.
But never baking. (laughs)
- I mean, that's an
amazing feat of color science
to be able to visualize and do so much
whilst keeping everything pristine
and protecting the negative like that.
Like that's incredible workflow.
- And I would say to
move the CDL discussion
a little bit further,
because we have the
luxury of going in Resolve,
in some shows we can even
propose a cube or an LMT.
In the general term of an LMT,
we I'm not necessarily
referring to the ACES LMT,
but just to give a
color tweak if you want,
that is more complex than a CDL.
That will be applied in the final looks
of the client QuickTimes,
and we can help with that as well.
So that's also an
exciting thing that we can do
to help the comp work
actually, sell the shots.
(laughs)
- So when you're talking about LMT,
that raises a really good point.
So one of the things that we haven't
explicitly mentioned
is when you're working in visual effects,
you aren't working display referred.
So what you see is what you get,
but only if you've got
the correct OCIO config
and everything,
the color science journey is correct,
then what you see is what you get,
but it is scene referred.
So using an LMT,
you're not baking in any
kind of display transform
in that process at all.
- Exactly, that's exactly what I mean.
Let's say in a
simplified quote unquote workflow.
ACES, let's pick ACES.
The display transform, which is at
the end, it happens because
it's by default included in your OCIO
setup. I mean if it's not ACES and if
it's a different color gamut we work in
That's also, it can be adapted.
OSIO is very malleable as a system.
However, for ACES,
where the LMT concept came,
that cube that we can export from Resolve
and get it back in the
pipeline in the VFX world,
it does not include
the display tone curve.
So never, we are not double-LUTing,
we are not applying contrast and curves
that are not supposed to be there.
So we are just including color decisions,
but more complex color
decisions into a cube.
Never including the display tone curve.
So, and never baking into the EXR.
It's just for display reasons if we want.
And the easy side of that is,
let's say in a VFX environment,
some people are gonna see things
on their calibrated monitor,
whether it's 709, whether it's sRGB.
Some people will see
things in a cinema room,
so there will be a P3.
And because that LMT is
supposed to live inside the ACES
system, if you want,
all the display transforms at the end
are taken care of by the OCIO.
So you can see the same thing,
and you can be confident
that what you're seeing
in a cinema room and what you're seeing
on a different display,
well, if all the
settings and the color setups
in Resolve are properly set up,
then you are confident that what you see
is what you will get.
- Yes, yes.
But yeah, it's amazingly powerful,
and it kind of gives you
the best of both worlds
because you can preview
decisions that were made on set,
and you can preview decisions that are
being made in the DI,
and you can see how the visual effects
are gonna look through
those color processes
and know with certainty
that things are translating
the way that the artists intended,
and the visual effects
supervisors intended,
and people are then, like
the client's able to see things
in a way that's familiar to them.
They don't have to look at log images.
They're gonna know that the monster
or whatever's been added to the frame
is actually showing up.
- Yes. - When you cool blacks down
it's not gonna disappear.
- One of the
important aspects is that ACES
brought to the game is
creatures and textures.
In some shows, the final
creative look of the show, right,
is strong, powerful, and those artists,
before the end of the comps,
they would need a
neutral environment to work in.
So by being able to
work under different views,
that helps them.
So the textures, and like you mentioned,
the monster is green.
Well, it needs to be green,
but under the client look,
it might be a little bit different.
So they need to be aware of that
so they can adjust textures
and skin, et cetera, et cetera.
- Yeah, yeah.
So it's a little bit like,
it reminds me of hair and makeup tests,
but for elements that you're creating
from scratch, right,
because you do your hair and makeup test
to make sure that everything's
translating, you know,
even if it was film,
oh, well that, you know,
we can't put them in that red jumper
because that doesn't work well
when you print it to
that stock or whatever.
So it's really that print aspect
of the pipeline that you get to preview,
but then you can take it right off again
and you can do it with a click
instead of a chemical process.
It's pretty cool.
Can you tell me about,
there's so many things to cover with
visual effects grading,
but can you tell me a little bit about
what would be your process
of dealing with a challenging location
with a lot of variable lighting?
- The changes or differences.
That's again comes and
starts with me chatting
with the VFX supervisor or
the comp supervisor or both.
And they are trying to explain us
what are they trying to
achieve with the final shots
because I'm not seeing those
until the work is advanced.
So if we have just a beach
and things happening on that beach
shot in different days,
different weather situations,
I have no idea if we're keeping the sky,
if we're replacing the sky,
if it's important to
keep the sky matching
or they are now
ignored that we're gonna do
sky replacement for all the shots,
do not take it into account.
Let's pick a hero shot and
let's see what's important.
The horse, the car,
the obviously the main characters,
but that goes without saying.
But then we're going into the
challenge that you mentioned,
the sand is gonna look different because,
or if it's not sand,
it's a better example.
Snow, grading snow, we all love it.
So that's when it comes into account,
hero shot and then I'm
saying, what is our tolerance?
So if we are to make the snow or the sand
it falls under slightly
greenish or slightly magenta.
I don't personally like
slightly magenta in lots of times.
I think a lot of colorists are not liking
anything slightly magenta.
So we decide on that
and then we're trying
to match everything the best we can
within that tolerance.
So is it perfect? No.
- It's such a good point that you raise.
Yeah, I love that you
raised the point of,
you have to know what work
is being done on these plates
because when you're doing a final color,
everything that is in
the plate is on screen.
When you're doing visual effects color,
these people are so clever.
These visual effects
artists are so incredibly clever.
They could be doing
anything to these shots.
So you really need to know, like you say,
am I gonna sit here and
waste 20 hours matching skies
and then find out that
they're throwing those skies away,
because it's actually set on Pluto
and there's gonna be a
star field there instead.
- Absolutely.
Like if I go back to the
example of the snow or the sand,
maybe that will not even
stay in the reality parameters.
So even if I do match them,
but then that turns
to be a foreign planet,
like you mentioned, or a fantastic land,
everything will be
practically hue shifted
and the clouds will be
green or whoever, we don't know.
So that's why I find it's important
if we have that
discussion at the beginning
with odd situations,
what is going to be done in those shots.
And I don't need to know the
details in the utmost details,
but at least the general idea.
So we can then match and grade
to help them deliver the
shots with least effort.
Well, least effort.
They always put a lot
of effort into those
to look magic like they do.
- But it's about making that
workflow efficient for them
and so that they can
then focus on the things
that are really
important to their department.
So you're cutting that part of the effort
out ideally for them.
Even though every
compositor that I've ever met
is an incredible colorist as well,
because they just have that eye, it's
part of compositing.
It's like having
another colorist as a client.
- It describes exactly the situations
because these artists are integrating,
well, worlds in those shots.
And they have to be
extremely, extremely careful
about the tiny shadows, the tiny details,
the tiny highlights, the speculars,
everything that they add to a shot
needs to be matching and integrating.
And yes, that requires an eye for,
well, a shadow in the middle of the day.
It's not the same shadow as a morning
or a shadow in the evening.
So the way I see our work,
even if it's in the
shadow and in the background,
it's to support their decisions
and to make their decisions easier.
And I find that the fact
that some VFX companies
have these roles proves that, well,
it's not just an
extra layer of let's grade
or let's do things.
It proves that they are, well, a
supportive, important role.
- That's right, that's right.
Because that kind of work
that you're doing there,
that visual effects coloring,
in a company that doesn't
have a dedicated colorist,
that work, if I understand correctly,
would be done by compositors
that would fall to
compositive supervisors or?
- I think that's the general consensus.
In some other companies,
the compositor supervisors
are taking over those roles.
And some of the
compositor or the lead compositors
probably as well, because
they do have an eye for color.
Whenever some people are
coming into our company
and they find out that there is a
dedicated department
and people taking care of those things,
I feel a relief.
And I feel the, not just
because they can't do it,
because obviously they can,
but the amount of work these people do
and the amount of.
Exactly. The pixels they need to move.
If someone with an eye for this
takes care of the sequences, I think it's...
that's what I hear. I think it's a very,
a very big relief for them to trust us.
Oh, absolutely. And whether it's done by
a comp sup or a lead
compositor, or by the color department,
I think what you all
have in common is that you don't work on
individual shots the way
that an artist would be. Because you've
mentioned the hero shot
and matching, you need to be in the same
way that you are in DI
across the whole sequence and across the
narrative intention in
a way as well.
Towards the end of the
project, the fact that one person has
access to the whole sequence as opposed
to the artist trying to
match two hero shots, that has an
advantage obviously, because
one pair of eyes sees the whole sequence.
We can take decisions
based on that. So before that
gets sent and approved by the
client as a final, final shot, when we
have to do some tweaks,
seeing a sequence is of
a giant help of course.
Yes, so you see initially
when you check the client grades,
that everything from a quality control
perspective is working.
But then towards the end of
the process, you can also, if
necessary, or if you're asked to make
other adjustments to make
sure that if there is a change between
the lighting and shots,
that it can be dealt with
by grade as opposed to a comp
change.
Exactly.
And obviously, that like keeping that
internal is, is good for,
you know, efficiency, and it
creates less work for other
people in other departments. It doesn't
have to go for a check
in DI, because you can
check it your with your colorist
knowledge.
Yeah, we say that, you
know, we never step onto the DI
ownership of the grades, of
course. But if we can help them
start in a better position,
then we can and with minor
nudging and adjustments, then I don't
think that you or I, as a
final colorist would get that would be
extremely mad at things
because it would simplify and
you know, make more efficient
your work in refining and you know,
carving more details of
the images.
So that's right. And because each each
process, each part of
the process is available, you could even
say, well, I just need
to see the difference between the on-set
grade and what came out
of VFX. Oh, they've had to
darken it a bit. I see. Or
look, they warmed it up. Okay,
I get it. You know, it's just
another
visualization and another step
in that in the thought process that
shapes the image and you
make that available in a way
that is take it or leave it.
Exactly. It's, I would say we're always,
we're always on the same
side supporting the
creative visions of the well, the
director, obviously, and the
DOP, but the VFX supervisor that
is supporting them in his own role. And
we are there to make
his life easier as well. So
it's just like we say, tiny
adjustments that are building up to this
final product, which is
usually and hopefully amazing and great
and colorful and magic.
Because the effects world does work with
mainly, well, fantastic
science fiction and sometimes less
visible effects. And that's
also a world where they, they are
invisible effects. And that
is also a challenge sometimes, then every
project comes with a
different aesthetic. And it
comes with a different setting,
different cameras, different
camera used, different color
sciences, if you want, but the, the
quality and the perfection
on some wide shots, shots on
an island somewhere is just
mindblowing. And you can see the quality
and the effort that was
put into those. So I'm trying not to do
anything to diminish
that.
Yes, yes, I know exactly what you mean.
Like sometimes the job
is to not destroy how gorgeous it looks
and do as little as you
can get away with doing because it's,
it's there. And I think
something that you just
mentioned that I'd love to hear
tiny little bit more about is the
different workflows. And
another great thing about being a visual
effects colorist, and in
your position, is that you
would get to understand a lot of
different workflows.
That was one of the things that getting
an understanding of the
pipelines was one of my well,
curiosities, if you want. So
getting or reading all the
effects specs from the shows, and
understanding, we are bringing all the
cameras into the common
space. And we decide that
for the effects vendors, we are
giving a ACES AP 0, or we
are which is which is amazing,
because while most of the
houses will work a CG. So the
transformation between ACES AP 0 as a
transport gamut, if we
want to ACES CG is
straightforward. Well, we can say
straightforward. It's taken care of
the OCIO easily when you're doing it right,
we can replicate it in Resolve very easily
without too much complication if you want.
Other shows decided that each camera
would be treated in its own color space.
So RED would be treated as RED,
ARRI would be treated as ARRI, et cetera, et cetera.
And that adds to the challenges
when we receive the images,
we need to be aware of those.
So when our departments are ingesting the
images, well, you know,
color science needs to
state that's very clear for them.
Be aware that some cameras require
different treatments, because
otherwise we get differences
and we don't know where and etc. etc. So
I'm not sure if I was clear.
I think what it really highlights for me
is that the way that color is dealt with
when you've got people working linearly
and, you know, lighting working
in the closest way to optical as possible
because you're creating effects
even if they're not invisible effects,
they still need to be extremely realistic
and believable effects. So you're working
in these color spaces
that can deal with that
and can make that translate on screen.
Everyone's got their own
preferred way of doing it.
You need that pipeline to be complex and
then someone throws in
another camera format at you
and you're like, that's expanding the
complexity again. But it's
like almost exponentially.
The possibilities are infinite, like we
say. That's why I sometimes,
most of the times actually, I look at my
colour science colleagues
and I'm like, wow, you guys.
The infinite possibilities and
complexities you guys deal with.
We say that as a VFX colorist in the VFX
companies, we have to deal with technical
and creative aspects,
but they have to make sure that all these
colour transformations and decisions
are working for a myriad of softwares,
right? Because lighting and
layout and comp and creature
and so many softwares and they need to
make them work. So
the pipeline is seamless
and it's invisible if we want to the
artists, right? Because they need to
concentrate on their creative work
and not have to deal with technicalities
or glitches and et cetera,
et cetera. So kudos to them.
I know, I know. There needs to be like a
world color scientist day where we can
all give them a bunch of flowers
and shake their hands and thank them
because when you work
with a color scientist,
you realise just how
much you rely on them.
Absolutely. I, like you mentioned, I like
a technical challenge or a technical...
knowledge, acquisition, and I
like to read some of those color
science documents. But I'm
like, when we come to equations and
fractions and
probabilities and double integrals and
mathematics, even if I study
them in school, I'm like, you
guys, kudos, I leave this to you.
Yes. And I reckon that like that narrow
and specialized understanding that every
person has in the pipeline of a visual
effects show is what makes them capable
of creating these incredible images.
Because there's, they're just beyond like
so many films that you work on. I would
watch with my jaw absolutely on the
ground going, how is that possible?
And it's, I think because in that
company, you have so many giant brains
that are so good at their Island. And
there is that teamwork, that network of
trust that, you know, after years working
on something, it does come together.
And it doesn't look that good.
I can't name the names of the shows, but
I had the chance to meet the visual
effects supervisors on
those highly visible projects.
And just to
have access to their mind, how do they
plan and how do they support the director
to plan those sequences.
For me, just that without going into
details was joy pure joy.
How did you come up with this?
Kind of rigging of sets meets visual
effects meets the real effects.
You know, we are all exposed to the
Making Ofs of these movies today, but
seeing them from the
inside, sometimes is mind blowing.
Like, yeah, the magic and the way they
can push the boundaries of
these movies is just amazing.
I am so, so grateful for you sharing this
insight with us and with
me and with Mixing Light.
And I just I'm beyond impressed with what
you guys can do. And I think you have a
very enviable position.
And for anyone who didn't know what
visual effects coloring was before and is
now aware of it, it's on your radar.
These roles do exist in big companies and
they bring more than you would think in
terms of the joy of being involved in
these major productions.
Well, you summed it up
actually very nicely.
I think of us, the VFX colorist, as the
added value to the
efficiency of the work for the
comps and the other departments.
And also, I would lie if I would say that
working on those
high-end images is not cool.
plainly said like this, you know, because we all
did the advertising, the TV commercials,
the other projects. And when I started the VFX
role, I was really unsure. I was unsure.
What am I getting into? Am I going to be up to the
standard or my experience would be
helping or not? Would I have to start from scratch?
Etc, etc, etc. And while it turned
out like you mentioned, some of my, and our baggage
helps a lot. And you get to learn
and touch amazing images on the way. So win-win.
Well, what an absolute treat. What an
absolute treat for you and what a treat
for me to get to speak to you today.
Thank you so much for joining us and I
cannot wait to see the next film with a
Christian's magic VFX colour on it. I'm
sure it's going to be another big one and
hopefully I'll get to speak to you again
and find out more about what you do.
But for now, this has been Kali
Bateman for Mixing Light.