I love our compositors. I love our editors. I also love our colorists. I love them all for different reasons. They each bring a unique perspective, skill set and technical platform that allow them to be the best at what they do. In SHOOT’s May 7 issue, the "Your Shot" column presented a compositor’s argument that "it was inevitable" that in the future, color correction would be done by a compositor. I feel compelled to present an alternative point of view.
Oversimplifying the skills and experience that it takes to be a world-class colorist shows a lack of understanding and appreciation for their work. Our senior colorists have spent years perfecting their craft. They are artists with the proven ability to interpret a director’s vision, and they apply that vision with a great eye for color and a complete mastery of a customized toolset that has been built from the best technology components available.
Our compositors can clearly do color correction. The question is are they the best qualified to do the color correction? We try to leverage the creative strengths of our artists, and we continually strive to match the task with the best-qualified member of our team. For example, many people feel that the key quality is best achieved directly off of the Spirit. But do we have a colorist composite the shot in a telecine environment? Not a chance. There are experts within our organization whose understanding of compositing is much greater than our colorists, so we leave that task to them.
The compositor’s proposal that coloring a flat pass with his Q Color system would give similar results is misleading. Working with a compressed flat pass, and trying to expand that to true film-style dynamic range, is fraught with compounding color errors. Many contemporary coloring techniques are based on controlling exposure and textural techniques that are stacked together in a telecine bay. By simultaneously controlling a Spirit telecine, da Vinci 2K color corrector, power windows, noise reducer and defocus interactively, combinations of applications are achieved that could only be accomplished in today’s telecine suites. The compositor’s solution also fails to indicate how the multiple repositions of a shot might be accomplished, something that is almost impossible to do in anything but a telecine bay.
Promoting the speed of a software-based "color correction plug-in" as being superior to the toolset available in today’s telecine bay is either disingenuous or ignorant. We operate both Q Color systems and telecine suites with da Vinci 2Ks. Our telecine suites are built to give real-time interactivity and feedback to a creative team that is led by a colorist. Many software-based color correction systems provide lower resolution proxies in real time but must render all decisions. This slows down the decision making process to something typical of a compositing bay but nothing like the performance our clients are familiar with or expect from our telecine suites. Q Color is a great tool that complements what we offer in our telecine bays. For some quick fixes based on creative changes that may occur in a compositing bay, we believe it can be an effective tool. However, we do not believe that it is a wholesale replacement of our telecine suites.
The ability to assemble a spot prior to final color correction is not a technological breakthrough but a workflow issue. Our senior colorists can color correct assembled spots more efficiently than our compositors. Whether the workflow facilitates the assembly of a spot prior to color correction is another matter.
To oversimplify the creative process by implying that it is linear and non-iterative demonstrates ignorance for the creative contributions that precede the delivery of the final spot to a compositing suite. Final color correction sessions are supervised by a creative team. A colorist’s reputation is earned by seamlessly interpreting, enhancing and executing the collective vision of the creative team into the final color of the spot. To imply that money can be saved by only color correcting the assembled spot during the compositing phase is like saying that a production can save money by shooting just one take—and that the ability to do so is indicative of who is the best director.
Today’s color tools are continuing to develop more and more capabilities. This was evident to anyone who walked the floor at NAB. These new tools deserve evaluation. Inevitably, new artists will emerge whose creative skills will serve the color correction market in the future. Their ability to excel at their art will be based on their skills, honed by years of experience, not by the latest software bundle. After all, it is not whether you call yourself a colorist, but whether your clients call you "their" colorist.
