colourist session

I contacted the owner of CheatIt a colour and production house, to see if they would consider doing the colour for the Quick Fix Films.

I did think it was a bit of a long shot, but contacted them first and then had a list of various other colourists i could contact if they didn't respond. Thankfully they did and I got the details by contacting on Instagram and was able to get the email address to move forward with getting a date in place.

The colour of the interactive films was really important and the final stage! While i'd made sure with the production design, to make sure the colours combined well, as they'd be viewed together, there were some changes i definitely wanted to be made.

I provided the colourist with 2 moodboards which i felt conveyed exactly the tones i wanted for each film, so they'd work well together. In order for them to be seamless in terms of colour, it thought it was best for the pink film to have a slight blue hue, so when switching to the green, the two tied in nicely.

I did my own edits of still images i'd taken on the shoot, as well as slightly altering the actual footage myself (to the best of my ability!), just to give the colourist more of an idea of what i was thinking.

The Nightmare

One nightmare included me not knowing about the colour spaces for the VFX shots. When the VFX work was done in September, i was pretty clueless and hadn't realised the shots needed to be exported as Pro Res files, with the original colour space. They were exported by the VFX artist with an automatic colour space (i thought) the colourist wouldnt be able to work with.

The VFX artist didnt have the project saved, only the exported files. So i had to get her to send me the individual lays with the alpha channels on and essentially re-do the VFX myself....

Which at the very last stage was absolutely not what i needed! But huuuuugee lesson learned, now i know LOADS more about VFX and colour spaces and won't be making that mistake, which seems so simple, ever a-bloody-gain.

CheatIt were great to work with, especially as there was a producer involved in the planning and prep.

I stressed myself out way more than i needed to with providing the right files for the colourist to work with.

I'd had no idea about film colour spaces, or EDLS or XMLS. So i did a wholleeeee load of research to make sure i was prepared and was going to be giving them exactly what they needed. Over-reading online made the whole experience a lot more stressful than it needed to be though - i over-read and watched countless videos of sweaty old men on youtube talking about EDLS and had a panic over whether or not they'd be able to see the actual edit sequence properly. However it all turned out to be fine and i stayed up for 24 hours for nothing.

The DOP Emma Langguth also came in on the 4 hour session as i wanted her input for sure!! She'd done colourist sessions a million times before, so felt good to have someone who knew what they were talking about alongside me.

But also, i realised i was totally fine in the session and didnt need to know any technical colour jargon at all, like i'd thought i might have to! I was absolutely fine with warbling on to the colourist and making sure everything was exactly how i'd planned it to be in terms of colour. And it all turned out great! I'm so happy with them.

The session was done using StreamBox and zoom online, which was surprisingly really efficient!