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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.
Hi everyone for Mixing Light, this is Kayleigh Bateman and I'm here today with CJ Dobson,
who is an amazing colourist in Melbourne and I've known of her and sort of tangentially
met her in passing quite a few times, but I've known her for as long as I've been in
the industry. She's an absolute pillar of the Melbourne community and she's been colouring
for 15 years. She's originally from Wellington and moved to Melbourne early on in her career
and worked at Digital Pictures, which is where I first heard of her. She was doing really
cool things, working at Digipix, making great music videos and colouring under the 16 colourists
there and sort of building on the knowledge that she already had from freelance colouring
in Wellington and then in Melbourne. And then at around 2012, I think it was, she went freelance
and had a couple of home suites, but mainly was freelancing all around Melbourne at different
post facilities and had a lot of really good connections with agencies and I sort of knew
her in a short form capacity. She was doing a lot of TVC colouring at that point in her
career and now very excitingly, she's just opened a new facility called Mood Labs Film
Looks, which is a big deal and it's a bit different to other post facilities. She's
definitely given it its own spin and its own take on what a facility can be and it's
quite exciting and it's also really exciting to see a woman being entrepreneurial and founding
a business in this space because it can be a bit techy and a bit of a male dominated
field. So I'm very thrilled to have her here today to talk about her trajectory from freelance
colourist into, you know, founder and owner of the facility and to find out a bit more
about Mood Labs and what they have to offer. So welcome.
Thanks, Kayleigh. It's wonderful to be here. Thanks for having me.
Oh, thank you for your time.
I actually, I am not from Wellington, but I did start my career there. Yeah, there's not
many other than Auckland, there's probably not many other places you can start out of
the film industry, but I'm from a much smaller town.
Oh, so you do that thing that we all do when we grow up in the country and you move to
the big smoke to do some work. Oh, that's cool. And Windy Wellington, how long were you there for?
I just lived in Wellington for two years.
Oh, that's good though. That's like long enough to really feel like you're a local after two years,
right? Oh, yeah, it was a great time. I mean, Wellington is just the best city,
apart from the weather. The weather is just, it's awful. On a good day though, I love Wellington.
I've only been there for a couple of days and I spent most of that indoors in a suite,
but I just thought it was such a beautiful city. It was kind of Melbourne-y though,
so it kind of makes sense why you moved to Melbourne because lots of the cafe culture
and little micro breweries and the little bit of art and culture, like a really cool spot to be.
It's a funny story. It's one day difference in my life where I could have, the next day I was
actually offered a job at Cutting Edge in Sydney, but the day before I accepted this job at Digital
Pictures in Melbourne. So like one day different and I could have had a whole,
it's like this whole other life. It's a sliding doors moment right there.
Yeah, totally. Well, I think Melbourne is lucky to have you, so glad that you didn't end up in Sydney.
Me too, I love Melbourne. We have this amazing community of colourists in Melbourne
that I just love. We catch up and we go have a beer and it's really wonderful and supportive.
I think that that feels, maybe because there are so many of us that we can do that,
but it does feel like kind of uniquely a Melbourne thing that we're so close.
Yeah, I really love that actually and I often see that from afar because I was Melbourne based for
a short time and now I'm Brisbane based and there are actually people who've travelled down to
Melbourne to do the colourist catch-ups who are Brisbane based. So, you know, I think it's kind
of the envy of Australia really in terms of that community. How lovely.
Yeah, we should have more, maybe like sit ones for all of us to kind of get together as well.
There's sometimes this one's in Sydney. Yeah, definitely and I think that kind of
cross-pollination that we don't really get as much now and I think we're going to return to this idea,
but when there were those big facilities and you could have multiple colourists working there at
the same time full-time and you could have multiple people in support roles coming up,
you know, we miss that because we haven't really had that for a while. So, having those social
opportunities to get together and to just have a chat about, you know, this crazy thing that we do,
such a lovely and unique thing. Just being alongside your peers and connecting,
it's so important and I think that's really true for me and for yourself as well having been in a
bigger shop. I remember sitting around and when it was quiet, digital pictures and there was seven
of us, I remember this one day, seven colourists sitting in a room. It was so great just to be able
to kind of like chat and talk about our processes and for me to be able to, as someone a little more
new to the industry, connect with those, you know, all those guys and see how they work was so valuable
and I know that the other freelance colourists and colourists who have like smaller shops as well
here, like we all really crave that. Definitely, I mean, I'd love to actually ask you about that.
So, moving from that, you know, seven colourist shop to freelancing, was that a bit of a shock
to the system? I was so ready for it. I think when I got to digital pictures, it was busier
and over the course of three years, it really quietened down to the point where we weren't really
permitted, I guess, to like go out and even like seek work because they were transferring ownership
of the business. Like we were basically shutting down and I think I can say this because the
business doesn't exist anymore but, you know, I know they were hiring people for fear of them
being competition so it wasn't because we had enough work and as the non-senior, like everyone
was senior and then there was me, I kind of got, you know, the dregs and so by the end of my three
years, I just, I was so ready to get out on my own. I already was self-taught, like I love the gear
and I was like all this stuff was changing, the tangent elements were just coming out and resolve
was like a couple of versions along and, you know, I was just like this is the right time for me to
be out on my own. As much as I missed some things about it, it was so valuable having my time there
but three years was enough. Yeah, so what were the things that you missed and how did you kind
of bring those back into your freelance practice? I think the thing like we talked about was
connecting with other people like who do what you do because it is kind of lonely being freelance
and for 10 years when I was freelance, I missed that and that's part of why I also wanted to start
a shop and like actually have a team because I think as a group you can achieve more than you can
on your own. I can't agree with you enough about that and I probably should have mentioned this
before we really started going but I've actually just opened up something myself up here.
Yeah, congratulations. I listened to your interview with Warren. Oh great, so you know I've got this
little sort of two room thing going on. It's a bit of a bootie. It sounds really similar.
It sounds like we're doing a similar thing. In some ways it's similar, I think in other ways what
you're doing is a little bit more revolutionary. You've kind of put an interesting spin on it and
you've definitely got I think a really strong business approach just looking at what you guys
do and how you kind of flowcharted it out of like you pick an artist, you pick a space and
you know you guys take care of the rest. It's really I think an interesting take on post and
facilities in general. So before we get too much into that I just wanted to say like I wonder
what it was that made you open mood labs and I feel like you might have already kind of
answered that a little bit. Yeah, I think probably one of the other driving factors was as a
freelancer I was kind of being put in a lot of situations where you know monitors were not
calibrated, things just weren't working like software needed an update and then when you know
update inevitably when you update something it's like this domino effect of everything else
needing updates and then four hours later you haven't started the grades. So I think as a
freelancer to have a facility that you know if I book it I know I'm going to show up and like we
have configurations for and like artist specific configurations and people conforming so it's all
kind of ready to go and you can trust in that and they're not wasting time because I think
worse than getting into a session and like being on the back foot and then everyone arrives and
nothing's kind of ready to go and you haven't even had a chance to like look at put a lot on
the footage and so that was one driving factor for me it was just like I just want somewhere that
people can come and it's totally neutral like when clients contact us we give them the list of
artists and say you pick like I would never book myself on something first it's always up to the
client to choose who they prefer to work with. I think that was kind of unique yeah yeah I think
that is very unique and I think that that point that you raise about you know when you're
freelancing you're kind of going around to different facilities and you're really at the mercy
of where they're up to in terms of their tech journey and you know you might be working on a
10 year old machine or you might be working on something that was bought a week ago you don't
know most of the time and even within one facility they don't usually clue in freelancers if they're
doing major upgrades or if they have kit that's off site for another purpose you just kind of
roll in and what you've got is what you've got and you've usually got about 10 minutes to work
it out before someone comes in so I can definitely sympathise with that and also I think that is a
motivation for me as well to have a space was then you've got that control over your system and you
can just decide when it's time to upgrade you don't need to go through a process with IT and
you know oh we can't do that because the operating system does this and you know then we won't be
able to use this other piece of gear and it's a nightmare yeah so there is something really
exciting about being a new business and being a small business and can you be a little bit more
nimble about you know the trends in the industry and you can adapt and change I mean we're so on
the cusp of like I feel like everything moving online where you know all of the cloud-based
workflows are something that we're really developing and looking at and being able to
like get ready for that and be ready and not be in a business where you've like
invested tens of thousands of dollars in like storage exactly you don't have to write emails
to the board to say look it's time you know we have to bring in this new bit of gear and they'll
say but we just spent 100 grand only 15 years ago how is that not still good yeah so it's great
that you've got that ability and you know you're only really beholden to yourself there and you can
say this is this is how I see things moving that's where we're going it's interesting that you raised
the the cloud because I did notice that you've got a cloud-based dailies offering which is really
interesting and I'd love to hear more about that yeah so we're still in our development phase we're
kind of at the moment offering it to basically small projects ones that we kind of already have
a bit of a relationship with the clients as well and we're testing it but essentially the idea is
I'll give you a little bit more back so because I did I was a telecine operator you know when I was
at digital pictures most of what came through you know the facility was graded before it went to
offline and then when everything sort of transitioned into digital we like lost this
step in the chain and people for years were watching everything in log and getting used to
it and you know it's a human kind of it's human nature to get used to something and your brain
sort of switches at a point to think that's reality that's what that's natural even though
it's log which is like super far from natural right so I think a lot of colorists have had
that experience where we're trying to get people trying to in a final grade and people are nervous
about these these transformations that are happening and they end up kind of watering it
down and bringing it back to pretty much close to the offline so my mission with MooLab is to sort
of shake that up like change it back to what it was but because of cloud workflows we don't have
to be so bookended about it doesn't have to be like everything has to be graded daily is like
having a a Fergus Halley in a van you know on set like not every production is going to have the
budget for that so why not use the cloud to actually have a little bit more of a holistic
approach and be more selective about the footage that you want to be treated so that with the cloud
workflows that we're developing for example on this short film they gave me a bunch of references
this is kind of their reference after the editor made their selects I got them to output an xml
for me for me like just a rough xml doesn't need to be tidied up it's not like a conform it's just
a selection pool of media we gave all of that media the treatment really basic grade nothing
no secondaries just primaries and then they've been sitting with that for a couple of weeks
and then we we checked in with them and said what do you think how's it feeling the director was
like I'm pretty happy the cinematographer said what if this scene felt a little more like this
and so we jumped in we grabbed that scene and we gave it a different look another version and we
updated the media pool so it's like a bucket and then the editor syncs to that and then they can
sit with that for a couple of weeks and when they come to do the final grade both versions are there
ready to go we're ready to start off from that point that's the concept we're not ready to fully
roll it out yet because like constantly the technology is changing and and we're we're
trialing different applications um because there's yeah there's still a couple of little pain points
but um that's the concept and that's where I feel like the industry is going to go there as a color
I really feel like grading can be split into two parts you know you've got your
I think you're like set up of your look and your balance and then you've got your secondaries your
finesse your polish and I sort of see those as two different parts and I think that first part in my
opinion should actually kind of happen alongside editorial it shouldn't wait until final grade
absolutely it sounds like what you're doing is bringing in a really long-form approach to
all productions because that's something the the higher budget long-form you know you'll have a
show lot and then you might have some lmt's for particular scenes if you want them to be cool or
warm or brighter darker what have you and that's something that we never saw in short-form context
because it was just very quick process I think time often was was the problem there but I suppose
when you're working in the cloud and you can work simultaneously on the same project then you can make
use of that time that they're in edit to be developing the look so it's quite clever really
and I've spoken with commercial clients about it as well because I think whenever I bring it up
someone's like oh that's obviously just for long form but you know just as many commercial clients
have fight these battles with their client like the brand or the products sort of I mean I had an
example where sort of the producer and they're struggling with this real estate client they just
keep making edit changes because things aren't bright enough I think it's a lot to ask of a
client to imagine or to understand the process so why not have a system where you can't just do a
quick brightness and they could just go here's our selects here's a rough cut can you just give it a
pass and knowing that none of that's being wasted I mean there's a lot of times when assistant editors
are kind of throwing that task that's right and then it all ends up in the bin and then do you
find that people are still cutting in avid or people starting to cut more in resolve because
I can see this really working well if you're all in a resolve cloud project yeah it's a mixture I
think the more experienced editors are still mostly avid based and then in the kind of commercial
world it's a mixture of premiere and avid and there's a few who are starting to make the move
to resolve and we we're trying to encourage people because we think it's pretty good editing
system and yeah absolutely as you say it's for our kind of approach it works really well
do you have any particular technologies you're using or is there something proprietary that you've
got under wraps oh no it's something in proprietary under wraps um like I said we've been trialing
different applications and I don't want to say anything okay because some of them haven't been
great and you know we're trying to move away from them um but yeah we're still in that phase and
actually Mars Williamson and I are going over to NAB show and we're super excited to talk with
different developers and things about where they're at um as well so that will hopefully
kind of feed into where we end up um that's really exciting have you been to NAB before
no I'm so I've always wanted to go and I'm so excited to go that's great oh I hope you have
the best time it's going to be like our little Melbourne catch-ups but like on steroids yeah
that's right and I think everyone's going to be so psyched to actually be there in person it's
going to have a good vibe so you picked a good year I think yeah it's funny I always wanted to
go like even when I was at digital pictures I wanted to go but um now that I have a shop and
I was like not super busy um I think like a project was booked and then got moved
and I was like yes this is this is the time yeah better go yeah that's right um so just moving on
a little bit from the technology um I'm interested to know with the approach behind Mood Labs the
facility is almost BYO artist even though you've got like a selection of people that you obviously
work closely with and I wondered what the idea was behind structuring it in that way and having
that kind of flexibility yeah I think I wanted to I have a point of difference I didn't feel
ready or really I don't really want to be a post house um because I want to be on the tools and I
want to be working and if I can have a nice space and we've got two rooms um you know if it gets
booked up with other artists then that's wonderful I can I can pick up some freelance and go and work
somewhere else or you know have some time off which is also nice oh so and I think there's
particularly with the lockdowns and stuff there's a lot of clients going directly to their artist
and so it's sort of um targeting that market where um they don't necessarily want to go to a full
boutique post shop but it's like free it's between freelance and a boutique like a full post service
place it's somewhere in the middle there you still get all the nice sort of treatment of being in a
facility um but it's a little bit more flexible yeah yeah so the scenario would be then like
a client approaches a colorist directly and says I'd love to book you for a grade and they say well
you know you'll want to attend and the client's going to want to attend so you know we'll have to
go somewhere nice let's book a lab at mood labs and off you go and um support wise do you have
sort of you know those bells and whistles someone brings in the coffees and all of that
yeah because that's hard to do from home yeah yeah and it does make a big difference when you've got
some of the times on commercial you can have you know over 10 people in a room so having somebody
there to make sure everyone's feeling looked after and absolutely no one's going to approve
a grade on an empty stomach it doesn't happen sometimes it's good to distract them too with
some some treats yeah that's so true get some work done while they're eating yeah yeah um yeah
what was the inspiration for the look and the design because it's really quite gorgeous what
you've done with the space thank you um yeah I had a very clear vision of the kind of um aesthetic
it's really fun people have started you know referring to things as being very mood lab
um which I just absolutely love because it's it's exactly that like um I wanted it to feel moody um
but also have a playfulness and a and a brightness so the branding has a lot of colour like
you know our brand colour is holographic like it's just every colour and and then of course the rooms
have to be feeling neutral so we've got the grey paint but even the grey paint I decided oh how am
I going to make this like a little more interesting so I've done this um this two-tone thing so we've
got the kind of the mid-grey on top as a pet like as a um as a wash so it's got this kind of almost
fake concrete look to it uh yeah I think part of um part of our roles is you know colourists is
taste so I think this you know for me I wanted the space to reflect um having good taste and
having style because ultimately people you know hire to have that to do that so it's important to
me very successfully done nice job thank you um how are you finding being a founder of I want to
say a facility I know it's not a post facility but it is a facility studio facility um are you
finding that there are different challenges to being a colourist to running a studio space
oh yeah I think essentially I've been in the zone of like I was calling it phase one which is like
the setting up phase which is it's a lot of work like from trademarking the name to you know employee
contracts and all of that stuff it's completely new to me uh and there's always going to be sort
of like roadblocks and speed bumps along the way and it's been quite draining that phase uh I think
we've just started to enter into our phase two which was more operational but yeah there's
definitely that side of it now where I have to be a little bit more selective about my time and
and delegating as well I just have to um yeah get other people come in and help me in areas
uh where I'm as a you know freelancer stuff I was so used to doing everything myself and I still I
mean I still do a lot of it I've done the website I've done kind of like a lot of it myself oh wow
that's that's cool I mean it's a great website looks really good thanks I think it still needs
some work but um thank you that's great yeah clearly you've got those design kind of that
enough of that design background to utilize the interior design and web design and all a whole
range of different contexts and I think perhaps being in short form and in commercials for such
a long time you must have been surrounded by you know creative directors art directors and
branding people and you've probably seen more branding more successful branding than most
people because it's literally your job to you know watch and to participate in that process of
creating it so um I do wonder if all of that has helped to to bring all of these cool um ideas into
fruition I think that's a really good point and you know a good friend of mine actually did the
branding for me um who I know through commercials so uh you know it is absolutely true we've got a
good pool of people good pool of experts to draw on when you do need to delegate something yeah
yeah that's that's the biggest thing delegating and and having you know being able to admit and
I would say you know going back to you know touching on me being like a woman and starting
business there's this imposter syndrome that like a lot of women have um and being able to tell
myself it's okay not to know and to actually if someone asked me a question to be like I actually
my teammate is more across that than me um is something that yeah I have to come to terms with
and be like I don't have to know everything um and actually I can't know everything um so
being able to say all right I'm going to focus on these areas and I want you to find out this
is in this for me and then try and um be across things of course but like not have to understand
you know understand absolutely everything about the business I mean it's just you just can't like
and also be an operator yeah so I don't think one of the best things is I have a bookkeeper now
so I don't have to do my own invoices oh that's amazing yeah it's so nice um so freeing
yeah yeah and that that is that's a big weight off my shoulder so I'm looking forward to you
know building the team up as well um in the early days we can't have that many people we just need
to start generating more income before the team can grow but as it grows I'm looking forward to
being able to um you know delegate and nominate roles and things and and spend some time um you
know I would I'm really looking forward to having juniors doing first passes for me and then I can
go and do some research and development and and you know talk with clients and things like that
as well you know that's exciting the junior thing is something um new yeah I feel like we just touched
on so many things there and I'm like which one are we going to to open into more before we get into
the juniors um I do just want to ask because I was going to ask you about being a woman in business
and and also in this industry in general and you've already kind of mentioned imposter syndrome which
I can relate to quite a bit um do you find that there are any particular challenges to founding
a business as a woman or is that sort of not really a gendered kind of consideration
I think I think it would be naive to think um you know the gender thing because it doesn't play into
business and particularly as you also touched on earlier being technical in this in this field
unfortunately the pattern is that um people don't afford trust to women um as easily um I do have to
work a little bit harder for people to feel comfortable and safe with me with the gear now
I've been doing this for 15 years and I still have that challenge most of the time people feel very
comfortable because I'm very confident with it I feel now with the business I have to do that again
but in another capacity where I'm just not afforded the same trust immediately as a generalization
like certainly um a lot of people are super supportive and as well and you know give me
the benefit of that's out but um I think that's probably the biggest challenge yeah I feel like
you're almost um like I've joked about needing a male figurehead just for certain meetings um
obviously I haven't done that and I have no intention of doing that but to me it feels
like you've either got yay women in business and let's go for a government grant or it's like
what are you doing here yeah yeah where's the guy yeah talk about technology here yeah yeah
yeah I know I know some stuff about technology yeah yeah it's highly frustrating I think um
I don't want to get too bogged down in it but I just thought it'd be interesting to know
whether or not that's something that you'd come across or you know we've come a long way from like
getting you know slap on the butt and like where's my coffee but you know I think there's still a
fair bit of unspoken stuff how much there's still there's still a lot of bias and and it's
so interesting because sometimes people even on the other end of the spectrum come across as like
they want to really support you but um that can kind of undermine your abilities as well where
they're like I get this I don't know if you get this but I get this like you're such an artist
it's a creator that's right they make a point of you being a woman and it's like it's not about
that yeah yeah so I think we have a long way to go I do think it's important to um and that's
another reason why I was like I have to do it I had other people approach me um to partner or to
join their business or whatever and I was like no there's no women with their own shop here in Melbourne
um as colorists we have we have um one facility Mr Fox with Flick who's a flame artist um she's
a co-owner but other than that really I can't think of any other space where um women are running a
post job or like a you know a color grading studio so that was important to me as well because
well I don't like to focus on gender it's it's there you know it's part of our experience it's
part of um the challenges that we face absolutely and it's important to acknowledge it yeah yeah
and to be like no I'm gonna take this up this space I deserve to be in this space um I had to
talk to that imposter syndrome which comes from all of those questions that you get from people
I mean I have memories of like being in digital pictures and being their most um experienced
person on the luster across resolve conform I like basically ran the kind of conform side of
the tvc department at digital pictures and I would be saying to a client all right there's a problem
here whatever and I would explain it and their eyes would dart over to the guys in the room every
time and they didn't have they didn't have as much knowledge as me but every time you're faced with
that and it affects you um yeah it does affect you but you have to push through it I guess and
absolutely and that's another reason why at mood lab at the moment um you know I've got Mars with me
um and the rest of the team are all women as well that wasn't really intentional but there's
something to be said about people having um the same similar experiences and understanding and
then being able to support each other through those feelings of um you know that imposter
syndrome feeling and then recognising that and being there to support each other because it's
something quite unique too um I couldn't agree with you more I couldn't agree with you more
I mean that's just I think it's wonderful and Mars is great you've mentioned her a couple of times
um I spent a very short period of time with her in Sydney at the start of last year she came up to
help on a grade that I was in and she's just amazing she was yeah just great like she came
into a grade that was already well and truly underway and she just hit the ground running and
clearly knew exactly what she was doing and was an absolute pleasure personally to be around so um
she's a good pick for your team yeah she's awesome and yeah we're stoked to have her around um doing
that you know I think like being like having women running businesses and women being like on the
tech on the tools is really important um and for me like being able to take up that space and be in
that space is something like um it is it is another really important thing to me I mean I
know it's hard people go oh you're playing the gender card but quite frankly like I don't have
a choice like it's there and I will tell you it's kind of been played already it's been played and
I can tell you that us being all women is serving against us more than it's serving for us unfortunately
still I don't mean to say that's right as in it is but like you know if you think about playing
the gender card it's sort of very much from the back foot right like oh absolutely yeah um and
you know and that's why it is great because I feel like you've probably had similar experiences
to me and I think it's important that we communicate and that we all know we're not alone in that
it's not like yeah yeah I think it's I think it's really interesting because I completely
sympathise with um those moments where people would be looking towards a man in the room to
sort of validate a technical um direction or even you know I've had people just straight up say to
me oh I assumed you couldn't do that you know we were talking about setting up port forwarding or
something for a remote grade and I was like all right well we just need to do this and this and
I assumed you couldn't do that and it's like just say it straight to my face all right then well at
least we don't have to you know guess about what you think it's straight out there um but it is
something that we're going to come across time and time again but um you know I think that there's
multiple ways as well to be proficient um and I know this is an interview about me but you know
I feel like there's kind of a couple of cliches of like either you're on the artist side and you
don't understand the tech or you're super techie but you're not particularly crafty and I think
that you know just like there are completely different lived experiences of anything that's
normally in binary opposition I think that you know that there are different ways to be technically
savvy and creative and artistic and craft based at the same time which you know we're always going
to find our own point on the continuum and it's just about people learning that it's not black and
white there no it's a spectrum um yeah and for people to learn and be educated that you shouldn't
look at someone and make a judgment based on their age their gender their background like all of that
needs to just go and it's what they're used to they're used to I mean I still see you know pages
of colorists and like 90 percent of them are guys more internationally we probably have a bit more
than that here in Melbourne but um it gets a bit boring and I go like I go to events and people
like are you a producer yeah okay yeah have you had any resistance or any feedback from any other
post facilities or anywhere that like a full coloring offering kind of facility since you've
opened mood labs no and it's actually been on my list of things to do is to reach out to them and
talk to them a little bit about what we're doing here because I would I would love to in an ideal
we'll collaborate with other post houses and you know think of us as like a bit of an injection of
color and particularly with our cloud-based stuff it doesn't need to be even necessarily at our
facility so I am hopeful that we can collaborate and we can work together
in fact and we've come close to having other post facilities that have overflow
and they need to book a space and so we're here for that too you know that's great yeah because
it's kind of um it's I don't feel like it's a particularly productive way of doing things
to see people as competition when especially when you've got a small boutique offering like this
because if you're considered competition by the giant businesses it's like come on guys like
let someone else exist in the space so that's really good that you haven't seen anything like
that so far and oh you mentioned senior and junior colorists and I know that you've done
a workshop as well so I take it that education and training is a big part of the philosophy
at mood labs yeah and very much uh one thing we want to do is with our panel discussions and
things like that is to keep it fairly broad I had someone else approach me about doing intensives
and I'm like well I'm interested in that it's not we really where I think the work needs to be done
I think the work needs to be done on a broader scope like let's tell everyone about the importance
of color and that relationship between us and you know the cinematographer and and the production
so you know our first panel that we had was about getting the look and that was with we had um the
cinematography society we're kind of supporting us and the colorist society and we had two DOPs
and two colorists uh Fergus Kelly was on it with me and Mars was moderating so we had this like
fantastic conversation about setting up the look what is that process what does it look like on
different productions and it was more conceptual like I want it to be accessible I want producers
to come along and understand what we're talking about and I want directors we had a lot of
directors there and I feel like there's a lot of education to be done in that space
and that's where mood lab kind of wants to be be kind of doing videos whether it's online or
whatever it might be just little snippets to be like have some insight that's on a more broader
scale like for the industry and beyond you know one of our other events we want to do is on like
the human visual system and and the optical illusions and things like that because that all
plays into what we what we do as well in the room so absolutely that sounds fascinating um I'd say
there's got to be a lot of research and there's a lot of time that we go into something like that
was it was it particularly labor intensive to get the first look development talk off the ground
yeah it was a bit of work uh one of one of the assistants here was working pretty hard on getting
getting you know stages and chairs and you know all of that stuff I think having done one
would be like ready like more ready to do a second we're thinking three a year um so we're
not going too ambitious that sounds like you could you could actually fit that in right because
you've also got to be coloring and running a business so you've got a few things to do yeah
yeah no and and for us it's also a networking night too so we had um we had drink sponsors and
you know we all talked and talked about the ideas and the concepts and was just so wonderful was
such a great a great night and great atmosphere um so hopefully we can keep that going uh but
then we want to do just little snippets as well yeah please see I'd love to come down and uh
have a look yeah the next one yeah oh that's exciting um I did actually hear on the grapevine
the things that you hear from calibration experts that um I heard that you'd purchased an iso
hdr monitor yeah yeah that's exciting instead of a new car yeah look I'm sitting in front of my
sony hdr monitor so I get it I know I heard I'm like oh my gosh how did she I like it's just
it's a there's a lot of money yeah honestly I keep thinking like I could have had an entire extra
room on my house if I had not bought it but you know you've got to look at it every day right if
you're a carpenter you'd want a really good source so that's it and I think if you're going to invest
in the monitor now oh and you have the ability to go to hdr you just absolutely have to because
that's where we're going yeah my my thinking was it's 20 000 to get a decent sdr sony so it's
already stupid in for a penny for a pound just do it um are you liking the iso yeah I do like it I
graded a series on it recently at another facility different um like the same model um but a different
monitor uh and it was yeah it was beautiful I've worked on I've worked on the Flanders and the sony
as well um but yeah it's um it's just such a different experience working in hdr I love it
and kind of going back to sdr I'm like I'm so ready for sdr to be done with yeah you kind of
get hooked on having that extra dynamic range and that extra like color saturation that you get
you know there's like a totally different feel to it absolutely and I always use this analogy it's
a bit like uh grading an sdr feels like a sleeping like trying to shove like a sleeping bag into like
a sleeping bag cover it's like oh get in there like come on I feel like it's more intuitive and
it lands in a place that feels more natural but there's a lot of room for it to go wrong if you
don't have good taste in my opinion because you've got you don't have as much limited range
so if people ask you to dial it up and up and up and up you actually can and then you can end
up with something that looks like a Christmas tree yeah well something that can actually like
you know be uncomfortable to watch yeah yeah no that's so true like you're staring into another
dimension yeah um so sorry just to kind of go back from hr I wasn't planning on talking about
that but um just came up um with the junior and senior colorist dynamic that you're talking about
um I think that's really interesting and really important and as you're aware I employ a junior
colorist and I just think you know I found it difficult to get into the industry myself to
begin with and to develop the skills that were required and I think possibly we've had a lot of
similarities between our careers at different points um in terms of you know learning from
generous mentors and seeing the value in that um so can you tell me a little bit about that
you know that kind of development that you're doing to to help foster the next generation
because it's super important I think I absolutely agree and it's so difficult for new talent to
becoming uh to get that experience and feedback because I think generally now a new colorist is
just launched straight into a session with clients without having any understanding of maybe how you
might run a session um time management techniques to help your client along as well because it's
you're guiding them and I think as a new colorist without that you can really get stuck in some
you know in some holes yeah and it's almost unfair to say sink or swim when you haven't given them
swimming lessons first you know yeah and no matter how many youtube tutorials you do or like you know
mixing live tutorials you do whatever it is it doesn't teach you that inter-client relationship
as well uh and for me another thing I really like benefited from at digital pictures was doing the
telecine and doing the dailies you know we get the film roll at like seven in the morning from
the lab and then I would have until eight eight or nine sometimes to get it onto tape and get
you know that tape was getting picked up to take to the edit um you know the edit facility to start
there offline and you've got to you've got to power through and you've got to get that done and
you only stop when you need to stop and go back and but most of the time you're just you're grading
in real time and I think that's really cool as well so um as a training ground you don't have to
you don't get into that trap that new colorists do where they overcook it you have to you have to
go fast um so I think for the daily side of mood lab we're excited to have juniors training on
dailies because there's less stakes I can come in I can supervise I can check how it's looking
and then that's also cost effective you know for clients they don't have to have a senior
on it from the start they can have a senior supervise that's amazing I think that I think
it was so good for everyone involved right like literally everyone wins in that scenario um and
the cool thing about having a deadline is like you say they don't overcook it and also you know the
most important thing is that balance that primary you know it doesn't matter how like you can't kind
of bring it back with a bunch of secondaries if you if you can't get the primary right you kind
of in trouble so you know and and also just to get you 10 000 hours right like you just have to
look at a lot of images and do it a lot absolutely yeah practice practice practice that's the main
thing I say when people are like what how do I get into it I'm like just do as much as you can
because your eye will develop and I don't think I feel like less than five years is you're probably
still not maybe quite there yet like I don't know everyone's different but um I feel like I wasn't
there for five years I think um they're 10 years I was like yeah that's gonna hit you stride yeah
yeah I've got to say that was me as well I didn't know if I was particularly slow or not like
it did take me a very long time I think it was also a bit of a patchwork for me um I didn't sort
of have one person sort of teaching me their way of doing things which I think maybe you get a bit
quicker um because you've only got that one approach but maybe in the long run you miss out
on some of the diversity as well um yeah sorry that's a bit of a tangent but um I love that you're
doing that and I really feel strongly about it and it's just great to see that role coming back
because it was very saddening to see when the major facilities were shutting down um the sort
of mid-levels who who rose up they would get juniors in for conforming and things like that
but they wouldn't necessarily be learning anything more than just how to get it in
as sort of quickly as possible and then they'd be booked on something else like you know
for a different department even so it sort of became like a technical
part of a role as opposed to an apprenticeship model and I think um if you don't get a chance
to apprentice you're not really going to be any good you kind of can't sprint to the sprint to
the end there you have to kind of just do your time right so yeah really cool you guys are doing
that um I wanted to chat to you because you've been you've mentioned a few long-form jobs but
um I've I've always known you to be really prominent in the short-form space so can you
tell me a little bit about moving from TVCs into long-form or were you always doing a bit of a
long-form and I just wasn't aware of it? No you're absolutely right at Digital Pictures it was very
much you're doing long-form or you do commercials there was no crossover oh actually no that's a
lie Adele Referee got to crossover but I think she might have been the only colorist right and
she was doing a series with a with a TVC director who she worked with a lot so um but the mentality
there was that we were very very different um different departments um which I never really
understood uh because I think it's still the same craft so you have to work at a different pace but
um it's a different you know it's not that all that different that to think oh like you can't
do long-form if you do commercials I was in the commercial department I just landed there that's
just where the job was you know so that's kind of why I ended up starting in there but I'm really
really grateful for that because I think a lot more of the colorists at least the Melbourne are
going from commercials into long-form rather than necessarily the other way around uh and I'm not
really sure why that is um but I like that I can and I know how to like very much fine-tune
something to that level uh in commercials that I can choose to do that if I have time in long-form
but even in commercials you have to work fast sometimes so yeah this idea of them being so
different I don't necessarily agree agree with that I think you know grading is grading and
if you've got the skill in the eye for it and then you can do it where it's very different
as the client relationship ah interesting okay um yeah there's a different hierarchy
yeah there's just different hierarchy in advertising you know you've got
you start with your production company so if you're lucky you'll get a cinematographer um in the
room where you'll get to have a chat with them uh and then you've got your director and then the
producer like hopefully you get them in first for like maybe an hour and then your advertising
agency will um come in once the production is happy that's the ideal and then you might have
an actual client like the brand come in uh to review and approve it as well so that's your
hierarchy and basically once brand and client come in it doesn't matter what the cinematographer
thinks uh so you're whereas in long form cinematographer is king right king queen um
they we're almost more I think in long form it feels like I'm working for the cinematographer
that's a slightly different relationship I think yeah every every project's different but in
general there's a different kind of hierarchy and you're playing that um role of guiding a
room probably of more people although I would say and it hasn't happened to me I've done probably
one feature film where we had a screening and there was more than 10 people but most of the
time I don't have teams that are more than three on a on a feature on tv show um whereas in a
commercial again you can have 10 plus people show up to talk about you know the amber hue of the beer
yeah absolutely absolutely oh that's fascinating um so really it was just for you about taking
what you already knew and using it in a different context as opposed to any kind of you know it's
not like they said oh well in long form we have a different color you know somewhere between
oh I guess there's different color spaces sure oh yeah yeah but um and the trims and things
like that well I I don't think p3 and rake 709 are all that different I think there's a different
approach when you grade for theater for cinema than you would for tv and I think I don't believe
that going from a theatrical grade to a um like a tv rick 709 grade is just a trim I think you
actually have to think about the environment that your audience is now in and so you probably have
to adjust for brightness if you if you've done something darker as well so there's that but I
you know as far as the actual transformation I don't think they're all that different
well I've seen some really really great grades coming out of colorists who had sort of been
pigeonholed in my mind as being short form like yourself and Fergus Rotherham and Matt Fez you
know there's been some really cool um crossover and I like to think that we're at a point where
we can do both so here's hoping because I think they're just both really great for different ways
like sorry for different reasons like I wouldn't want to have to choose
no me too I love the balance that's I think last year I was doing so much long form I was on this
eight part um series like one hour episode series that was just a huge wow huge part of my year
yeah quite a big show and um you know I was just never available for any of my commercial clients
and I'm like please remember that I still do commercials I like them I just wasn't available
I actually think that might be one reason why people do tend to gravitate to one or the other
because of the pace um you know you might do maybe four or five features or series in a year
but you might do thousands of commercials and you know clients want to work with you but if they'll
get frustrated if they can't and so they might form relationships elsewhere and you kind of
end up in on somebody else's books um did it's a bit of a cycle there yeah there is a bit of a
cycle did you find that most people were pretty understanding though of that eight part series
and and just said oh cool and when will you be done or um well the thing is too it was kind of
like spread out so occasionally it would be available but it would be very much like someone's like
you're probably not available but are you and I'm like I actually am and that was amazing but
you know that wasn't that often it was more more more the other case uh yeah as well there's there
like you say often it's one episode and then a break and then another episode so sort of
gone are the days of pushing all eight episodes out really quickly yeah depends sometimes it is
I mean I've done some shows that are still like just jam-packed you know quick turnarounds but I
find often at the moment you know visual effects end up um taking us on and you know you're meant
to have finished something that I was meant to finish one show months ago still haven't finished
it yeah well speaking of visual effects I mean can you talk to me a little bit about the portable
doll because I had a look at the trailer I haven't watched it but the trailer looks amazing and I
couldn't help but notice that there's a heck of a lot of visual effects in that one yeah yeah that
was a big VFX job um actually sometimes no it was big I was gonna say sometimes some things
some shows and films can feel really VFX heavy when there's a lot of fantasy elements and then
some of the more mundane stuff that you're like there's no VFX on that as more
and you have to work harder to kind of blend all that stuff in when it's more like reality um
but I loved I mean I loved working on the portable doll it was really wonderful I managed to um
it was a strange one because the director and the DRP weren't based in Melbourne um but we had some
time to brief together in the beginning and they sort of came back in after I'd done I think I'd
done a second pass um so they were very hands-off um you know we had a wonderful briefing session
setting up looks uh and then they were up and then I was left on my own to my own devices and
if I had an idea I'd kind of chat with them about it and say what do you think about this and most
the time they were really excited for uh for my my ideas which is just a wonderful uh feeling when
you you know you feel like you really are contributing to the project uh yeah so and there
was some there were some sequences that we really helped along you know those visual effects as well
get it all married in and blended in and stuff it was um it's a cool film it was really fun
just great did you did you often have the visual effects in the conform when you would begin and
when you would begin a scene or would it be a matter of you know grading the plates and then
seeing what the visual effects ended up looking like and then potentially tweaking to fit them
into the world yeah I think the idea going into any feature is to get those vfx in before the grade
but that does not always happen uh so yeah the idea was there but no there were but there were
some big holes when we started and then of course there's a bit of a break there um and we come back
once the vfx are done and do that final part so um yeah there were some big scenes uh that were
kind of I think they were on green screen oh kind of gosh it was a while ago now some of these
projects you do ages ago and then they like I don't know why but it took a while for it to come out
it's like where's the spill migrated when you do a green screen shot or a green screen scene
I'd be interested to know whether or not like d spill and things like that coming back in visual
effects completely change the grade or do you find that you can actually grade those plates like
because when it's a completely green screen or a completely blue environment there's a heck of a
lot of spill yeah yeah the d spill definitely affects the environment sometimes more than other
depending on the of course the environment but uh no I had to uh on a recent show there was a
piece of wardrobe which they should not have put on in front of a green screen it had a bit of teal
in it um and the d spill like completely took all green out of that um element of wardrobe to the
point where I'm like and because the rest of the piece of like it was a jacket and the rest of the
jacket was blue and then this piece that was more meant to be teal uh had turned blue so there was
no way other than masking and tracking this you know panel for me to then match that across the
whole episode and so I had to go and I had to wipe out that teal part of that wardrobe so sorry
wardrobe but I changed it. I noticed it was actually quicker to take it out of the whole episode than it was wow okay it's way quicker
oh wow well that would have been quite a surgical operation yeah I mean I don't I don't think I
I just said this is what we're doing because I was like no one's going to opt for me to mask and
track um every you know all the panels on on their shoulders and um yeah so could you tell me a little
bit about where you think the industry is headed um the direction that things are going in because
obviously starting a new company you're thinking about what people need right now not what they
needed 10 years ago I think uh keeping trying to um there's part there's a couple of things right
where we're going as an industry it's like where do I want us to go um and having conversations with
other colorists like what are their what are their struggles um what what could be improved in our
industry and having that experience of doing dailies and stuff gives me like that insight into
maybe a better time you know uh and a solution perhaps for offline eyes as we call them when
people get used to something looking a certain way so I want I want to see the industry change
in that capacity but obviously technology is changing cloud based stuff um then we've also
you know obviously HDR so in the capacity of what I want the industry to do we want to do the film
looks and the development and our we call it great as you go approach to dailies but I also see
things evolving in the space of uh you know cloud workflows virtual workstations
HDR uh there's even like a little bit bit of this AI stuff that's you know coming through and we
have to look at ways that we're going to implement that in our in our workflows and not to feel
threatened by the idea that you know uh um auto automatic grading and matching tools are going
to become more prevalent because I think there's more to what we do than matching and I think what
we consider natural uh is so relative to our environment to our perception and that's kind
of the beauty of the human visual system is it's adaptable and we can we can do a pretty strong
look without people realizing and affect the tone and the feeling of a project I love that about
what we do so it's ways of using that new technology to deliver that faster and to more people
being self-taught like learning color by myself um from tutorials uh as the beginning of my journey
kind of gives me a really big appreciation for that can like the everyday consumer having access
to our tools and that's why we are a result facility and that's why I still think it's really
wonderful to have that accessible for people because you you're you're encouraging people
to understand what we do and to get involved in what we do uh as well and I I think that can only
help our craft I don't want to see this kind of gatekeeping that some you know the big facilities
used to do it's like oh you can only do this if you've um if you know someone or if you know
you're fortunate like me to get in the door but you know I really pushed my way into that door
um you know so uh yeah I think moving with those trends uh is something uh moolab you know is
focused on and um that's our kind of ethos is keeping things more accessible more broad more
more general and trying to improve uh practices across the industry and not just for high budget
productions yeah oh that's great well I think that it's going to be very successful because
surely with something kind of as you know I don't want to say the word obvious but um something that
you really need right like color you can't get away from it as soon as you start rolling there's
color on screen so you know just being part of that earlier um I think people are going to get
hooked on it once they start to see oh we can do this okay yeah yeah I hope so um one other thing
we want to do is archive properly people don't really archive properly so that's part of the
offering is you know can go what do you mean by cold storage what what do you mean by archive
properly I would say particularly in the advertising uh and you know we often hear of um quite big ad
campaigns losing all their dailies all their camera rushes because someone hasn't archived it
got you in any kind of reasonable way uh so we want to offer that to clients as well where
that's fabulous okay your dailies can go into cold storage and it's there probably I'm not sure at
the stage if I want to do LTOs we'll have it as an option but I'll outsource that I don't want to
I don't want I don't know I just want to invest in like a new technology yeah LTO sort of does feel
like old technology but I've actually thought myself a few times I've been archiving stuff
off to like 10 terabyte drives and going this might be better on an LTO because there's nothing
worse than having your drive and you've got a duplicate of your drive and then you've got one
in the safe somewhere and then before you know it you spent thousands of dollars on drives and you're
like probably could have just afforded that LTO deck yeah definitely a consideration totally and
I I won't say I completely won't do it but it certainly isn't something I'm excited by
oh I don't think anyone in their right mind is excited by LTOs and look if you are I don't
want to yuck you yum but jeez almost like get a life right yeah I mean I guess it's better than
not archiving anything true true well yeah putting it old on old hard drives spinning drives and
sitting them in a shelf for for years and years and then going to load them and of course the
drive won't spin yes which happens a lot it happens so much yeah well look thank you so much
CJ it's been great having a chat with you I've really enjoyed hearing about mood loves and I
can't wait to see where you guys go in the future maybe we'll do a check back in at some point to
see how it's all progressed because you're very new yeah so new so new well I'm wishing you all
the best thank you so much it was really wonderful to talk with you such a pleasure
anytime for mixing life this is Kayleigh Bateman thanks a lot everyone