Welcome to the Color Timer Podcast. I am your host, Vincent Taylor. This is a show where we speak to professionals who work with color. Today, we're speaking to a very old friend of mine, Michael Henry. Michael is a filmmaker, a writer. He's been in the industry for 20 plus years. Made an incredible feature film called Blame that was in the Toronto Film Festival.
I was chatting to Michael about the show, saying it's all about color, and then made some kind of nasty remark that only friends can make, saying, "Oh, I assume you can't come on the show because you're color blind." And then when I heard that, I went, "Wait a second. No, no, no. You have to come on the show. I want to chat to you about what it's like to be color blind. Being a creative in this industry, what can you see? What can't you see?"
So that's what we're going to do. We're going to use the 15 minute sand timer as per usual to keep the conversation contained, keep it focused, and yeah, let's go. Take your seats because the hourglass is about to turn. We are entering the world of the micro podcast. Explore the craft, creativity, and science of professionals who use color to tell stories. Welcome to the Color Timer with Vincent Taylor. Michael, hi. Thank you for joining me. Good to be here, Vincent. Good to see you as always.
It makes us sound all kind of official when we speak to each other like that. When I was chatting to you originally, and I was just telling you that I was doing this podcast, and it was a podcast talking to professionals who work with color, and then I said some kind of remark about going, "Oh, shame you can't come on because you're color blind."
And then I went, "Actually, no, no, you should come on the show, and we should talk about what it's like to be color blind, especially you're a director, you're a filmmaker, and how that impacts you." And then the more I thought about it, I thought back to the old days of film school, and I was still a DP, and I was shooting something for you, and I remember my little anecdote of, and I think this is true, I don't think I made it up.
I was putting a gel up on the light, and you came over to me, and I guess you were shy about it, I don't know, but you said quietly, "Oh, is that green? Is that a green gel you're putting up?" But I went, "Yeah, yeah, it's like..." But look, thank you for talking to me about this. No worries. I mean, you're always sensitive as a director with color, like on sets or in the grading room. I just feel like when you're color blind, you're just confused.
It's like color confusion, color deficiency more than color blindness. So yeah, I'm just like, I'm never certain, never sure. So hence, "Is that green? Is this..." You know? Anyway, so... Oh, before I jump into that first question, because I've made this mistake before, I've got to remember to stop my color timer. - Please. - All right? Yeah, yeah. So here we go. - I can see it in there. - Here we go. It's official.
- Awesome. - So, I mean, how did you find out you were color blind? How old were you? I was in grade one. We were learning colors, and magenta, the color magenta, was something I just couldn't understand. It was like my... I think it's the opposite of my safety word. It's like my fear words, magenta. And I thought it was an alright kid, pretty smart, could pick up things, but colors, I was just like, "What the hell is this? It's brown, right?" And then no, it's sort of...
I still don't know, so I'm guessing, right? Magenta's like "ready brown," right? Or something like that, or it's... I don't f***ing know. It's part of my language. I just don't know. So I just remember in grade one going, "I can't... No matter how many times you try to teach me this, I can't... get it! I just can't understand it." So I remember my dad took me to the I&E hospital in Melbourne, got a day off school, which was always awesome.
That's good. That's good. And I just remember having a whole bunch of tests done. My dad giving me one of these invisible pens, sort of cool books to do on the way home just to soften the blow. But yeah, found out that I was severely color-blind. Right. Yeah, and that was at seven, and nothing's changed. I'm still... Did you, as a little kid, did you feel... How did it make you feel? Or you didn't...
There's not very often, other than if someone says, "What color is this?" You don't walk around the world going, "That's red, that's green, that's blue. Oh, look at the sky. It's awesome." You see it, you think it, but you don't... I don't know. You don't verbalise it or process it too much. And I've been like this since I was born. It's the way I've seen the world. And it's still very colorful for anyone that doesn't understand what color-blindness actually is.
It's actually for a minute percentage of the color-blind population. It's black and white color-blindness. For the rest of us, it's just tonally... We probably see 5,000 colors where you see whatever it is, one to two million, whatever. I don't know what number it is. I've got no idea. We only see, yeah, a restricted amount, I guess. Do you... And it's okay if you don't, but do you know anything about the science behind color-blindness? It's to do with the cones in your eyes, supposedly.
And there's the three colors, or the three colors of light, which is what, green, red and blue. But that's kind of my knowledge of it, is that there's something actually physically wrong with the color cones in your retina. Right. That don't process the light properly. Do you happen to know if it's hereditary, or... It is. Well, so for anyone... I mean, it's a pretty easy way to explain it. It's a recessive gene that gets carried on through a mother. Right.
And a mother will give it to her sons, as in the actual color-blindness. Yeah. If she passes it on to me, then I, as a color-blind person, pass it on through my daughter, through her genes. So if I had a daughter, she would be 50% chance of being color-blind. Right. Which was leading on to my other question, because I was wondering if it was like hemophilia, where it's just male or female, but it's not, right? It's like 90... 95% males, or some huge amount.
The only way you will get a color-blind female, I'm pretty sure, is if you have a color-blind mother and a color-blind father, I think. The mother is carrying the color-blind gene, recessively, and she marries a male who's got the color... who is actually color-blind, so therefore... And they've... It's an X, Y thing. And they have met at a color-blind club. Absolutely. The color-blind club. Yeah. Which you don't know about, but I told you about. That was really fun. I can only imagine.
You've kind of touched on this, but could you try to describe to me how you do see color? The best... I just think it's like... So I'm looking out here and I can see a tree, right? Where you would see all the colour differentiation in the green in that tree, in the leaves. It's like, imagine taking 15 different shades of green, or very close, and grouping together in one block color. That's kind of more what I see. I don't see the differentiation.
That's where I think color-blind people get lost. Primary colors are a lot easier to differentiate. Show me a yellow and a red. I can pick that up. Show me a dark green and a light brown, and my brain starts going, "I don't know." Where it fits. What it is. So right now, when I see a tree, I see it as very vibrant and colorful. It's green. It's a super green tree out there. But I'm not seeing those color differentiations in there, but I'm still seeing tonal differentiations.
I can see the underside of the leaf is dark, the top of the leaf is bright. But I'm not seeing color differentiation like a non-color-blind person would say. And again, I think you did actually already touch on this. But is there any way that it affects your day-to-day life? No, apart from my driving test, which I can't talk about, but I passed. So there you go. I'm not color-blind at all. No, it doesn't. It doesn't affect. I really... It would affect your life ridiculously.
I mean, as a color grader, it's like everything you do. But for most of us, color doesn't... I guess assessing color isn't an integral part of our life. It's just something that happens in the background and very often, you know... Very rarely, sorry, no one ever stops me to go, "Hey, what color is that shirt you're wearing?" The closest... And it's far away, but the closest I can possibly get. When I was working in China...
And I'd only been wearing glasses a couple of years, and I got a new prescription. And I started work that day, and it was great. It was really good. Next day, great, it was good. And I think the third day, I kept the glasses on as I went to go outside, and I took them off. And I think there was quite a colorful sign there, and I went, "Why does that look different?" And I realised that they'd put a blue blocker or a color thing on the glasses.
And I freaked out, because I went, "Oh my God, I've just been grading for two days." And it's interesting, because I went... Of course, I put my old glasses back on, and I went back, and it was subtly different, but it was all relative. And basically, I just shifted the green hue out of everything, and it was fine. I mean, that's my... Talking about green hue and stuff, when we're thinking about working as a director and working with color grading and this...
The worst thing for me is green tinges on skin and stuff. Like, if they're under a fluoro or something, you would spot it like that. I would still look at someone and think tonally, their skin looks alright. It just doesn't scream out, like, "Oh my God, they've got a green face."
And there's so many times where, you know, I'm doing an edit, or I'm just running through, and then I show someone something, and then they come back and go, "Why is that person got a green tinge on their face?" "Oh, it hasn't been graded yet!" Or whatever, you know? Because, you know, everyone uses LUTs now, and just quick little things to present an edit to someone. - It's true - So often, man, so often! That sort of thing is my, you know... Kryptonite, I guess.
No, Kryptonite's green, by the way. See? Can't see it. Yeah, sorry. Now, we have a mutual friend, a mutual close friend of ours, and when I said to him that I was speaking to you... And so he's given me a question to ask you. The Matrix... The red pill and the blue pill, you know? Did that lose any value? No, no. Because again, primary colors. I could see the red and the blue. If it was a red and a brown pill, yeah, I'd be screwed, man. That film would take a whole new meaning for me, I think.
But no, no. It's fine. It's fine. And I think you were initially talking too about, like, the red jacket in Schindler's ... You know? I could spot that. In Schinder's List? I could spot that. Like, you know. Yeah. I think that's... I think colorblind people probably have, like, an innate strength with tone. I think maybe I mentioned this to you as well. I think tonally we must just, like, black and white and just...
Well, I was going to ask you about that. I was going to ask you about the world of black and white photography. Like, if you watch a black and white film, I don't know. Does it have any impact or...? It's equivalent to you. I mean, I imagine you guys watching a black as you guys, you know. You go. You color sights. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know. Fine. When you see something and it's like a mid-grey in a black and white film, it could be a grey shirt.
It could be a red shirt. It could be a bunch of different colours. Do you know what I mean? But tonally it's sitting in the same spot. That's kind of, like, what I would say. So, I guess that's why I'm saying tonally is the thing that I pick up on more. Like, if you showed me two browns, you're picking up the colour where I'm looking straight away for the tonal differences. One will be darker than the other.
Yeah. And sometimes I would just pick the darker one as brown, I guess, because generally brown is a darker colour than green, like primary sort of stuff. So... It's a constant guessing. But it's interesting that thing about, I remember when I was, you know, a budding cinematographer and just learning and a mentor of mine had said, you know, one of the best things you can do to develop your eye as a cinematographer is to shoot black and white. And same with
photography. Because you're not getting distracted by the colors, you're focusing on those tones. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's probably that's very, very similar to what I would say from my point of view. I've always been really interested in a color is just something I defer to my cinematographer and my grader for but I can still the person that I was reading about recently, Nicholas Winding Refn, Drive Director and a few. Oh, yes. He uses
color in such a like amazing punchy way. He's supposedly colorblind as well. Is that right? And I think that's that's part of him stepping out of his safety zone and just saying screw it, I'm gonna over push this, you know, and the way he uses colored light so often, you know, where it's not even needed, but he's using it as a stylistic choice. Yeah. I see that now. And I go as a colorblind director, I kind of go I get what you're doing. I get
you're just pushing it, you're having a bit more fun. Yeah, you're breaking a bit of those boundaries, I guess that, you know, normal color sighted people might not do. And going back, you know, to that analogy of you and I on set from, oh my god, 20 years ago, whenever it was, where where where I interpreted the way you were saying it was a bit of shyness. I mean, do you have a shyness still about it or?
Yeah, it's not something I don't walk around with my, "hi, I'm colorblind" t-shirt sort of thing when especially when yeah, look, when you're directing or working with someone, it's something that you don't I mean, it doesn't come up unless I'm talking to a colorist really or a cinematographer, you know, yeah. Yeah. Well, on that topic, then, I mean, how do you work with like a colorist? How would you work with a colorist during a in a suite?
Again, I would have to really trust them and defer to them. But I would use references from other films and things that I like that that, you know, I would be very picky on tonal decisions and things like that. I can see consistency in color too, I guess, as well in a way, maybe just, you know, I could I could tell her something feels a little jarring.
But but there is a lot of trust like, you know, I mean, I think the film industry in general, you have to put a lot of trust in everyone you work with, you know, you want to work with the best cinematographers, the best sound recorders, the best. It's true. whatever. So I probably defer more to a colorist and a cinematographer than I do, you know, other other areas of filmmaking I think because I need to. I just need to trust in them and know that they've got my back.
This is not related to colorblindness, it's related to you as a director, but who are your, you know, who inspires you as far as filmmakers go? Well it was always, it was always, you know, Lynch, people like that, just again, I like things that were a little left field. But you know, modern filmmakers obviously - people like Fincher, he's been amazing. I look, I was a big Italian cinema 70s, 60s, 70s, so Bertolucci, I mean, Conformist is one of my favorite films at the time.
I'm a bit like everyone I think, the more you get into film, you just deep dive into so many eras and so many different, you know, for five years I'm just into 60s cinema and then for another five years, I mean American cinema in the 70s is freaking phenomenal, you know. So I love it all, I really do. I guess I'm finding it harder to say I love it now. Korean cinema, that's my last five years for me. But wait, wait, wait. But what do you mean you're finding it harder to follow it now?
What does that mean? I think to get overly excited. I mean, television's doing it for a lot of us now. More than cinema, I think. That's what gets tricky, you know? Interesting. Like, it's the bigger films that I'll go and see in the cinema for the spectacle and the impact. But there was a time 20 years ago I'd go and see so many independent films. Oh look, the time is running. That's alright, that's alright. You can see that the reel spin is... See? I know, I know, I know.
It's definitely the year of television. It's got to flip somewhere. It has to, I think. And then just following up on that point that I interrupted you on, you said Korean cinema. What is it about Korean cinema? No. Just, it's ballsy. It's balls to the wall crazy. I love it. And again, coming from someone who loves, you know, 20 years ago, like I was a Lynch, Lynch-file, like through and through, to come and to watch some of these just mad Korean directors.
I mean, Parasite has to be one of the best films from the last five years. I mean, I was a huge fan of his prior to that. I mean, Memories of Murder from him like 20 years ago, it's just phenomenal. Again, there's just a bit more risk taking in everything, in storytelling and stylistic choices, you know, things like that. I just, I... Yeah. It got me excited again, I think, which is what I'm waiting for again. I think I'm waiting for my next phase to get excited.
It's so, so true. And when you have that moment where you, you know, whether it's a bloody painting or a film or whatever, and you just go, "Oh!" You know, it's... It just hits you somewhere. Music does it to me as well or something, right? There's something where it just all of a sudden something left of field just starts to just grabs you and then you just go that's it. I'm running with that for the next five years.
That's my thing, you know, I sort of I sort of love it. So well, I'm gonna be I'm gonna be good and my timer has run out but Michael, thank you. Thank you so much it for me. It's it's fascinating and and it's and it's great to see you Great to see you as well. Pleasure. Cheers, man Michael, thank you so much. It was great to see you mate. I miss you Thank you to my executive producer MixingLight.com If you're watching this or listening to this on their
website, you already know what they do. If not check them out Everything color they can help you out thank you to my friend of the show Filmlight and to my producer Kayla and Thank you for listening. Thank you for liking subscribing leaving comments all of that kind of stuff It's it's awesome and I appreciate it Until next time keep coloring outside the lines. Take care The color timer a micro podcast experience