Developing a Career in Color Grading with Colorist Aurora Shannon

Hi everyone, I'm Kali Bateman for Mixing Light and I'm here today talking with Aurora Shannon who's a colourist at Company 3 in Vancouver. We met each other many years ago now when she trained me when I was working for DNEG. We both worked there at the same time and I was really fortunate to be trained by Aurora. She's extremely clever and to be trained by Aurora. She's extremely clever and has an amazing eye. So she taught me everything I know about VFX colouring and I'm extremely

grateful to her. And I'm talking to her today about the work that she's been doing with Company 3 but also the other work that she's doing as a but also the other work that she's doing as a mentor to up-and-coming filmmaker colourists and as well sort of how she got her start and where her amazing career has taken her so far. So recently I've watched a few things that Aurora's

graded and they're absolutely beautiful. Some recent series work that she's been doing through Company 3 shows like Sweet Magnolias and Under the Bridge and they're both absolutely stunning. They've got gorgeous contrast, they've got beautiful saturation levels. So yeah why don't beautiful saturation levels. So yeah why don't we start there? I would love to know anything you're able to share about the grades for those programmes. So they're both really really nice

shows to work on. They're both quite feminine shows like Sweet Magnolias about these three women

who are best friends who live in this fictional small town which is like it's essentially it's a fantasy of American suburban life and they have their ups and their downs but you know it's always good in at the end of the day kind of thing. Under the Bridge in some ways is almost the complete contrast. It's about a group of teenage girls. It's set on a set about a really horrific true story that happened here in British Columbia

and it's almost a total opposite. It's not wholesome, it's teenage friendship gone bad, gone very very as bad as it can get. So you've got these two kind of very contrasting stories but what they both have is they both have this quite beautiful, gentle, feminine cinematography and that's just literally that's just what we follow through in the grades. So for both of those shows they both have their own bespoke LUTs which is obviously the starting

point of any look. The Sweet Magnolia it was a LUT that I inherited. It was my first project here season three when I came to company 3 Vancouver and it's a very soft just the right amount of contrast, just the right amount of saturation, warmer tone. It is shot and set in Georgia so it's got that kind of that warm southern american tone and that was developed by the DP Brian Johnson with Colourfront for the show. Both HDR shows so obviously

have a HDR version of that. And then the LUT for Under the Bridge is a bespoke company 3 LUT. I'm not going to say which but it's featured on quite a few company 3 shows as a starting point for the developers. So you start with that LUT and then it gets developed towards that vision. In this case the main creative is the EP and the show creator Quinn who also directed a couple of the episodes. And this is, I kind of don't really like

using the word filmic because film is a format it's not a colour palette. But it is that kind of that typical filmic kind of Kodak look. So the story is set in the 90s. In the 90s if you went to the cinema your film would be shot and projected to you in celluloid. So I think it was really you know she really wanted the film to not only be set in the 90s, look like it's in the 90s, but almost feel like you're watching something from the 90s. The attention to detail is amazing.

So as someone who grew up in the 90s I'm like I had that, I had that, I had that. It really really is quite amazing. But again you know she had this really really dark story and it would have been so easy to go dark with it and she didn't. She wanted to go soft and feminine. She wanted to have those moments of femininity, fairness in the photography and in the grade.

There are all these pastel tones throughout so pinks and yellows and blues and and mints and wherever it is in the art direction of the cinematography it was just my job to let it come through and emphasise it. Well I think you succeeded beautifully. It's got that lovely softness to it but it also has this gorgeous curve that has a real contrast through the mids. So the skin always looks right, it always looks dimensional and 3D and yet the shadows never get too

low. Yeah I've begun to describe, one of the things that's really nice about working for a company at Company 3 is you just have this catalogue of LUTs. It's extraordinary things have at your disposal and when I've you know raffa it just being like this is the show, this is the LUT use it. You're actually picking and developing the LUT and I've begun to talk in very

untecknical terms about LUTs in terms of thickness and thinness. It's something I feel like I've become quite sensitive to and I think it's what you're eluding to is sometimes you feel like okay it's low contrast but I'm not feeling it. There's kind of not something in the middle of the, there's not this richness

in the middle of the image. It kind of to me, the only way I can describe it is it feels kind of thin and then on the other hand it's like well I'm looking at my waveform and it's flat but it doesn't look flat so it doesn't feel flat. Yeah I completely understand what you're saying there with the thickness it's got like a real presence to it and it's got a density in the colours and yeah just stunning. So when you work with those

LUTs are you working underneath or over or combination? I tend to always have my LUT at the very end so I'm always working underneath my LUT obviously unless it's an input LUT but I tend to always have it at the very end and I'm also beginning any grain so under the bridge we use grain extensively throughout it and actually

different types of grain. You don't actually change the LUT or the colour palette or even the look that much because we go back in time we then we go to the 70s and we go to 50s we have even flashback sequences within the 90s so we use grain to signal, try to signal to the audience that this is a different time but without

doing a really obvious look. So one of the things that I was playing around with is do I put my grain before or after the LUT and what I really came to the conclusion with on this show is I think now I prefer it after the LUT so I'd go grain, LUT, grain. Yeah perfect so those texture elements aren't being given the same curve as the colour elements that kind of makes sense in terms of you know if it was a celluloid process how it would kind of work. It's just yeah gorgeous work so

with the Sweet Magnolias where you inherited the look was it a matter of kind of working out what the colour journey of the previous seasons was and staying quite close to that or were you able to deviate a little bit? So Brian decided that he wanted a new look from season three going forward he wanted a new LUT this was the new LUT so I actually graded episodes one and two to match to match the previous season and we went

through the reviewing so that isn't what I want. So which was completely fine you know it was a learning curve for me you know it was literally my

first job it was my second week. Oh wow. So yeah that that before you start phone call with the DP is really important but it's totally new look and honestly you know Brian knows what he wants so the LUT was what he wanted the CDLs were what he wanted I mean I was for the most part on that show I'm really just polishing the CDLs like I'm polishing the CDLs I'm you know just some windows to bring down the light he's very sensitive to anything he feels

is over lit or kind of studio lighting or anything like that a few little fixes here and there I don't really don't think it's a show I can take very much credit for. Well I think that sometimes knowing when not to do something can be actually harder. Yes it does take a very

light touch. Yeah yeah yeah beautiful and so for those listening the CDLs are the files that come from set and so if you've listened to the interview that I did with Fergus Halley who is an amazing dailies colourist out here he or a dailies colourist would be grading everything on set and usually having conversations with the DP around that and then we're seeing here what happens in the DI sometimes those CDLs are blown away but sometimes and ideally really they're brought

into the DI and used either as inspiration or as a starting point. Yeah so I will always use the

CDLs for a starting point if I feel that they're useful and I think all Mads all of the time they are useful particularly when you're doing the dailies and the finishing as part of the same company and you've been able to be part of that initial kind of camera test, look day, set the LUT before the daily starts. For me personally why would I not use them you know like it's work. Absolutely.

It's been done someone spent time on this it's been paid for and for me personally it really does just give you that head start really. And it's sort of when the system works you know because that's the idea isn't it that's why people do dailies it's not to throw it away it's not just you know lip service to the production it's actually to start that creative thought and you know when it works it does carry through and those conversations from the very beginning become part

of the end. It does and also I think it's I mean this isn't the main reason but it is a nice consequence of it you know it's so much nicer for the people doing the dailies knowing that their work is being used and not just being thrown away and you know when I'm in early to get a head start and they're leaving a bit later and we cross paths I can be like you know yeah we're using the CDLs and they're great thank you you know.

And that's part of coming up in this industry isn't it because a lot of people cut their teeth in dailies and when you get a chance to get that kind of feedback I imagine it's quite satisfying and also gives you a chance to help them if it's not landing if you don't get that feedback how

are you meant to improve? Yeah exactly I mean if I had my way and I've discussed it but it's just not possible I think the scheduling points of view you know I would I would hand the project over to them first to kind of you know almost like finish their job you know their path um because they do do a tremendously good job but obviously when you're grading entire takes rather than whatever seconds get picked in in the cut it's never going to be perfect you know but it doesn't mean that they

can't do perfect once they've got a path. Oh well that's a lovely idea and hopefully the scheduling works out and you can do that at some point and I think that just goes towards your nature as a mentor and somebody who's very very good at training people I've been on the other side of that and you've got a real skill for it.

So while we're talking about it can you tell me a little bit about the mentoring that you're doing through your old university and also through the

Vancouver post-gi. Yeah so I was very very lucky I got to go to Ravensbourne which is part of the university London now in the UK really really good university I owe a huge huge debt to I wouldn't have even known that colour grading existed or the lab where I first started existed if I hadn't have gone there and they're really lucky to have the same tutors that I have so they're

still there. They have several mentoring schemes and I've participated in several of them the big one at the moment is called SEEDS so it's for people I'm not sure exactly what it stands for it's basically with people additional barriers entering the industry so it could be minority it could be neurodivergence it could be disability for example just people that need a little bit of extra bespoke guidance

just for them. But I've also done a lot of unofficial mentoring like I don't want to get completely undated but I usually reply to every message I get on LinkedIn for example and you know I usually especially when I was in London was going for a lot of Coffees because I get bored and I like to talk to people so people usually ask me for a Coffee I'll go for one so I did a lot of unofficial mentoring and I also did a lot for other students at Ravensbourne

unofficially as well and I'm now doing the same thing here in Vancouver the Vancouver Post Alliance so their mentoring is a little bit different it's usually for people who are a few more years into their career than students or graduates. I've got to be honest it's probably students and graduates who enjoy mentoring most just because I feel like there's more there's more advice to give and the advice makes a

bigger impact you know. I understand completely you're taking them from the exponential curve you know it's really really sharp but whereas when you get a little bit further on your gains are smaller. Or sometimes it's like yeah just hold on in there and that's all you can do. Yeah keep going. But there's a few things that I've

noticed that kind of bit the do's and don'ts. So one of the things that I've noticed unfortunately is I feel a lot of young people are getting not the best advice from their universities on let's say for example somebody wants a job they want to become a colourist and they want to do it what I guess now is the old-fashioned way of assisting colourists you know make client services at IO, assistant colourist, unicolorist daily is

the effect of colourist. You know the kind of path that we've both taken and what a lot of these colleges and universities tell them to do is to send the CV out saying that they are colourists

and it's all about the demo reel. And I met this young one woman say for a whole year she'd been trying to get a job in London it's just a runner like anything and she couldn't and she was convinced it was because her reel wasn't good enough. And I was explaining to her no one cares what your reel looks like. Like at that point when you're like wanting to enter the industry to get a job to then get a job as an assistant colourist.

It's nice if you have one you know it shows an interest probably no one's even gonna like it. What I want from you is a CV that shows me you can hold down a job. So put your one year of working a TesCo in there because that shows you turned up and followed instructions and held down a job for a year. And I want to know what your skill set is. Do you know what time code is? Do you know what frame rates are? Do you know what raw camera codecs are? You know can you import and export a

CDL or an EDL? What software do you know? Rate? Do you have an understanding? Have you used it? How much have you used it? And really what this is is this is all the skills that I'm looking for in an assistant colourist. All the skills that I'm going to have to teach that assistant colourist. They don't already have done. So I get a CV like that and it's the same for assistant editor jobs as well. I can look at that and say I can have them where I need them in three weeks or four weeks

or two months. When I get a CV that says I've graded 12 music videos I have no clue as that person's actual technical skill set. I've got no idea how long it's going to take to train them. If they've graded 12 music videos as well, great. That kind of indicates what the usage of that software package has been. But it's almost a checklist. So anyway I gave her this advice. She redid her CV. She sent it to me.

Yep that's great. It was two or three weeks later she was offered a job at Envy as an assistant colourist not as a runner. Yeah so and it was just it was frustrating for me because I see this she's just been given the wrong advice you know. And with the right advice she got immediately because she had every skill. I'm like I want you as my assistant colourist. You know she had all the

skills but to her she also wasn't valuing. You know she didn't know that this list of skills actually has a value because it's just normal right. You just import it, you export it. No it's not the necessary this big thing but it is but it might not feel like it you know. Right yeah and I think that's something that people who know quite a bit fall for all the time is that the more you know the less you think you know because you're aware of what you don't know.

Whereas if you just know like one tiny little thing you're like I'm an expert. Yeah and then the other thing is the reels. Like I said at that point in your career a reel probably doesn't really matter. It's not that important. Obviously if you're a freelancer trying to get work especially commercials working it's absolutely vital. It's your bread and butter. But I was talking to some other colourists about okay so you're applying for jobs in assistant colourist. You have the

opportunity to submit a reel. Of course you want to submit a reel because you want to take that opportunity to show your work. Well what is a

useful reel? Because the other thing I then find is the reels I'm like okay there's a series of images. I've got no idea what they are. I've got no idea what they look like. I don't know what you've done to them. I don't even know how many projects I can't. I literally can't make any assessment of skill from from this. Whereas if you have a reel where let's say you have a flow of reel. Again this is for assistant colourist work

not colourist work. Let's say you have four or five shots taken from a scene and next to each other in the scene. Now I know if you can balance and match up. I can look at that and see it's very good. Now let's say we have a longer form project and you've taken a shot from each thing and you put the next to each other. I'd be like oh you've made a number of variations of the same look which are both different and consistent.

Another skill set has been demonstrated. Then you have some mishmash of lots of different looks. I'm not so different but okay yeah you can do lots of different phrases. I've got some sense and I've also had enough time on each project. I think sometimes there's this idea that shows have to be really really quick and really fast paced. Sometimes I do think it's good to give people a moment to actually register what it is that you've worked on. Even if it's just three or four projects that's

fine that's okay. I mean I think some of the things that you've covered there are really interesting. So in terms of the skill set of an assistant colorist it's less about that artistic creative kind of vision which you can develop over time and you can develop your eye and you can develop those techniques. But it seems that you're sort of saying that the more fundamental things there are matching, balancing, consistency, being able to work to a brief.

These things are quite technical and dry and you're not necessarily going to learn them on your own doing music videos in your bedroom. What I see is when I started there was only one way

to become a colorist. That was to join a company like Company Free as a runner, work your way up, try and get in the grading suite, get a position as an assistant colorist. That was the only way to do it because there was no kit at home. You couldn't do it at home, there were no courses, there were no online resources. That was the only way you could do it. Now there are these two pathways. There's this old school pathway

which still very much exists. There's this newer pathway where you can do these online courses, you can use online resources. There's so much content being made, there's so many content producers. I see students working on advertisements for social media for really big brands and they're getting paid for it. There's this other pathway as well and they both have pros and cons.

The con of that second pathway from the work that I see is the discipline, the consistency, the balancing, the matching, all that really really boring stuff is not impossible but it's it's harder to learn because where are you learning it from? You haven't got a senior or a mentor, you're not sitting in a chair, you know, checking shots, comparing new VFX shots against old VFX shots and then matching the new VFX shots in or doing dailies. You don't have that experience.

Again it's not to say you can't have a career going that way, lots of people are and do but I do tend to see it's did more towards the short form. Yes I couldn't agree more because also in short form you can use a lot of maneuvers to get somewhere but in long form there's often restrictions on the workflow.

So if you're working on CDLs you've got your 10 values and you can't go outside of that, there's no secondaries, you know, you can't muck around and go oh I'll go cool this way and then warm that way and then I'll come back to the center. You just have to go straight to the goal and same when you know we were VFX coloring there were restrictions around what tools you could use and how you could implement them so you had to get really good at getting straight to the point.

You couldn't kind of meander around to get to a good balance. And you've also, and this is one of the most challenging parts I found of going from a junior like this the biggest challenge I had as a junior colorist having come up with the assistant colorist in a DI finishing environment which at the time was quite unusual, usually was more difficult to be in a daily environment, was I had a client next to me telling me what they wanted, validating what I had done,

I had a grade, no problem. At the moment I didn't have that person next to me, I didn't know what to do. Like I've got an image, I've got the tools, how should it look? I don't know. Does it match? Well I kind of think it does, it does on the waveform but does it? Is it good? No idea. And then that was a lack of experience, right? That was a lack of time in the chair,

the specific time in the chair alone. And that's one of the reasons why I went into the effects grading because I knew I was going to get that time, I was going to be forced, I was going to be forced to figure it out by myself. So let's talk about that start of your career and

how you came up in the DI suite as an assistant. I mean we've talked about this previously and you've got some amazing stories of the people that you worked with at the time and you know the rooms that you were in are pretty phenomenal so anything you can share about that I'd love to hear. Yes I had probably the most extraordinary timing and luck I've ever heard of the start of my career.

I was doing work experience at a small laboratory off of Border Street in London and I went there because they had the lab timers, the telephony, colorist and the DI colorist, it was the only place I had all of this. I was like this is where I'm going, this is where I'm going to land. So I went there and a runner walked out, they didn't even walk out, they just texted that they quit and I asked for her job and the guy who became my boss didn't

really want to give me the job. I think he thought I was a bit of a precocious brat which I probably was. Nothing wrong with that. But anyway he was kind of desperate so he gave me the job and my chief's were like yeah sure just as long as you submit your work. I had a term left on my degree, go work, this is the point of the course. So I was supposed to be looking after the telephony suites but of course I didn't want to be in the telephony suites, I wanted

to be in the DI suite. So I was always in the DI suite and the first colorist I assisted was Robin Pipsi who is just an absolute phenomenal legend of a colorist and he was doing or they were doing, this was like just a room in the back of a lab that almost everyone ignored. I knew what was in there. None of the other runners knew or cared. So I was in there and I was talking to him and then Quantum of Solace comes up. So this room in the back of this lab becomes company 3

London. Eventually it goes through a few names first but it's associated and he basically, I think he wanted me as an assistant colorist but he basically says we're going to need our own client services. This was the end, this was the excuse. So then I became their own dedicated client services. Then Laurent Rohan, the color scientist and technical director was like I'm not having you sit around making cups of tea.

He gets me in the scanning and recording room and I'm doing all the dance, matometer readings and I'm changing lab roles for the lasers and lacing the Arri scanners. So I'm having a whale of a time. So much fun. I've just about graduated, not even had the ceremony and then it's like right you're going to be Stefan Nakamura's color assistant. He's coming over the finished Quantum of Solace and he has to have an assistant.

Now I have no assistant skill set whatsoever. I don't know how to do anything on resolve because it's fine. Just go sit next to him. So my job as assistant colorist was essentially just always just sit there and talk. But of course in all of that I just absorbed so much information and he has one thing Nakamura has is the most phenomenal, I mean he has a huge amount of skills and talents. The one thing he has

is the most phenomenal work ethic. You know you want to work on these kind of films, this is the work ethic that you have to have. So he really impaired that on me and yeah it was just extraordinary just watching this film being made from the very start. Literally the lab roles of film coming in and being scanned. To the very end sitting with him and he actually taught me how to calculate how on or off paying the print was and I'm sitting there with my paper.

So it was unbelievably lucky. It's almost like doing a master's or something. But at that point then that was it. I was an assistant colorist. I was able to assist Rob Pitsy on many films. I think I did another one with Nakamura. I did a couple with Stefan Sonnesfeld. I did one with Mitch Paulson. Yeah and then later we were joined by Adam Glassman and then later from that was a junior then but Greg Fisher and

Paul Ensey. So yeah it's like a really amazing group of people and it's not just the colorist but it's also you know Lauren was an amazing technical director. Then I was joined by John Cortell who is absolute legend. I think even the Academy Award winning color scientist. You'd never know to meet him. He's so humble but he is. And then you know it's engineers and it's

editors and then the client. So you know like sitting in a room next to Anson Dove-Mantle who's basically telling you how he sets up his shot for lighting. And then the next day someone's like oh you know he's doing a talk at the BFI and it's only 30 pounds. And I'm like what's even a suite with him all afternoon? Why would I pay 30 pounds to go? But I was realizing moments like that you really realize what you're just getting. It's just part of your kind of daily working life.

It's stuff that people would you know go out for the evening to go and listen to. But that's just absolutely the best start anyone can hope to have. And I think it really speaks volumes about what you get as an assistant and why working for bigger companies even if it takes a little while to get to that goal is a really solid way to get there. Because you

learn so much clearly. You get so many opportunities to understand different parts of the process and you get a chance to get good at it without all of the responsibility being on your shoulders. Because you hear stories about people getting an amazing chance but it's very sink or swim. And I think it really depends on the day of the week for anyone whether or not they've got the ability to get through that kind of it's not a sustainable way to work. It's not me. I

just know that's not me. That whole being a freelancer particularly trying to learn your craft and develop your status and your profile is a free that is not me. It's just it's not my personality. I know it's not.

I did have a moment so I left company 3 for about seven years. I just hit a ceiling where it's like I'm not going forward. I'm not learning anything. If anything I kind of feel like I'm drifting backwards because ultimately you can only progress as far as the work that there is and the work that's available to you. And I was in that spot I think a lot of people can find themselves in where you're like well I'm too experienced to just be doing assistant work. I'm

too ambitious. I can want to do more and I can do it but I can't do that just yet. There's got to be something in between. And it was a really good time to be a freelancer in London because the kit had just become available but very few people knew how to use it yet. So you could make a lot of dough. I was just like I'm tired. Like I'm worn out.

I'm tired. I don't want to be running my own business and invoicing people and chasing money and chasing work and going into one place one day and putting this hat on and go and there's also this underlying thing of kind of just knew I wasn't quite ready. Like I could probably blag it. I could probably do a good enough job. But I knew that there was a block missing to my experience that I had to fill in fast. And I think that's when Binn Rona came back to finishing. I'm

still completely terrified. Like that sink or swim feeling I just don't think it ever leaves you. I get it at the start of every single show I do. I'm like this is it. This is it. This is going to be the one that ruins me. You know. But I at least knew I had all of the pieces. I'm like okay I know I can do the clients stuff. I know I can do the social stuff. I know I can do my balance. I know I can do my match. I know I can do my windows. I know I can. I've got all the

pieces. I've just got to put it together.

Yes. And I hate to bring it back to gender. But I have noticed and I also have experienced this as a woman is that sense of I'm not ready. I need a little bit more. I need to be better educated. I need to get that experience first. Whereas I find that a lot of men will jump a little jump a little bit more like head first into those

single swim moments. Like even you know hearing stories of people who don't know a grading system particularly well and just kind of talking their way into a suite and saying oh yeah I can do it. No worries. I would be absolutely beside myself. I wouldn't be able to sleep at night. I'd have to go in for a month unpaid to get up to speed.

And I don't know like I hate I hate to bring it back to gender but I do think that there is a gendered element there of feeling confident and the point at which you just say I'm good enough now. I'm gonna do it. And I suspect that you were probably good enough at that point. But it's everything you did in between gave you even more. Yeah I mean I think on the gender thing I mean there are literally studies that say that you know if a guy fulfills 40% of a job

description he'll apply for it. And if a woman like 90 she won't because she's missing 10 or something. So there's definitely something there. It is always hard to know what's personality and what's gender. But there's also a little element of and this was really when I was at DNEG. I spent a lot of time at DNEG. I was very happy there. I got to live a lot of life. I got to travel. I got to have weekends. It was wonderful. But there

was also an element of I was waiting for the right opportunity. I kind of knew I could I don't want to be rude but this is how it is. I could go down a level in calibre of work and and be a finishing. I kind of knew that option was available to me. But I knew once I did that it would be really really hard to get back up to what I actually wanted to work on. Same thing. You know I spent longer being an assistant colourist before I became a junior. I probably

could have gone down a level. There's always this option when when you're working for a top tier company or a top tier calibre production to go kind of down a level in calibre and upper level in job title. There's always there's often always this option and sometimes it's the right move to do right. But for me personally I never felt

it was the right move. I felt like this is the calibre of work that I want to work on and I'd rather have a lower job title and even potentially lower pay to be on that rather than you know to be in the top seat but on something I don't really want to work on. And there's probably an element of status there as well. That the calibre of work that you work on it gives you status.

Sure I mean I feel like there are different worlds in a way and you could either be like big fish in a small pond or small fish in a big pond and you chose small fish in a big pond but while you were that small fish you were actually

getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Yes and I sort of by chance and accidentally found myself being a big fish and actually in a bit of a small pond. So Vancouver is not a crowded market for colourists or color grading. You know there's pretty much there's ours there's picture shop both employ a max of three or four colourists at any one time. That is pretty much the population

of finishing colourists of Vancouver. There's a couple of smaller companies but again you know going back to this luck and timing I just happened to physically be in Vancouver when they needed a colourist and they kind of weren't any like I'm not saying they weren't any other candidates but you know the big company you know if you're a dailies colourist it's very easy to get shoehorned as you're a dailies colourist. You're a VFX colourist that's what you do. You're an assistant, you're a

junior. It's always an element of luck about how you come up to the next level. Sometimes it's moving country you know I went from junior to the VFX by okay it was an open job and a website I typed it but I moved country. That's how I went up that level. This was a case of being in the right place at the right time and again sorry to bring it back but with a certain caliber of employment history and credit list which brings

about an element of trust. You know it's the same thing if I'm you know if I'm looking to hire an assistant because probably more now we're talking about a colourist you know I look at their CV and I'm like oh well that was on the TV right so I know that they can work till that's done. That was in a cinema. I know they can work till that's done. That was for Netflix. I know they can work till that's done. And I think at that level there's more technical processes to understand and to

you know shepherd the project through. You mentioned before that the two series that we discussed were HDR, SDR. So knowing those workflows if you've done jobs that are for Netflix or Hulu or what have you you're probably familiar with Dolby Vision workflows and HDR XT and you're on top of these new workflows and these new technologies that seem to be moving at lightning speeds.

Yeah and again it's you know let's say you're someone you've blagged your way into the suite, you've got your little box of tricks, you've made this thing look spectacular, you've got all the social skills and the client skills and everyone loves you and then it goes off and it gets rejected by the network. Every shot has a QC error, the HDR gets rejected on technical grounds. I mean it'd be a complete enough a disaster.

And can you tell me a little bit about when you moved to Company 3 for the second time in Vancouver in your current title. I noticed that on one of the shows that you were on My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 that you were grading along with Stefan Sonenfield Did you find that there were a lot of opportunities for learning these workflows and you know obviously understanding the Company 3 way of doing things. Was that an enriching experience for you? Under the Bridge is also a shared project with

Stefan's. He did episode one and I did Am doing two to eight. One of the things I found at Company 3 is in terms of like the editorial side of stuff, everything outside of the grading room there is a Company 3 way of doing it right and of course it changes with technology but it's pretty consistent and it's pretty consistent globally and it has to be because projects are just Pinging all over the place. Inside the grading room every colorist gets the grade how they grade.

There is a lot of difference between how different colorist grade. Even the things that you consider to be technical but still are subjective like doing your Dolby Vision trim. Do you analyze each shot separately? Do you find one analysis you like for the scene on one shot and apply that? I heard something about someone analyzing a grayscale chart and applying that to the whole thing. The colorists have the freedom to work

how they work. There's also a huge amount of opportunity to learn from other colorists as well. Sometimes you do an indie film and they want it to look like an indie film. Sometimes they want it to look like a glossy Hollywood film. Sometimes they want it to look like a glossy Hollywood film. And you're like what do you mean look like an indie? Well there are kind of

things. So you know sometimes they're a little bit grungy, a little bit mushy or whatever that kind of trend is or something like that. But I have noticed the tendency and is with these kind of higher budget, higher status, is the importance really really really seems to be on colour separation.

Like that's that's if someone wants to ask me what makes a Hollywood film, a Hollywood film from a colour grading perspective, I would say it doesn't matter how strong the look is, it doesn't matter how grungy the blacks is, how indie look they've gone or how much they've

dirtied up in the LUT or the dailies. When you look at that end result you're going to have perfect colour separation every single frame That's a really great tip for anyone who's colouring and it comes right back to those fundamentals of balancing because when you have a well-balanced image you can then do what you want to it because you've got that foundation there and you have created that colour separation and you see it you know on a parade if you get your scan or your original material and

everything's in the red channel and then you pull it down and pull some some cyan back in and all of a sudden

everything just is revealed. Well sometimes you know sometimes you go a bit further than that you know there's there's a colour there's an inherent colour separation which is in a perfectly balanced shot and then you can always go for a slightly high part which is where you're actually separating the colours further and one of the ways really really simple is you just key your blacks like key your blacks put a little bit of blue in them pop pop now if your shot isn't

perfectly balanced it's not gonna react in that way the other thing is if you haven't learned how to match and balance naturally you're using your keys to match your balance I mean I'm of the opinion there's only so many keys and windows you can put on an image and tell it just kind of falls apart or looks really digital in place so you kind of already use it up you know yes I call that overcooked yeah I and I get there all the time especially doing short form because

everyone from the agency is like oh that thing there and that thing there and individually yeah individually you go okay all of these are good corrections but you step back and go oh it's really overcooked now and it's really not tied to what was shot anymore so I completely understand what you're saying there and I think it comes back to that idea of complexity not being better than like sometimes you need to be complex but in an ideal world I don't I don't think that adds

anything yeah especially with material it's very well shot yes I mean the difference I mean the

difference between I've done quite a variety of work and in and the wide variety of work in the last year and a half as partly because of the strike the strike really affected us here up in Vancouver so it got to a lot more indie work and I mean like real indie work which was great and it was really amazing to work on some films that's really great stories but they you know they were more challenging to grow like there is a big difference between something that's been shot with

tens if not a hundred or something million plus dollars spent on it and something which is grading with us because they want to voucher a film festival you know there's a big difference but I think it is it is absolutely doable you know if you know how to do the tools that's doable but yes you've often got to do much more to the image and you've got to do much more on to each individual image and which is bespoke to each image yeah so having like a scene

instead of saying everything's already pretty

pretty good you might you might need a bunch of windows or keys to just match one angle to another before you look at the scene absolutely but each one of those should have a point and purpose to them which couldn't be achieved in a different one at least for windows and keys some people like to be very very clean and only have one or two nodes that have any kind of offset or lift down a game right like no no you can't have more than that I don't see any reason to not have as

many as you want I often have a lot I find it very useful for myself to be able to toggle something on and off and I especially find clients like to see stuff being toggled up you know they want they've made their note they want to see the before and the after another thing I find very useful with doing that is let's say I'm really struggling to match two shots because they're just so inherently different if you know like oh I'm too warm I'm too cool you know like

the this perfect line is so thin you can't hit it and then I'm like okay let's go a bit too far going to key bring down the gain and start to dissolve I love this so much dissolve that nodes opacity and with it the intensity of my correction and that's how I'm gonna get it but I can't do that if it's in a node do something so that we'll find I'm tuning um I've got no problem with having lots and lots of notes and then of course you get it right and then

you can apply it to the rest of your thing um but you don't want to get in a pickle that's the other thing and I think so I think a lot of lots of it and again the working with other colorists working under other colorists the experience of working on more projects I mean ideally the aim of the game I think or the aim of my game is developing a methodology right so that doesn't mean that you're doing the same thing on every show or in every shot it's not

you know bunging a bullet grade on or like your version of a space but it's having some sense of process of how you approach something I think this is really important for long form and the more long the long form for episodic it's essential I don't know how anyone could grade a series without having some kind of methodology um I think you're getting a real pickle there so you know like this is what I'm gonna do if you're on resolve on the group grade this is what I'm gonna

do on my clip my first notice my CDL I often end up especially on the higher budget shop stuff even ended up with a kind of a no graph template once you've figured out what the client wants and what they tend to bump up against in the review you know you know what they don't like about what's been shot it even ends up with like a bunch of turned off nodes kind of doing the same things which you turn on and off or um other things on resolve I found really useful that

times per methodology is there's this thing where you preserve a number of nodes right so it means you can pop in case grades but you can save nodes say one and two which is your cdo and your match or you can do it in your group which is great if your group's like you're seen by scene um so I find figuring out how where you want to put things how you want to put them because what you really don't want to be doing is spending time dragging and dropping nodes

onto each individual shot or getting into a pickle and you're like oh I did it in the group for this scene but I did it on the clip that's enough I want it panning off that's all that kind of stuff I think that's so useful it's that's the craft side of it I think and every colorist is going to have their own methodology but you're in

the process of refining yours yeah and with every show it changes you know every show every person I work with you know it I feel like it deepens my understanding of an image like you know on under the bridge sometimes their eyes catch the lighting the the not the practical lighting the set lighting and it creates this really small but really intense especially in HDR kind of thing of light I don't like that and I was like I haven't noticed that but now you mention

it I'm like yeah it is better with that reduce so then I'll go to the next HDR show and if I see the same thing I'm gonna see it and and I'm going to address it immediately and other things like sometimes you feel so silly afterwards you're like how did I not notice this but of course you're just looking at you're like oh does their skin tone match you're not looking at what their eyeballs are doing.

and one thing I noticed on another show is I'm like I'm lowering the contrast and my saturation's going down but my client hasn't asked me to put the saturation up so now I feel a bit like you know am I allowed almost you know the note is not to take the contrast down and put the saturation up can you know is it rude or are they going to be asking what I'm doing if I put the saturation up back up then they go oh we've lost the saturation let's put it up you know

lovely but but then from that I'm like well actually hang on a minute maybe I should have a node prepared to my little gallery that both brings the contrast down and puts the saturation up so the saturation stays exactly even and then I can dissolve that on and off with my gain and that way I've almost invented a new tool because in resolve you can't my knowledge anyway do both at the same time right but then that's my tool which does both at the

same time and then you can end up with like this my almost like a gallery of these tools which you can jump to really quickly and they're going to do exactly what you want they're going to behave exactly how you want them you know while you're in this live session Yeah and when you are in the live session I mean I've just from my experience I've used resolve for close to 15 years and I feel like when I'm on my own or with clients that I know really well the tool disappears but I did

the tool disappears but I did a film with a famous director and all of a sudden I felt like a newborn baby and everything I was clicking buttons wrong I was like pressing the wrong thing on the control surface because I was nervous and if you're working at that caliber all the time I imagine that little toolkit that power grade gallery or whatever it is is really useful for doing those quick confident client reassuring moves because like you don't you don't want to move in

any way that spooks them you've got to keep their

confidence even more so when you're doing remote so a lot of my grades in this remote I have zoom I have the iPad and they can't see what's going on like they can't see if it's crashed or saving menus come after it's stuck in some mode usually when someone's in the room they're like oh okay you know I'll give her a minute it's it's doing something you know it's fine but when you're in the flow of a session multiple people in the room in a hay or something and you're like

not doing what I want it to do and the panic can kick in pretty quickly yeah and that's not an ideal point from which to make creative decisions you know when you I hate that feeling and I think everyone's been there of like oh my god I just want to show the swan on top of the water and they can't see the legs but the legs are going you know it's just not fun yeah sounds you can always feel a bit worried I mean there's an element of I guess performance

yeah to a live section you know how have you performed did that go well of course the work's fine but did the experience of that section hit where you wanted it hit you know yeah and there is a lot a lot to that and sometimes just get a day and everything seems to be stacked against you it does feel like that sometimes I often feel like that if I'm having a technical problem I remember recently I was in a session and I was meant to have a particular plug-in licensed but

there was a problem with the license and there was so much backwards and forwards around that that I just couldn't focus on the creative and I couldn't even be that you know fun person in the suite and yeah it can be a problematic moment. Yeah

one thing I found different is say when I first started features and broadcasts were two separate divisions completely separate separate clients, separate DPs, separate colorists almost at some point even within the whole asset the like company 3 separate companies now it's just it's long form right episodic and features pretty much together it's long form colorists clients DPs writers are moving through them there's no barrier but what I have found is still a very big difference is when I do a

Episodic generally speaking I'll grade the episode and then we review the episode there's probably some look there right at the beginning and then there's a little bit of time for some notes and that's the episode finish you go on to the next episode and you do it over whereas with features particularly indie features if they've got a 4 CR package or they've got an 8 CR package they want to be in that room for 40 or 80 hours.

and I remember one of the things we spoke about was how in an ideal world you would balance the shot then match your balance shots and you then apply your grade because that way you're not kind of a lot of it comes back to color separation you're not you know what's the difference between a grade and a watch kind of thing so a lot of what that means is at least I found that you end up doing all three of those at the same time in the same process so you're doing your your balance your match

and you're kind of LUT and sometimes you're finishing as well kind of all in the same path with a live studio audience which can feel quite high pressured at sometimes but I think again that's just an experience being a need to get used to it because you know when I started out and I was sitting next to people who had been doing you know color grading for 20 years and who had been doing finishing for 10 of those years I mean that was Monday you know like that that's

just what they did day in day out whereas for me I went from it's quite funny actually I went from really struggling to grade without a client being next to me so learning how to grade without a client next to me now having to almost relearn not in terms of the skill set but kind of like the time management and the okay yeah I remembered that note we'll jump to that but I'm just going to finish the shot here kind of again I think everyone's going to relate to

that I think you've actually hit on a journey that a lot of people go through right because there's a massive difference between putting on a podcast or putting on your favorite album being snug in the room by yourself you control the environment you've got some snacks it doesn't matter what your face is doing doesn't matter what you're saying you don't have to say anything and you can just go right into those pictures and go for it and if you want to get up and go to

the loo or if you want to walk around the block and refresh your eyes yeah you can and then you bring the client in and it's a whole different

ball game I actually so I didn't do it this year which I actually really enjoyed it so it was a bit disappointing but last year I did something called we haven't made people crazy eight so it's a filmmaking competition and what happens is people pitch their short film ideas and the eight winners get to make their films in I think it's eight days which sounds like a lot but they're like building sets and stuff these are properly made films and then people like our companies they get

some funding and they get kind of gifted services and stuff like I did two of them and they were two short films you know it's been five and seven minutes long I had four hours to grade them so four hours to grade one one day four hours to grade the other which would not be crazy except you get five filmmakers come in and they're all sleep deprived and delirious because they've almost finished and they've all got so many ideas and honestly the projects are absolutely fantastic I

really really loved them we ended up with two really really good looking pieces of work those were crazy like you literally got someone with you know you're going to be disqualified if you don't stop and why should it be red it should be exactly that was not good I kind of came out this sweet in another color so previously was like how was I was like yeah that's crazy well it's good to mix it up a bit and I mean working through the strikes and working on a

bunch of indie projects and working on a bunch of shorts I imagine that it gives you quite a breadth of experience that at other times perhaps you wouldn't be getting in that role totally I mean totally if it wasn't for like the quick clean anxiety of that situation I would have really enjoyed it but um no it was it was a really good opportunity for me to do a much broader range of work I mean I was basically hired to increase capacity on episodic grading for what at the time was a

streaming boom and was projected to be a continually exponentially growing streaming boom so after I joined about two months later the boom ended and then there were the strikes um so really what I'd signed up to do was was to be doing you know episodic shows one episodic show after another episodic show and what I ended up getting to do was to do two really phenomenal episodic shows and a bunch of features of very varying budget you know all the way from Big Factory

Wedding to I'm trying to think what my lowest budget was I think it's probably Takes the Village um because the documentary set in East Vancouver about a refugee Gansan family growing up um which I think was sponsored by Telus and kind of everything in between um and yeah again you just learn something from from every project and every person that I work with especially DP always always learn something can another little node goes in that gallery of something to pull out um and another kind

and another kind of luck goes on the favorite list of like okay this is a good luck for this but this is how I grade with that lot um so yeah because I've never done documentary before that was the first documentary I'd ever done um Party Pirate had some sections of claymation I've never graded animation I've never graded animation literally into a live action scene like it's the same scene it's like whoa how how do I do this you know um so I I did benefit a lot and also yeah

I got to do some music videos and commercials and I think one of the things that I really loved is um one of the features I did Valiant 1 which I think is going to be released this year so it's certain north-south chris minstler but was shot in BC so that was it was quite a challenging grade from making it look not only like different country um but also completely different weather conditions because they shot in BC thinking well we're guaranteed to be overcast and rainy and it was

like blistering heatwave so it was a very challenging grade but really phenomenal um DP who actually shoots only on red which is interesting because I feel like not a lot of people are shooting on red at the moment or at least here what we're getting in Vancouver um and a very strong look he's a commercial DP um so he came back with a couple of strikes of strikes he came back with a couple of commercials during the strike um which were much appreciated and great I was like yeah he would

be fine um and tell so on that film where

it was red my understanding is that you created a bespoke LUT for that one using the red creative kit what was that process so it was quite interesting so what happened was this was another LUT originally that had been done either by or for our dailies department um which I had inherited but when I came and the dailies looked absolutely fantastic and it was originally going to be a HDR stream so we would have just had a HDR version but when I made

Converted it to P3 and I looked it in the theater by the time we came to grade the one that's been actually it just wasn't working it was it was too heavy you know you can always like you can always add contrast in it's very hard to kind of take it out you know and I was like I love like how the LUTs going it's just it's too strong to keep so I took some advice and again this is one thing that's wonderful about working with a company you can knock on a suite and and go to a colorist

it's more senior than yourself and I worked with an absolutely phenomenal um cover called Anne Boyle and she looked at it and she went that's worth a creative kit that's I reckon that's what so we found the creative kit and we were able to completely reconstruct the LUTs that have been made essentially like a base LUT and a bunch of input LUTs with different names some of them are a touch odd um so we we rephrased it and then we were able I was able to adjust how much of

each of these input LUTs and which base LUT these input LUTs were going on to to create a more bespoke version of the lot for the fee free but then also I could adjust it on a person basis as well what an amazing amount of control so unbelievable I will now actually I did do another short which was red now I get any red project I'm straight for that phrase because you know if I go to our I mean our imagery and science team at scene one I go I want a LUT that does this is in this is

RED they'll give me whatever I asked for but I can't adjust it literally live in the room with on on such you know on a scene by scene basis And to have that skill which is more of a color science skill and you've brushed up against color science your whole career and worked in very technical roles that have required understanding of it and to be able to get hands on with it and see how it can be like an actually creative solution to a problem as opposed to a bunch of like really scary

formulas in a white paper yeah I think I still find it kind of scary I I've yet to meet anyone that I think has an equal handle on both the technical color side side of color and then the subjective creative side of color you know I think they're just fundamentally different types of brain um I once considered I was like maybe I should put the color scientist and I think it lasted about one afternoon um that also goes along with when I decided I was going to learn how to

use python that also lasted one afternoon um but yeah I kind of the necessity of needing to understand something in order to do what I want to do creatively seems to kind of push push me through it so I always say it's my understanding of that extends as far as it needs to and it seems not an inch more but um I think that's um I think that's really practical though because you've only got so many hours in the day and there's only so much bandwidth any one person has and if you're really

focused on your goal of being an incredible colorist then going off and getting sidetracked becoming a color scientist is not necessarily going to get you there I also think it's it's how you learn so like if something's abstract but I'm trying to learn python it's like if you write this script you'll be able to tell the time on this clock to go back by 10 minutes what I don't want to so therefore none of this is making any sense to me whatsoever if I actually wanted to do that it

would probably make enough sense that I would be able to do it but if python was going to help you with that you know setting up your node graph for something really practical I imagine you'd get it if anyone can write python and can write that please message me on linkedin and we'll go for coffee and I'll buy it this time well there you go you heard it here first and um if anyone in the Vancouver area feels like buying Aurora coffee it sounds like you've um you've got a potential coffee date

so um can you tell me a little bit I feel like I've taken a lot of your time up and I will wrap things up quite shortly my first mentoring session I ever did was supposed to be half an hour and it lasted three hours so don't worry oh they're so lucky um well I did want to just hear a little bit about so you've obviously done some amazing things and since we last saw one another you've been kicking huge goals and doing beautiful work now that the strikes are over in productions

ramped up again I know there's quite a few shows that you've graded that haven't been released yet but I also imagine there's a huge amount of stuff coming up oh wow so what are you excited for so

the plan is I'm finishing under the bridge um sweet magnolias is coming back to me for season 4 which is a massive massive privilege because it's I think the first show it's the first show that's come back to me rather than been given to me you know like it didn't have to come back to me it did um so I'm hoping to manage as much of that as I can and then I'm taking a year off to have a baby that's what you do when you're at the top of your career oh well that's so awesome

oh any congratulations oh well that's I don't even know what to say I'm just so excited for you so yeah so that's my next year and we're hoping we'll probably be spending a chance a bit in Europe um kind of that's where our family is and maybe even a little bit traveling

while we get we'll see. Oh you always manage to squeeze a bit of traveling So that's very exciting, and then yeah I guess kind of after that my slate is pretty pretty blank really um I guess I just have to hope that I've made enough good work now that it speaks for itself in the year and a bit some

yeah I look it absolutely will. Talking as a mother of a three-year-old now um when I came back from Vancouver um I was seven months pregnant and I'd been away for about a year and a half and I was like oh my god I'm about to take another six months off and everyone will have forgotten me but you know as soon as I was back everyone was ready to jump on again and I think people actually love it when you're a little bit unavailable I'm just so excited for you and I'm all about the working mums

fantastic. We'll see how it goes but you know I think it's you know it's it's very easy to always think of work in terms of work and only work um and I think when you're first starting out kind of going all the way back to when you're first starting out it really is because that's how you do it you don't make something of your career by being one foot in and one foot out you know you're all in but you know at a certain point life has to happen or should should happen

or otherwise it's like well what's the point in working hard you know that's absolutely right yeah and when it comes to family I just think you know all of those previous generations problems of you know oh I'm having a baby so I can't have a career they're gone now and we can we can do both so why why not why not be happy in both areas well I think that's a really nice point to wrap it up um I'm absolutely thrilled on all points I'm so excited with the amazing career that you're

making for yourself and watching the beautiful making for yourself and watching the beautiful work that you're working on um and I'm really I think I'll talk to you offline about your mentoring because I really back that awesome all mentoring because I really back that awesome All right well thank you so much for having me and um thank you for listening if you've managed to get to the end of this you've managed to get to the end of this yes thanks guys thanks so much for joining me and

for Mixing Light I'm Kali Bateman