Welcome to the Colour Timer Podcast.
I am your host Vincent Taylor.
This is the podcast where
we speak to professionals
who work with colour.
Today we are absolutely doing that.
We're speaking to Mr. Eric Weidt,
a colourist for film and television,
directly associated
with Mr. David Fincher,
of whom I'm a huge fan.
I can't wait to chat to Eric about
projects such as Mank.
We haven't really
talked about black and white
much in the show yet, so
I really wanna do that.
And also get under the
hood if we've got time
into the world of Mindhunter,
which is an amazing series and colourful.
Ah, I wanna jump into that.
Don't forget, we're
gonna use our colour timer,
our 15 minute sand timer,
just to keep the
conversation focused, but let's go.
Take your seats because the
hourglass is about to turn.
We are entering the
world of the micro podcast.
Explore the craft, creativity,
and science of
professionals who use colour
to tell stories.
Welcome to the colour
timer with Vincent Taylor.
Eric, welcome.
Thank you, Vincent.
It's nice to be here.
I'm very excited to talk to you.
A little bit nervous
because I'm a big fan.
No, not possible.
Oh, calm, just breathe, just breathe.
Nine times out of 10, I
forget to start my sand timer.
So I'm gonna be a good boy.
Here's my sand timer.
So we're gonna kick it off.
So it's like a game show,
you know, like under pressure.
Okay, I've got a great
warm up question for you.
You ready?
Your desert island film or TV series.
Oh, you're stuck on a, and I know,
I know there's no
electricity on the desert island,
but let's just--
Do you want to give them a standpoint of colour
or just enjoyment?
Not just enjoyment.
Oh man, that's a tough one.
I mean, the easy sort
of film that I would say
is one of my favourites is
Blade Runner, the original one.
But what got me into
film and cinematography
to begin with was
just, when I was a student,
was films like Fellini - Satyricon,
or The Conformist or whatnot.
You know, just things that look good.
Yeah, well you'll
have to watch it at night
on the desert island,
'cause it'll be too bright,
I guess, with a little sand.
All right, all right, let's,
I should stop mucking around,
'cause we haven't got much time.
Now, when I was researching,
your name, it's always
associated with David Fincher.
Of course.
And I know this is a, maybe diplomatic,
but does that ever get frustrating?
No, not at all.
I work, he keeps me busy, you know, so.
But to be perfectly honest, since I
arrived in Hollywood,
I've only been working for David Fincher.
I mean, yeah, colour-wise,
I've only worked for David.
Yeah.
And you spent a whole heap of years,
like 15 years or so, working in Paris
with filmmakers and photographers.
Yeah.
Tell me about that.
What was that like,
and then how does that inform
your role now as a colourist?
Well, I worked in the
fashion photography world,
starting in around 2000.
And it was all about
still capturing of stills.
And I was sort of a Photoshop guru
and a printing guru over there.
And so, I was working
for this digital company
that kind of evangelized digital capture
to still photographers who were used to
working in traditional film.
And the idea was to sell
them on this whole new process,
using film emulation LUTs.
And a lot of them had
their own universes and styles.
So we would create
custom LUTs for them to,
so that their universe
could sort of exist, you know,
live on a screen while
they're shooting, you know,
their medium format stills and whatnot.
And I would say that that
was my very big introduction
to photography.
And it's all, it's a
really fascinating world
with amazing talents
and it's pretty high end.
Yeah.
I feel like it's like
one of those talk shows
where you get a listener to call in,
because I was chatting to a director
friend of mine yesterday
and I mentioned that
I was speaking to you
and he goes, "Oh, can
you ask him this question?"
So this is for my
friend, what did he say?
All right, how do you
guide a first time director
into giving you actionable feedback,
especially if they haven't
developed a visual vocabulary?
Oh.
That was his question.
Oh, I mean, that's part of the, you know,
you're providing a service to somebody
and when you're working
with artists, you know,
it's such a whole spectrum of people,
it's as wide a spectrum as
there are people, you know.
Some people aren't clear upfront,
they have this process
that it takes you a while
to figure out.
Others are extremely clear upfront,
they give you
references, that's always great.
Others aren't clear necessarily upfront,
but when they sit in front of us,
when you put something in front of them,
and David Fincher is one
of these kind of people,
he's extremely verbose and
clear about what you need to do
to that image to make it
look like he wants it, you know.
And in that sense, it's easy to just follow his direction,
sometimes.
When you begin working on a project,
be it film or television,
what stage do you get involved?
Well, with Fincher, I get
involved very, very early
because one thing, I'm
usually hired by the,
I'm not part of a
facility, I'm a freelancer,
so I am essentially
hired by the film itself,
like any other crew member.
And so I'm on from the start,
working with the DP in terms of,
in finding out what
the project's all about,
what they want, do they need show LUTs,
do you know what kind of
camera they're gonna shoot with,
and they do camera
testing a lot of times,
and it goes through my base light,
and they say they want
me to throw things up
right from the start.
Obviously, if I have time.
- Yeah, yeah, it's always the time thing.
In regards to working with Mr. Fincher,
I mean, have you noticed,
over the period of time
you've worked with him,
that there's been a change in aesthetic,
or is that not relevant because it
depends on the project?
- I wouldn't say there's
been a change in his aesthetics
since I've known him,
since I've been working for him,
so that's about eight years.
We had one project that was more,
well two actually, that were more
outliers than others,
but no, every project is
different, I have to say.
But I would say over time,
'cause I'm remastering some
of his old classics right now,
like I remastered The Social Network,
I'm in the process of
remastering Panic Room,
and I'm also just starting on Seven.
And I would say that
he's much more interested
in what he calls the suppleness
of sort of an Ansel
Adams type of zone range.
He's really interested in seeing details
in all ranges of the spectrum.
Seven, for example,
was very, very crushed
in terms of the final look,
not in terms of the cinematography.
The original negative has lots of detail,
mostly, but the final
look that was applied to it
was very chiaroscuro, you know,
it was very, very,
very moody and contrasty.
And I would say David's look and
aesthetic since then
has moved into something more
where I would say he
uses the word suppleness
and I would just say that
he's really into detail, yeah.
- That's interesting.
When you mentioned Seven,
I've just got this wonderful memory
of going to see that film with my dad
and driving home in the car
and we both just kind of like,
you're just silencing.
- Yeah, it's an intense one.
- Now, I'm such a
massive fan of black and white
and so I really wanna
talk to you about Mank
and your process of that.
Where do I start?
I guess the first question is,
was that always gonna be
a black and white film?
- Yes, yeah, because it was always
about the creators of Citizen Kane
and it was very much
talk about replicating 40s,
the feel of 40s and
the cinematic look of
black and white from the time.
It's like, let's make this
look like it was shot back then.
So of course,
the end result is obviously widescreen
and not four by three or whatever,
but all these other
elements went into degrading,
well, we call it degrading,
but aestheticizing the
image to look historical,
like vintage-y, yeah.
- Yeah, which it absolutely does.
I mean, I've watched it
three times now, I think,
and every time I go,
"Oh, look what they did
in that, you know, so."
I mean, where did you start?
Did you start just by
kind of studying older films?
I mean, I know that seems
like an obvious question,
but where the heck
did you start with that?
- Well, we started with testing cameras
and there was a question of
whether they wanted to shoot
with color cameras or a monochromatic Red
that doesn't capture color,
just capture straight black and white,
and that was the latter was the choice.
And so it was like,
"Wow, this is gonna be fun.
"No color keys
whatsoever, no cheating underneath."
You know? - Of course.
- And so it's all Luma keys,
and that's quite a task, you know?
When you're used to
somebody being able to tell you,
"See that tree back there?
"I want it more ominous or whatever,"
and you can't select
the color green, you know?
But you gotta find other ways.
But as far as the look of the film,
David and Eric Messerschmitt,
they really had clear ideas
of all the different elements
that make for an historical look,
things like softer lenses
on the side and gate weave
and really heavy optical grain,
and this kind of, especially
this kind of blooming thing
that used to happen
on certain film stocks.
Yeah, and so we bloom
the blacks aesthetically
and even sometimes key framing them
depending on the shot
and even blooming the highlights as well
on Amanda Seifried,
sometimes to give that gauzy
and kind of look.
And his marching orders were usually
using the word silvery.
And I think that goes
back to what I was saying
about Anansol Adams kind of tonal range
is that the silvers are in
the middle of the spectrum,
and so he wants all the different,
from A to Z in terms of those zones
to be in conversation with each other.
Yeah.
I mean, how much, I guess
it varies on the project,
but how much prep time
do you get for a project?
Well, with David, I
mean, they, like I said,
I don't work for a
facility, so I'm hired by the films.
And so I, you know, the
only reason I'm not working
from day one until
it's actually delivered
is because I usually have several
projects I'm working on.
But otherwise, David's
happy with being able
to come down the hall and say,
throw this up on the
baseline, I wanna see this scene
and let's work on it together.
And then, you know,
he'll spend 20 minutes
and then he'll walk
away and I'll keep working
and he'll pop in anytime, you know?
And he just loves it.
He loves
post-production more than anything.
Yeah.
Do you, outside the world of a colorist,
I mean, what is your,
what keeps your heart going?
What's your inspiration?
You mean like art?
Art or, you know, just expression.
I like storytelling a lot.
I like all forms of expression from
poetry lines on a page
to I love going to any
museum either of contemporary art,
not so much contemporary,
but painters and photographers.
And I mean, I do mind
a little conceptual,
I don't mind a little conceptual art,
especially if it's funny, but,
and I don't know, you
know, things like that.
Whatever, even reading books,
I've gotten back into
reading books lately
and the sky's the limit.
In music, I'm a horrible music nerd
and I've just loved music
my whole life, you know?
Do you play?
I do not play.
I've dabbled, but I
mean, I've dabbled in drums
and in guitar and
keyboard synthesizer things,
but I've always been kind of a DJ
and one of those kind of, you know,
I love playing the
game of like, you know,
hey, let's name 10 songs
that you have the word yellow in it, go.
You know, and that kind of silly thing.
Yeah, that's amazing.
Do you have a different approach
for like television versus cinema?
Well, yeah, no,
because, you know, like I said,
I've only really worked for Fincher
in terms of a colorist in narrative.
I mean, I did tons of
fashion work in coloring
and back in Paris,
but here I've only
worked for Fincher in any,
so him, it's like any TV
show needs to look like
a film anyways.
Yeah.
But I have worked on
documentaries with him
and also on animation and yeah, I mean,
sometimes the genre itself, you know,
really does dictate because
if you're doing a, you know,
a documentary that has
historical films in it or whatnot,
you can't just go and grade
those films again, you know.
You know, I've done those
kinds of things with him,
but I've also done animation and yeah.
I had no idea he'd done animation.
I didn't realize that.
He did an episode of Love,
Death and Robots season two
or three.
Yeah.
And I graded that.
Yeah.
What's that like grading animation?
I mean, how, I've only done
it once about 10 years ago.
So what's it like?
Well, with, well, it's
surprisingly similar.
I mean, the great thing is
that you have all the alpha
channels you want because
it comes from, you know, 3D.
And so they get, they usually
give you the hero, you know,
as an alpha and
automatically, you know what I mean?
So that you can dial him
or her or they in correctly,
you know, things like that.
But other than that,
it's, it's just as, you know,
with Fincher it's just as
demanding as any other genre.
Cause he's very, very
particular about what he likes.
Yeah.
Is there, is there a genre that you
haven't been involved
with that you would like to work on?
I don't know.
I'd love to, I'd love to
do a high dynamic range
documentary on volcanoes.
Cause the imagery is
just unbelievable, you know?
Wow. That's so specific.
That's like, I don't know if
you've seen this documentary
that came out called the love, love
couple or something.
But I already thought
that before because I'm a big
Werner Herzog fan.
And I was thinking, cause I
saw one documentary he did
about volcanoes and I was
like, damn, if I run him into him
in the supermarket and
say, Werner, I want to,
I want to grade your next volcano movie.
Cause it's just like a fascinating thing.
That would be my ticket
to work for Werner Herzog.
That's fantastic.
If he's listening.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
I'll give him a call.
That's it. My timer ran out.
We're done.
It goes so far.
And I've still got so
many other questions, but
Eric, thank you.
Thank you so much for taking time out.
It's not a problem at all.
Vincent, it was my pleasure.
Cheers.
Thank you so much,
Eric, for having a chat.
That was cool.
You the listener.
I was a bit nervous, right?
Yeah. It's hard.
You know, when there's
somebody you really respect
and you look up to like I've been
watching Eric's work
for years and yeah,
it's, it's hard to do that
to kind of control those
nerves, but I did my best.
Thank you so much to MixingLight.com
they're my executive
producer and putting the show on
and also to my friend
of the show Filmlight
and my producer Kayla.
And look, thanks for listening.
Like subscribe to all that kind of stuff.
It does help.
It does make a difference.
I appreciate it.
All right.
Good.
The color timer, a
micro podcast experience.