Things Colorists Tweet: Insights from Professional Colorists
If you’re interested in learning more about what it takes to be a colorist, keep an eye on the things colorists’ tweet.
Following the right people on Twitter can give you a drip-fed education in pretty much any subject. These colorists who tweet have really helpful insights, skills and solutions to share. Add them to your feed and keep an eye open! Occasionally you don’t even have to be looking that hard to come away with some valuable gems.
Before and after of the Mass Lotto spot. #colorgraders #davinciresolve #redepic pic.twitter.com/NYbbX2szxy
— Rob Bessette (@robsbessette) November 26, 2014
A very interesting paper on colour science published by VES. P3, DCI, 709, XYX, scene linear and all http://t.co/SUgYy2OrgH #colorgrading
— Mathieu Marano (@ilovehue) December 6, 2014
Tips: Mistika shortcut list http://t.co/FLedsSjDyb
— Mathieu Marano (@ilovehue) November 27, 2014
Hit the video embedded in this tweet to hear from ICA colorist Warren Eagles with the results of his “What are you grading 2014?” survey. Some really interesting stats on the changing nature of the business!
What are you grading, earning, shooting, editing, genre, monitors, codecs, 2014? Final results feedback movie https://t.co/2eeVwzvkMd
— Warren Eagles (@warreneagles) December 18, 2014
What a Professional Color Grading Suite Looks Like
In this tweet from colorist Jim Wicks you get a good sense of how a professional colorist lays out his colour grading suite including his colour grading surface, UI monitor, scopes, grading and client monitors.
Another shot of my new 4K color suite. Grading RED Epic. pic.twitter.com/k0SuxXoDFk
— Jim Wicks (@JimWicks) June 13, 2014
One benefit to using an ultra-wide monitor like this is that you’ve got the right screen real-estate to see what you’re doing. You can never have enough space to make room for your scopes, nodes, curves, keyframes, colour wheels and more as a colorist.
I’ll only buy Ultrawide monitors from now on. pic.twitter.com/LIqc5k34xi — Panoptik (@PanoptikTV) June 13, 2014
Then again, you also need plenty of desk space too for your colour grading surface. In this tweet the Tangent Element, which is normally composed of 4 unique units that can be put together in any way you like, with as many units as you need joined together…
The longest Tangent Element… pic.twitter.com/o9FObYK2gT — Mathieu Marano (@ilovehue) June 14, 2014
Guess which show I’m working on? pic.twitter.com/8Te3ebK4Zm
— Josh Petok (@joshpetok) December 15, 2014
This peak into the colour grading suite sometimes includes a look at their nodes or before and after comparisons like the one at the top of this post.
Seems I missed #TimelineTuesday. Guess I’ll start #NodeWednesday pic.twitter.com/MiQ1V39e5Q — Jason Bowdach (@JBowdacious) December 3, 2014
The Questions Colorist’s Ask
@VEThoxton @jonnyelwyn Tip: Question I ask a lot – what time of day was this shot? And what time of day should it look like it was shot? — Jamie Dickinson (@dickij10) June 22, 2014
One of the best ways of learning from other colorist’s is to see the kind of questions they ask when they encounter problems and the answers they get. That’s part of the beauty of Twitter is that you’ve got access to a world-wide community of experts, and the rest of us get to look in on the conversation. Click on the date stamp in the following tweets to read through the full thread.
640×480 29.97 in QT looks fine. In Resolve shows hybrid frames and interlace. Tried “video field processing” Didn’t work. What am I missing? — Rob Bessette (@robsbessette) September 10, 2014
when creating DCP in Resolve, how do you compensate for audio drift of 23.976 when going to 24? — Rob Bessette (@robsbessette) November 12, 2014
In edit page I just did a .1% pull up to get the audio to playback at 24. Don’t know if I’m doing this right, but in theory it will work — Rob Bessette (@robsbessette) November 12, 2014
Anyone out there have any words of wisdom on this? @rohit_bmd @j_salvo ? — Rob Bessette (@robsbessette) November 12, 2014
I’ve been messing with DCPs from Adobe Media Encoder into a Doremi and a Christie. It sort of works ! — Jamie Dickinson (@dickij10) November 14, 2014
One colorist who loves a particularly tricky form of Q+A is colorist Juan Salvo who occasionally posts these kind of questions. To which he always knows the answer. There doesn’t seem to be much that Juan doesn’t know.
Here’s a funny Resolve puzzle. Why isn’t this guys color chart working correctly? pic.twitter.com/GKZ5A24gwD — Juan Salvo (@j_salvo) November 5, 2014
Let’s play a game: Same shoot, two different cameras (c300 and RED) which is which? Why? pic.twitter.com/kNvsBA4dQs — Juan Salvo (@j_salvo) December 2, 2014
