001 - Andrea Chlebak

welcome to the color code my name is Kellen Kelly I am a colorist I am an image scientist and when I'm not color grading or image sciencing I'm talking about color grading and image science I should probably get some different Hobbies but not today today we are doing our first full on episode of the color code and I couldn't be more excited because my guest is Andrea clayback supervising colorist at Harbor Picture company and one of my favorite colorists Andrea has a crazy list of credits that include movies and shows like Elysium Mandy and the girl from Plainville and she was so generous with her time and talking to me about the way she approaches projects the tools the techniques that she brings to bear for various projects and relating her overall Journey as a professional colorist super excited for this conversation and to share it with you guys before we dive in this episode is brought to you by Cal man a portrait displays brand I'm really excited to have Cowman as a partner on this podcast because I rely on their products every single day in my color grading business to present a well-calibrated accurate image to my clients when we are color grading they make an awesome product and I'm really proud to have them supporting this podcast now without further Ado let's dive in to my conversation with Andrea kleback how does one begin a podcast hi Andrea hi Colin welcome to my garage it's created what do you think do you like it it's amazing I love it cool I love all the colors in here yeah we gotta we got to get the colors we gotta come correct we're colorists exactly for goodness sake um thank you so much for being here I'm really excited to hear I'm excited for us to finally meet we haven't had the chance to meet before um and you're one of my favorite colorists you've got such an amazing and varied body of work you know I feel like there are colorists who have a thing that they do really well and I really like that one it's like okay cool that's that's their thing and I can really see that thumbprint on every project they do I really feel like that as a place but you have a completely different relationship with your craft I feel like every project that you've done whether we're talking about Mandy or Elysium or the girl from Plainville uh more recently or any of the work that I see you put out I can see the attention to detail and the sensitivity that's kind of common across all them but the work itself really varies in palette and texture and feel um and I just love that I just think that's a that's a unique thing among colorists that's cool I mean I it's something that somebody recently brought up talking about a new project that they were noticing that like going through a reel or what have you of of my work that like there wasn't any one thing that kind of was you know a niche that I was drawn into for a period of time or anything like that which I don't really think about necessarily uh I just kind of take on each project quite specifically I guess and I think it's really cool when people notice that it's it's not prescribed or it's coming from one certain place it's kind of coming from where it needs to come from yeah yeah well so let's let's dissect let's rewind let's figure out how did you get to this place how did Andrea become Andrea how did you develop this practice how did you get into color grading uh interesting it's sort of I think it's one of those like preparation means opportunity sort of like situations where I um didn't even know it was a thing I'm sure a lot of us kind of started in the industry not necessarily knowing uh color grading it was a job to be honest um I went to art school that was my college Emily Carr in Vancouver British Columbia Canada um and I went I I went in to be a photographer to be honest I mean I got I went straight out of high school I thought I was going to go into the kind of commercial photography program I had always had art in my life and my family my mom was sort of a natural artist she was a baker but always sort of like fostered that in me even as a child like sort of sitting at the kitchen table you know home with Mom doing whatever um there was always like art materials and paints and drawing and things like that out for me to do and I think I just naturally sort of was that was my thing um but when I got into high school and what have you I sort of got drawn to you know making taking images with the camera and what that looked like and I think at the time I was maybe not as aware of filmmaking as even something that I would go to so I I kind of went to college being like I'm going to be a photographer this is my my dream and I did painting and I did sculpture and I did all of the things that you do uh in first or second year uh film school or art school that then led me to no actually like you love photography and motion so you should really start shooting things so I it's kind of changed my major went from photography and sort of more Visual Arts like General Visual Arts to film and it was kind of a integrated media program so I learned about sound and I learned about you know as we know a little bit of post-production not so much color grading but like editorial visual effects and I got really kind of into the visual effects side so when I got out of school I naturally became a photographer because it was like what I knew you know how to operate you know a business that way you know it was like it was easier for me and I didn't really want to work on set like that was one of the things I did I I it was kind of an interesting merge because I was a Stills photographer and then I started to do Stills photography on set and then I really learned about commercial more commercial sets you know and how I didn't really want to do to be there so I think uh for me it was a real it was a kind of an eye-opener like I love the filmmaking process but I really like the finishing process and I was I got interested in visual effects and I actually applied for an internship at a visual effects company when you know the the systems weren't really readily available it was kind of like you know you had to be kind of mentored and brought on and trained on the systems in the studios you could you didn't just have Maya or whatever at home that was like really expensive um and so I was applying for an internship at a visual effects company and the visual effects producer who interviewed me and my saw my reel and everything kind of said to me have you ever thought about being a colorist and that's sort of the first time anybody had brought up that as a career path or job to be honest I'd always thought of colorists at the time as being kind of color timers right because I'd spent a lot of time in film School processing films shooting 16 millimeter and going to the lab and working with timers but not really thinking about that as as a creative process at the time it wasn't really presented to me that way and the people I was working with didn't approach it that way so for me it wasn't really that wasn't more of a technical photochemical job and she sort of enlightened me to it but it was a few years after that you know that that whatever happened there didn't work out I ended up going working animation and continuing as a photographer and and sort of finding my way into editing and then uh I started working for a facility that was transitioning from a digital to film uh Transfer Company to their main job was to or function was to basically take digitally acquired mostly documentaries but there was a lot of films at the time that were starting to basically be digitally Acquired and that was a new thing um and saying no well we still have to submit to festivals and Master on film so it was a sort of digital to film Transfer Company and that naturally made sense for them to expand into di right at the time and I I was just kind of doing learning all of the things at the time at that company and when the the managing director sort of said we want to we're going to expand we're going to look at color grading systems we're going to look at every you know printers every scanners we're going to do the whole thing um what do you what do you think you want to do there because I was really super young like really just out of college trying to figure out what I was interested in doing and I I just remember I remember kind of looking at the color grading you know sitting in the middle of that diagram and going I think that I think that's what I want to do and he and if I remember his reaction was like yes like that is what you should do wow you're like the perfect personality for that job and I and I and he was from all you know the deluxes and technicolors of the world he had worked at all those places and it was kind of I took that kind of to Heart like oh it's interesting because only a few years a couple of years before that somebody had even brought that up and then here it was in front of me and within a couple of months we were evaluating systems so we had a base light we had a luster we had a quantel Pablo if you remember that system um uh we were talking about the nakota and then of course resolve at the time was just before it became a readily available piece of software but it was a big Hardware solution so at that time that was the really expensive system yeah so we weren't really looking at that so I had the chance not being a colorist but being somebody that they saw as you know fostering my career towards that uh they basically put me in this room with four different color grading systems and I was trained by the each of the vendors like film like came spent two weeks with me I spent some time with um uh with luster colorist I spent time with quantel and I learned all the systems before I knew that I was a colorist and basically in that that experience you know our company chose a Baseline and then I became a base like colorist and I became an expert at you know how to run a base light and I was able to we brought in a senior colorist who I basically trained how to use this system and he basically trained me what a colorist did with that system and so it was kind of this Mutual kind of mutually beneficial relationship which I thought was really interesting it was kind of before I knew like we chose the system because it was very intuitive and it was slick and it looked really good in the way that we wanted the vibe of the studio to to feel in terms of how you felt when you were in a session uh that's what we picked Baseline for and then ended up being kind of my system of choice you know but I didn't really it all sort of happened like naturally like I was just there and that was a skill set I had and interestingly enough that colorist left and we were a small group of maybe 10. independent uh post-production company and basically uh there was a feature film that was in our pipe and I remember that sort of just looked at me and said do you want to do you guys do you want to do it like we don't our colorists sort of just left and you're here and you know everything you need to know how about running this but you know obviously you haven't graded a feature before and I sort of put my hand up obviously and said of course I'm gonna do it um luckily it was an incredible DP I still have a really good relationship with but he was open to you know he was introduced to me and was like yeah sure let's do it and so I feel always like I was really trained by a DP because I had all this technical knowledge I was trained how to do it I was trained somebody else I kind of understood what a colorist did it's very basically and then I got this opportunity to really just do it and you know I he he put trust in me and also gave me a ton of mentorship during that experience and it was like one film and then after that I was like okay this is how I do this yeah that's so cool I mean it's so many things that are striking about your story but one of the things that strikes me as you're sharing it is when you think about like most colorists I know when you look back at their Journey there's some sort of phase or period where they have to start unlearning things they're like that that wasn't great wisdom or instruction that I was given you know by like The telescene Operators back in the day or whatever you know like I know I was in that category of like oh the way I was taught to use the three-way color corrector in Final Cut Pro 7 that's not really the best way to get like Artful cinematic images as opposed to like correcting the image and it just feels like you you didn't have to unlearn stuff you really got the right information and the right you know like visual sensitivities you just kind of like without knowing it you were building the ideal toolkit for a colorist to have even years before you begin at color grading yeah I really I I think the timing was one of those things that I look back on as being kind of uh special like unique because it was really that time between there were still tell us any colorists kind of very actively working uh so very much a lot of you know actual film color timing going on which I had the experience to understand how that worked here we're going to shoot a bunch of digital images to film process it and go through like I I was like mentored by of film uh color timer before I even knew what digitally you could do and then yeah I kind of always say like I walked into it without the baggage right I don't didn't have any of the baggage of how tell us any worked or what you're supposed to do or what things you're supposed to hit or what targets you have to you know what the scope should look like you know like obviously when you legal in full range and all those things but it wasn't the same you know it was like a little bit of this open world where I just kind of dove in and I think that's why when I the first couple of colorists I worked with who came from that land you know it was it was really interesting of a dynamic because I was kind of like I'm the expert at the like I know all I need to know I don't know I don't have the wisdom of the years of being in the room and doing all of that but I know this like inside and out and I wasn't kind of held back by any of the lack of knowledge because it was just coming at me in the way it was coming at everybody yeah so I think that was to me like a lot of people kind of joke around like oh because some of your first projects were pretty big like how did you kind of get there with you know in your 20s um and I think it's just because I was sort of sort of at the right place at the right time without you know not necessarily having the experience but having the knowledge to end confidence to be like well I could do this you know for sure this is this is something I know enough about and I can trust myself in the process you know and all of the the visual sort of sensitivity that you built up with your photography practice and you said you did some animation stuff along the way like all that feeds into like okay this feels good or that could feel a little better or whatever that's not unique to color grading exactly and I think that was somebody kind of early on and that was the first DP which is David maxness he's the DP that I I first worked with he really pushed me that way it was like you have the eye for the the image like you know what you need to do you know what you need to do to create it so if you know that then you know what you need to do to enhance it or you know and I think that was one of the best compliments I've had in the last few years is that you know you don't really go to apply your thing to it you kind of you kind of softly find a way to to lift it up and I think that's that's always what I wanted to do and that's kind of how I even when I was a photographer when I did my post-production on my own photo work I didn't want to like transform it I wanted to take the image sort of in a pure way and then sort of make it sing with that work and I think that was sort of like this early learning that now I've just sort of built into what I do in my process yeah so it just sounds like you you built up the right fundamentals of you know like like working things the right fundamental parameters in a good way interesting so gosh I'm so many so many things I wanna I wanna ask you about um you know I guess like if we pivot a little bit and go back to what I was originally sort of uh struck by when uh we were setting up our conversation today is like that variety that you've always had in your work like I think we've started to get some Clues into that already like oh Andrea comes from a pretty diverse background and didn't necessarily walk the maybe a normal path of being trained by a master colorist from zero and and you know one day getting cut loose like what what else do you like how do you think about projects when uh they come to you how is it that they come from like all right we're gonna work with Andrea we're gonna you know like Master these images together how do you get from there to the to the Finish Line how do you set up the the world or the feeling of uh the projects that you take on well I think I you know part of that is I do get the diver like from the get-go I get the diversity of just those Outreach right I get a lot of that just really interesting you know collaborators that come to me saying like I saw what you did here I mean it's not to say I don't also get people that say I want that look can we do that you know for sure but I think that because of my approach to sort of like okay that it's really interesting for me to find out what you like I really do a lot of research visually and like give me the stuff you like the look of now let's look at what you've we have now let's look at where we were going where you were going with that before we started talking and let's see like how let's talk about it like I spent a lot of time actually sort of in my own set of Worlds you know having conversations about well if I do this and it's like this or maybe that's the wrong way to go like trying to really feel it out for myself um and I one of my big things in my process that I do is uh when I get the project sort of in hand originally um if it's been shot of course if we we get to start a my more fun standpoint where before it's shot that's a bit of a different process but I say it's been kind of edited and it's coming I'd like to sort of just sit it down sit down and be completely like I'm gonna let this hit me for the first time and just try to take note of like what I feel what I want to feel more of what I want to feel less of you know really be like sensitive to the experience and I think that really helps me sort of get very clear emotions about the project so then I bring those back to the filmmaker and usually the filmmaker is like oh that's interesting oh I didn't really see it that way or yes we totally have that issue and when we sort of start to work through that like a new uh new eyes right new eyes in the project and like new life to it and so we start from there and then sometimes at that point I'll get into their ins like inspirational points what I think is kind of interesting like what do you think about this scene for example if we did something like this and we really use like pre-existing images that are out in the world just so that we have like a sort of tangible thing almost to talk about like it's not like I'm trying to make it look like this movie but I want to use that as a touch point so that we you can react to it and then we can sort of I can get the goal posts as to where you're comfortable with me taking this somewhere at dinner yeah um and then really for me again I think it's just like it's kind of trying to let the the project itself work through me so I don't get too caught up in the John rower you know obviously sometimes I'll get repetitive genres or certain types of things but I think that's why I get the diversity because I really sort of handle like I'm in this one now so now I'm just gonna like approach it the story I'm gonna approach the the feeling I'm going to approach the whole Arc that we're they're trying to create and then how I can of like add or enhance it um and then I I like to work through it from like start to finish because that's how we watch movies or or you know TV series or whatever um let's start at the beginning and like let ourselves sort of feel our way through and then you kind of jump around when you you find places that need more time or you need to go back to them but I definitely think that that's like you know really important and then also adding this sort of sound element in pretty early so that we like I said at the beginning I love to watch the film as it exists with the sound get the whole picture um obviously as we work we get to remove that we get to listen to music I usually like to pick music that goes with the soundtrack that I know that's coming just so that I'm always in the vibe um I know naturally how to make the right decision and then we go back and we watch it again you know and I think that sometimes that's not usual like I've heard that more recently it's like oh we usually don't hear the sound till later and I like to sort of bring it back in because I feel like sometimes you can you can kind of push something a little too far you don't need it to be because the sound is going to do some of that work and then you've kind of lost the sort of subtlety um so I find that all of those pieces together you know I always try to work with everything as I go through it and and then of course it's different with each filmmaker too some people won't really want that full experience and others wants you to sort of do your thing and then them to come back and react to it so I'm always trying to be sensitive to that person or the collection of people that are making the film and what they need from me too right sure yeah and so when you're you know going through those initial Explorations and kind of figuring out what is this movie going to look and feel and taste like um is is there typically like a show up that you're developing that you're going to work under or is that just very per project yeah I mean if it's a project you know Stu it's kind of 50 50 still these days but I'm definitely leaning more on the setting up of the look before it's being shot um you know that's a lot more of my work um which I love you know because it's like we it's it's like you're contributing before there's even an image that's made um and so I often in that sense yeah like we we spend a lot of time with the the mood boards and the imagery that's the dp's already generated into the filmmaker sort of like I love the way this looks and then what I do is often try to to create like almost like a grid of looks based on things that we've or they've been bringing towards me like we like this we'd like to do this what we're going to shoot on these lenses we're thinking even you know we're gonna take and then I'll sort of build kind of a grid of you know maybe four to nine or ten different looks that kind of take it a little far um or go very very you know go really subtle and and I tried to look at the test imagery if they're say shooting camera tests or whatever um with that or sometimes just imagery that's you know like genre specific that we have from you know previous projects um a shot on the right camera so this is a similar type of location let's just look at this is somebody else's movie but let's let's look at this image with these these different looks and see what that conjures for you and that's how I usually get to that show let where she like you know on set sometimes there's two or three so it's you know we have our main show and then we have one where you're like oh this is for the for the night special narrative moments or whatever that there's a flashback or there's some kind of a fantasy thing or maybe you know we've made I have a recent film where we did a pretty like strong bold show alert that everybody really loved and I felt that you never know just to give somebody the opportunity to like you know shoot something or not be sort of Trapped in something too contrasty or what have you to give them sort of the extremes on either side um and so that's kind of I like that just because I don't want to ever have anybody feel boxed in or like they have to adjust their the Lut that we've made on set just to accommodate something so I like kind of prepping in that way yeah that makes sense and so in that it's it sounds like for you when it's possible like it's pretty ideal to get to develop and cultivate a look like before as early as possible right I think it's great because you you you kind of get in the minds you know the mind of the filmmaker at that point and then you can what I've been experiencing with that is that I get to if there's issues that come up or they start shooting in a circle I get that call you're doing this what do you think and for me that's great it's like you know I'm not on set but I get the opportunity to sort of collaborate or assist or whatever you know support in some way you know there's a few DPS that I work with that'll just they need to just have a therapy session like yeah I don't know why we're shooting this you know and for me I that's I love that I'm a people person I love to just be there to support people regardless so it's an opportunity for me to sort of give them something that they can work with but then continue that conversation as the film is being made and sometimes it goes you know towards editorial they start cutting and then the editor feels comfortable because they've you know I've set up that whole look at the beginning and they're saying okay we're getting to the scene but I need this to look like this can you just take a run at this one scene and send it back to me and that conversation is going right it's not um and it's the thing is is that the setting up the let isn't the end of it's basically the beginning you know and so you just sort of is it's an opportunity to have a long process to build right yeah um the later you are involved as the colorist as we both know the shorter obviously the amount of time we have to kind of evolve the look and get it right so if you start before you know they're even shooting it may you may not hit it at the beginning because things change and photography changes and lighting changes and stories change um but then because you've started that you know you're in in the mind there as well or it's on your mind you you know are going along that process regardless if you're like got your hands on the material not you're there in it mentally until you actually get it in front of you which I think is really kind of amazing because it's like I've there's a few films that are that have just recently finished shooting in their editorial and I've been they're on my mind still you know I'm working on them regardless you know of me actually seeing them and trying to finish them if that makes sense absolutely and I'm just curious do you find that in those uh types of workflows when you do sit down to begin the actual grade once edit has completed does it feel like a bit of an easier takeoff because you're looking at a baseline sort of rendering of the image that everyone is familiar with because they've been viewing it through that Lut versus like a stock camera Lut or something like that yeah I think I mean sometimes the stock camera that's great you know and it's like everybody loved it and leave there's no issues with it sure the worst in those cases is that there is issues and then but then of course as we know there's the we call it the dailies love where people get used to it even though they don't like it but then they are uncomfortable moving away from it so yes you know those that's more the challenging side of things but if if I've made it what's kind of amazing is if I've made it I know what I put into it yeah so I know what I need to take out of it if something is not working and now we've gotten to this place and somebody says it's this but just this oh great I'll just flick that off you know where I'll just break it apart um and go back to scratch or from this or you know you know whatever you need to do but I know all the layers that went into creating it and so what I usually do is when I start back I break it back out into grades it's not a lot anymore you know the show let had a purpose it existed and now we're gonna break it back out into grades and free ourselves from you know what we were a single thing yeah yeah off that yeah I mean that the show lot was the vehicle for your Collective creative intent and now you've got to back out into those individual modules so it sounds like you'll once you do get into the actual di you'll continue to tailor in tune that look that you developed uh at the outset if it was one of those projects now you can continue to tune those in uh and you're in a baseline right correct yes cool cool which is also I think like uh the way I talk about it often I realize that that's really embedded in how I speak like I'm using the word layers obviously that's different than nodes it's a different kind of way of thinking about it but it really is kind of embedded in my process of how I work so when I generate the Lut I'm obviously got a base light with my original camera material and I'm I'm trying to be organized way as possible like creating layers that can individually sort of produce that look but then again when it comes time to you know come back we have a process of being able to sort of conform and then break out the lens this is the sled on this this sequence the scene has you know obviously we can track what let's if there's multiples being used and then we replace them with the stack of grades which is something that basically allow has allowed me to sort of build as my process which is really cool you know and it's not that you can't do that with the you know resolve or luster but it's just for sure how I speak about the processes is in that way for that reason so well I just love that you know it happens it sounds like baselight software really supports like the way you approach your craft and the way you think about it but I just love talking with colorists like you because for me it's like the software is really driven by the way you think about what you're doing and if you just take what the software gives you it doesn't really matter how great or terrible the software is like it has to come from you so you just have a very articulate and defined process of like this is how I like to use this software to accomplish my clients creative goals yeah and I think originally like going back to my sort of origin story of becoming a colorist yeah I often say it is kind of what I learned like how I learned to be a colorist was on a base light um so it just naturally became how I look at imagery or how I'm about to you know how I'm going to break down the process or you know I do make an effort on almost every project to try something new in base light as well which is kind of cool and it's neat to go back and see other projects like oh that was the time I was really into curve grade or you know yeah I really I really like dove into the sort of like a color balance tool or like the whatever it was like a um colored temperature when they came up with that tool set it was like a whole new world of like where would you put that and how do you layer that and I know I really love I mean I think that's with any software but I love that that you know for me it's just like it kind of keeps me kind of alive in in a sort of software thinking about as a software because you can really get caught up just sort of doing the same thing over and over too which I think is fine uh but I I like the you know this sort of I don't know obviously every software updates and I just like the feeling of like it's an extension for me of my body and my hands right I don't even look at sometimes somebody will say like oh did you notice the new something like a new feature or whatever like no no because I'm not even I'm not even looking at the screen half the time yeah you know that was like one of the initial things now that's a little bit different because I think more software allows you to just have the image on the screen and you don't have to see you know work through the UI to to get the work done but that was initially a thing Baseline for me that was the number one um feature was that when we're looking at the image we're all looking at the same image there's no color graded image on your UI you're looking at the screen the big screen in my case or you know this whatever the small screen a new and clients the filmmakers were all looking at the same thing so I'm gonna go draw shape they see me draw the shape on that screen it's like that's our canvas and we're all looking at the same thing it really takes a lot out of the communication that sort of happens sometimes in a suite where you're you know sometimes they're people's backs are to you you know to have to describe what you're doing especially if you're trying to have a conversation about like the restaurant that you went to last night yeah um or like some amazing song you really want to listen to or whatever you know whatever that keeps the flow in the room going if you have to stop to be like hang on I'm gonna do this I found that really jarring and so Baseline was one of the reasons I loved it was because it would give me that opportunity to be like this is just everything's out it's all transparent that's how I am as a person it's all in front of you so you want to see me draw something I want to take a key you're going to see it like it's all happening on the one screen and anything that's in the background you know it's all the sort of processes and things like that like the the interface is still there but I'm almost never looking at it right which I I thought it was such a testament to the the actual panel and the way it was designed because really it's all because it's all this tactile experience and you're just like working with the image and you're moving your knobs and and like we all do with all of them but that was to me when I was looking at the different pieces of software that was the one that was like instantly intuitive like sitting down my hands are doing the thing it's the reaction is happening on the screen there's no delay and I don't even have to look at the screen the interface to know what I'm gonna do you know I'm gonna have to challenge myself the next time I sit down the brain like okay can you do Andrea mode that's it that's all you get pal yeah yeah that's beautiful and that's such a fun relationship to have to your craft and I love what you were saying about kind of intentionally uh experimenting with new features or tools from time to time um I'll put you on the spot can you think of any like recent examples of stuff that you've been playing with in base light that you find interesting ah that is an interesting question um what I would love there's a there's so much now that there's just like a release so it might be out of date um but a cup within the last few years like it really came down to um because it's not enough it's not in a visual effects sort of platform there's not a lot of sort of third-party applications on Baseline and I think that you know basically colorists are used to that like you you kind of Define the ways you're gonna approach something like Beauty work or I'm gonna paint something out or I'm gonna do you know and you define those through the tool set you had and it kind of creates the style of colorist you are you know there's things you just bounce out to visual effects because you're like oh that's not we're doing this you know and it's not to say it's like exclusive or you know it's just kind of your process you know how to do this or you don't but you also develop these really interesting ways of like generating effect like sort of effects that because you don't have the plugin for it you do it just naturally and there's a really cool process of generating halation in base light which is a sort of a that the the engineers have worked together to like come up with look at this we've all been doing this kind of stuff through the last few years but they now have an actual process of like if you layer these five different things this way and you offset the image and you do these things you can generate this really like subtle it can be very subtle can be very extreme but this like natural effect um and I love I love that like when you can create a almost like a visual effect um I use a lot with like music videos or things like that where you want to create something that's sort of like expanding and Contracting um and it's like yes it could be a visual effect but I can just sort of make this thing happen um in the bass light it's kind of nice to be able to do that so I I love that like layer there there's a lot of new tools where you can layer things to generate an effect oh that's fun um which I think is just it makes it's it's powerful it's in a different way you know it's like yes we we can oh I could use that effect over here and do it but because you actually have to kind of get into the nitty-gritty of like is it going to be two pixels it's gonna be I love the nerdy stuff like that where it's like oh well what if you did it this but then you you know you offset it by three frames you know and then you get a totally different effect I've done that just out of survival trying to create something interesting where somebody's kind of asking for something like can you do that thing you did on Mandy for example that comes up a lot um and the tools are different or the image is different and so I'm trying to figure out like well how do I conceptually what I did on Mandy was this was which was like mixing you know certain uh like merging two colors and then basically inverting one it was very kind of cerebral in terms of trying to get to the result um but that's not going to work for this because it's a different lighting and like I wouldn't be able to get the same channel effect so how am I going to do that you know and I I love that in in base light you can kind of spin down you know the set of like layers or operations and sort of hack them quite easily yeah you know because they're it's layer based so you can kind of work oh I want to work off this layer I want it this to be the this layer at the top where I want it to be the bottom and only affect the outcome or the output of the last layer you know different little things like that which I think is it just makes it's almost like so open that it overwhelms people but I think once you just understand the boundaries of it it's becomes more creative you know from that perspective so do you play with like blend modes in the layer mixer all the time or not layer mixer but layering yeah yeah I mean that was a really powerful thing that they that was quite a few years ago when they came up with blending modes and it really I love it like getting sometimes you get sort of wacky effects you know when you do like a crazy grade and then you're like I'm gonna just try I mean coming from a photography background where Photoshop was like my base point of understanding what color grading was that's also what I kind of love I mean I used to tell people with the bass life it's like photoshop on steroids right that's kind of what it is because it's basically that you know using layers or adjustment layers and then blending modes so when that came out that became really cool now I use the blending modes almost exclusive well now I shouldn't say exclusively but I use them consistently when I'm trying to when I get to that sort of final stage of the project and we're kind of going back and forth especially in series work where you kind of go from working with the DP to the showrunner to a director maybe that comes in and you're trying to sort of you know get to that find that last little touch yeah and so I'll do kind of a more extreme Grid in the direction somebody's going and then use the blend to sort of bring it to the perfect place um versus trying to hit it you know with just one grade yeah so I use a very consistently just in those lots and then I can you know label those layers and say oh this was the DP Review where this was the director review so we can turn off and on and we can see how subtle you know that change is and then you know apply it across everything or just that scene or whatever but it's I find it's nice because it helps you just really zero in something especially if you're say you get like a look or a Lut for example I use the blend modes with with those sort of look Luts all the time it's not like the OT like the right you know going to display Transformer yeah it's like just like a creative look sometimes those are really extreme where they do damaging things to the image they looked really cool on set but we're gonna bring them into a grade and we're gonna we want it to feel like that but we don't want it to be we want to use a grade to do that we don't want it so I'll often use the blending modes for those because it just sometimes it's nice you get some of those like color separation things in those let's you can't they're tough to get by hand yeah I don't know what's going on like I didn't make this you know um especially if it's some come from somewhere else it's really nice to be able to use that so you can just kind of get that little taste of it without committing to the whole thing you know as we're talking a thought keeps coming up that I'm going to blame on you because we're talking about music when we first when we first started you keep making me think about Tom Waits For some reason oh so Tom Waits has all these interesting ideas but the the one that you just made me think of as we're talking about sort of blending and you know finessing little things into place as you get toward the finish line of a project Tom Waits talks about these like some songs come out of the ground like a potato and some things some songs you have to build them out of things you found like a pool cue or like your father's watch or something like that but I just love the way you're talking this very agnostic way of like maybe it comes from a blend mode maybe it's a third party Lut maybe it's something in my hands but you're just using the stuff in your toolkit to make the image what you feel like it needs to be yeah I think that that's kind of like when How I Learned you know going back to my story of that is I was given all of these tools like here's Lester that does all this stuff you know yes we can get into the details of what makes it faster or more powerful or you know all of that but for me it was it was a it was a real education in just what you should or should you know not should or shouldn't do but what you could or couldn't do in the digital realm with an image right what breaks it what what what makes it alive you know what are the things what are the little strategies you can build and it's sort of like I think over the years you just developed those things okay no I'm going to use that and that's kind of why I do the thing where each project I'm like oh I'm gonna try to use you know six Vector which is a base light uh operator and I find that one probably the most challenging to use like a naturally personally and and they'll film like would probably laugh at that because I think that's common but it's just not as intuitive for me I try to use and I'm like nope I've tried you know yeah but every once in a while I'll give it another chance you know maybe maybe this show is the one and and there'll be kind of more experimental sort of looks like Mandy for example where I needed to sort of go outside of my comfort zone of what I knew um and that was a project where it was like yeah I'm definitely going to do this almost every time because you know really at the end of the day there's like sometimes 95 different ways to do the same thing you know and it really just comes down to you finding the one that you resonate with yeah and then you just you can you can be kind of an expert or you can you know for lack of a better word but you can make that image sing with that thing because you really connect to the process of getting there like I understand this tool exactly what it's doing you know yes I could do this this way or that way but I just like this because it just it's quick a lot of for me what I do is I'll find something that I could do this this way this way or this way that is the fastest I will still use videograde for example I like my lift gamma gain I didn't come from that world at all but I love the the way that tool set feels and how quickly I can get to a result um I don't use it constantly but it when I'm setting up a project or I'm trying to feel something out that's the one I use because it just gets me somewhere really fast and and I don't know why but I will continue to use it because it's that just that's how my experience is with it right so totally yeah I had a a color science Mentor who was like joked to me years ago he's like yeah wasn't it funny when all of the color correction uh platforms came out with like log grading tools is like and then they realized after the fact that lift gamma and gain actually worked great on log State images so yeah I mean that especially like when you're feeling and when you're in the room those are really great ways to get to a place really fast yeah and I think we're often like under deadline and you you know you have you know especially in the commercial world or sometimes even at the very beginning of a project where you're doing look development you've got a bunch of people in the room and you want to get somewhere quickly and my I love the experience of just I don't know where we're going but I want to give them something fast that they can see and they can react even if they hate it like it doesn't matter if it's the right or the wrong way but but that to me that tool just gives people that right away and you know I'm just gonna bend the curve and mess around with it and you know because we all know that one real really well or most of us do yeah it just happens quickly and it gets us you know four different results in you know under a minute yeah um and I think that like I definitely have gotten there with the more logarithmic tools you know in the last few years for sure and I use those sort of more religiously you know because it's like I have to use this at this point because I'm gonna be like oh you want to do that okay I'm going to use that tool um but it's you know you yeah it's nice to have that tool kit where you're like this is for this this kind of uh experience like we're trying to get to this result this is for this kind of result you know in this mindset if I'm by myself I'm going to spend more time trying 75 different things out if I'm with a bunch of people I'm gonna try to narrow the scope so everybody feels like they're part of the process and like understands how the image is changing and so they can make the right decision you know so it's like somewhat sometimes the more simplistic tools just allow you to get further you know sure for sure it's interesting you mentioned look development um and I uh might have been uh checking out your IMDb uh in the last couple days here and I notice you have a credit on there for look development colorist on certain projects yeah I assume that's in that's intentional and reflects what you know the something that uh you that that's the best descriptor for what you feel like you did on those projects yeah I think like there's you know it's happening a lot more where you know just due to sometimes geography tax credits or just you know scheduling the nature of projects where you might start working on something or you might be with the cinematographer that you're working with and then they're no longer on the project um or it has to finish Another Country what have you that that's just kind of naturally happening and I know that's sort of my my strong point is that sort of beginning stage that look development like how are we going to take these ideas and translate that into a color grading application in some way that's you know going to work for everybody up front and then you know that might give people the tools to go ahead and finish their film or their project in another facility or with another colorist but for me that's like where the magic is in my world so I I love that title because not that I'm I I of course love to you know to touch every frame of a movie but even to have the opportunity sometimes to collaborate on something that you it was never going to be yours for a variety of reasons or it was not gonna you're gonna be able to finish it um but you get a chance to sort of bring something to the table I think is pretty special um yeah and there's a few projects where I think in if they've been all sort of for different reasons like there's a few where um I've done them for that reason where the cinematographer and I have a really great relationship they might be leading on the series um the post-production hasn't been sort of established yet and they want to shoot some stuff or they want to get this look across right away to Executives or to the showrunner so they can start shooting and there's a series that's pretty you know bold in my history for for that it's just basically like we we speak the same language I can trust you this is what I want to do this this and this let's like have you know a six hour session we'll we'll go through a bunch of things and then I generate that for them and then they use that to shoot the series or in that particular case or a feature um sometimes it's more evolved like that that's one example where it's literally me basically making a look and they use those as Luts for the shooting and then it finishes years or months or whatever somewhere else um others where uh I actually do a lot of the look development we're getting into the full like post-production of the project but for a reason let's say of you know it has to finish in another place we sort of take um I just recently did this actually uh over the summer where I did you know four days with the um two directors they came to La we spent a bunch of time we we got through as much as we could of the film and then I essentially handed the project off to another colorist who I've worked with in the past um and so he knew like he gets my project he sees oh yeah this is Andrea okay you know um and and I could you know we can communicate through the software or just by discussion you know I think if you develop that relationship with other colorists it's really great because you can trust them I mean I don't again it's you know and we don't it's not rocket science what we do is what we do in the room um but I like the idea of saying kind of handing a project and letting somebody else even give something to it it makes it you know actually more Dynamic and interesting because you actually have two different angles kind of coming at it you're coming at it from the same place in terms of color grading but you're two different people and if you understand the vision even if it's slightly different you can really bring another layer you know and that's kind of to me like I'm really excited about that as we go towards the future because just for scheduling reasons for tax credits making things really complicated sometimes where there's so many projects that I'm on but then not because they can't finish in Los Angeles or they you know what have you and um it's just it's nice to be able to solve the opportunity to collaborate on them but I really like the idea of you know building that team and people that you collaborate with on a regular basis of like oh I'm doing this but you're really good at lick development can you do the look development but that I'm going to do the we're going to do the finishing over here and this is what's gonna happen with this but like we can work together and it's not like an ego driven scenario it's literally a creative project for both or three or four entities whoever ends up working on it um to me that's really exciting I mean it's definitely something I'm trying to build in my own team um you know in at Harbor we have a really big thing about just collaborating across multiple facilities I've definitely worked with other colorists where they've started it or I've finished it or vice versa or you'll tag team a series and that's really amazing because you get to learn oh that's how this person is approaching that challenge or that narrative thing or this creative thing or the client thing whatever you're always learning from them and then you get to sort of bounce off each other a little bit which I think is really I mean it's it's just so much more interesting you know than kind of kind of sometimes being we cut we sometimes feel like we're in our own bubble sometimes you know so I think it's nice to be able to have the opportunity um so I'm all for it you know I and not to say that I actually am the finisher I like finish the finishing touch but um there is something nice about just being like I'm just gonna do this crazy look I'm like good luck with that have fun enjoy good luck yeah um but I mean it's it's but I'm always like really conscious of trying to you know make something that's really gonna gonna be interesting and and really make sense for the project and it's gonna help everybody get deeper you know the the further you get in look development why that's so important to me before they shoot is that it allows you to get so much further in the final even if it's just a week or two weeks that you get on the project you have to go through all of that in two weeks or one week even sometimes not to say that that's ideal but sometimes that's what happens I mean I go through a whole a whole life in that week if that's what I need to do it's so much better if you you have the opportunity to say like let's just do this up front because then by the time we get here you'll have processed all of this other creative stuff saying this to the director or the DP or both of them obviously um then when we get here we're going to be like way further along like creatively mentally what you know where we need to be so when we start we're coming at it from like okay I don't like this where this is going you know I like this but I don't like that part this is too dark you know this is too bright can we we need to find something here you're just further because you've just been watching it in that mode that's been close but now you can you know when you get something close and then you can see really quickly oh that's wrong you know incorrect okay I need to fix that um it's hard to get there if you're too generic you know if you kind of like start really open or with the basic you know here's the Airy LED or whatever cool but you know getting a little bit closer up front helps people people again react have emotional responses and then by the time you're in the mode of like okay we gotta get this done in two weeks you're so much further along the process for sure I mean I feel like that's one of the things we can kind of learn from the photochemical tradition like if you look back and think about really good DPS who knew their lab person knew their next doc knew what they were printing to who could literally encode their only notes for like what needs to happen to this scene into three numbers and just by I be like all right that needs a point of red or like you know a point of green or whatever it's because they knew what they were like all the variables that you just talked about were locked in but when it's all open like that it's you're so right it's just harder to if you can't see those fine details until all the fundamentals are really consistently in place that's why I love to do that in in like developing that original Lut is kind of giving them giving you know filmmakers sort of some extremes because sometimes you'll see something really magical in that like you'd never you'd never have done that whatever crazy contrasty look or like deep black look across the whole film but then you'll watch we just had this recently where we were looking at imagery and we were like clicking through and I was like oh here's an image of like a street corner and here's an image of two people in a dark room in here and then it was like whoa I keep going back to this really extreme one for these very specific settings or scenarios and it was it was like okay now you've just given that to the cinematographer like you know where she's like okay now I understand that if I'm gonna shoot that I wanna I'm gonna change something in my lighting so we might not to me we may not do anything with the Lut it might still be the Lut but she's now looking at it from a perspective of like that's more interesting for that you know and it opens your mind to something that you may have not seen before you know so I think that's important you know kind of setting setting some framework and then giving somebody something unexpected so they can be like oh okay I'm gonna change something I do or when we get to post-production or we get to the final we can experiment with that more yeah you know something to look forward to right it's so cool um speaking of extreme looks I feel like we got to talk about Mandy of course I I mean first of all I love those images and they're so singular and unique to that project what were you familiar with uh the director's work when uh it's Panos am I pronouncing that right yeah were you familiar with uh their work before you began that like how did you react what was that first conversation about like yeah here we're going to turn it to like a a 20. well it was something it was really interesting actually because Panos is a so at the time I'm from Vancouver basically uh he he's based in Vancouver as well um so we've sort of been in a similar Circle A DP that he worked with prior um in the film called Beyond the Black rainbow which was also like stunning in a totally different way normally I had worked with in the past and so we sort of were all in a sort of similar circle of sort of friends in the industry um so I knew of him obviously I've seen that film because I had sort of studied that film prior to working with Norm um who's also just like visually just kind of makes Incredible images and so trying to like line up with what that meant you know I I was really aware of that look um obviously Mandy is a totally different look in the opposite direction almost in that film but understanding sort of like where that director is coming from like where panels is coming from in terms of what he was trying to create and the feeling he was trying to generate um it helped me just understanding more from you know having worked with Norm in the past unfortunately Norm was supposed to I believe work on that film um but wasn't able to work on it and then a cinematographer who I had spent uh the the five years before before basically working with uh Benjamin Loeb who ended up shooting Mandy I had worked on on like a number of films with him and so it was sort of this natural process of you know well we're going to work on this together right because we just did all these other movies and yeah and his uh aesthetic you know obviously evolves over many years uh but at the time our work together was of course I'm on board you know I he likes things a certain it was a Scandinavian cinematographer um comes from Norway so things are dark um we always like you know cheat around the edge of things being like too contrasty or too low contrast or whatever it's very subtle um but he had a look in a way that he really liked and that I was able to kind of capture early on and he similarly liked that about me where I wasn't like stuck going one way or the other like oh will you push it yeah I'm gonna push it okay more and so we we really jived on that connection of like more okay try that so when we set up for Mandy um I thought that's where we might be going so he kind of came in I spent the first couple of hours with him looking at imagery already kind of coming in Kuwait you know obviously impressive from a cinematography standpoint very colorful more so than I was used to seeing his work look to be honest and um so you know we started in a more subtle way and then Panos came in and it was like yeah yeah that's kind of where we're looking can you just can you go like a little bit more can you just like try you know any cap just sort of sort of like very politely being like just a little bit more and then I remember there was a point where I'm okay like I'm gonna go and I'm kind of feeling you know been behind me be like uh you know like I don't know and there's just like just more just more um and then I I remember there was something we were trying to get to there was like um if you've seen the film there's a lot of red imagery sort of red and black so it's literally the only color Channel That's active is a red Channel um and it was hard to adjust that in some cases if we wanted it to be more it was like make it more vibrant well if we're in like a film color space or P3 color spaces so far you're gonna be able to work I mean maybe at the time of HDR had been involved that movie would have looked even more crazy um but we would have spent we spent a lot of time on like grain and texture so we were weaving those two things together constantly it's like push the grain push the color Okay pull the green back okay now put the color over here now you know so it was this really like finding finding it finding it finding it um and that was a project where I kind of did half of it and then it went to Belgium and was was worked on by another colorist in Belgium with and then the cinematographer went to Belgium and worked with him and I worked with Panos so we had this sort of interesting almost like conversation of color where I had the director I started with the two of them kind of established a very kind of extreme goal posts of looks probably across like half an hour of the film worth of material then it went to Belgium then it came back and then we Dove a little bit deeper and made more you know worked on more scenes got more extreme got a little bit more into narrative stuff established one of the things I really spent a lot of time was establishing the first sort of 10 minutes of the film in terms of getting the grain getting the texture getting the colors that stick out what are we going to be pulling out but then yeah going back to the story about the Reds was I just remember there was a point in time where Panos was asking to sort of can we push that more can we get that like I don't maybe it doesn't need to be red maybe it's like magenta and I'm sitting there thinking like how am I going to get this color and it's sort of a testament to baseline or example of the base light thing where I was like what am I going to use okay oh channel mixer okay and I just for some reason there's something in my head said like if I if I replaced uh a Channel with blue where there's no color maybe I will get something interesting and just something in my head just was like try this um and then the black turned blue and the red turned magenta and they got this really incredible scene where when it it fades to Black it fades to Blue and it fade it it will go from you know um the two characters you know in this there's a scene that's on Nicholas Cage and it comes up to Linus and it fades down and it comes back up and instead of going to pitch black which because there's not a lot of light in that scene that's kind of a point of it um it goes to the sort of blue texture and then comes out of that blue texture into and there's like nobody's ever I feel like that's a very music video thing like nobody's really done that in in at that level long-form narrative type of content especially in like the sort of climax of a film yeah um and but it was just sort of one of those like moments of like I know I want this to be more it needs to be more because of how I see this film and how it's playing out and I really had to it took me a little bit like it was definitely out of my comfort zone because all the things were taught about color grading like don't don't put color in the black you know I mean we do that but like you do it very specifically right um and I think that was a moment where I kind of just like stepped into a free space of like oh this is a this is Art like yeah we are creatingly we were looking at something almost from a painterly uh perspective if you think about if you're painting something I often look at like Dutch realist paintings as sort of that reality based like using those as an example of like lighting quality and color and light and color and shadows well when you're painting if you have that experience do you often the most interesting paintings especially trying to make something almost like Photo real you're putting you're starting with a layer of color in the shadow and I think that as soon as my I kind of you know did that thing where it clicked for me that oh yeah it's uh I'm painting this this is kind of there is already a layer here but I'm gonna add something and it has to come kind of from a different angle I can't approach it like lifting up again or whatever it's gonna come from me literally taking the image and stretching it into somewhere new and that and that was really like that was the director you know he was pushing all the boundaries in that movie it has to be more it has to be more and when I understood why like I sort of got into the film more and understood sort of sort of psychologically like everything was a metaphor um when I understood that it made perfect sense I think on a standard not like any horror or a standard but like a standard sort of Thriller you don't think of that initially but horror movies are you know the opportunity to do something really creative a lot of the times because they not aren't what they are you know it's not what it seems and so you kind of can push the image you know and because it's not real I mean obviously it's not real but as a genre it's there to sort of you know spark something else in your brain you can almost tell another story or a subtextual story with the color yeah absolutely yeah I mean I just got to give you like a colorist high five for like navigating that so because like I I know I'm sure you do too I know so many like good colorists who in this situations that you were just describing of kind of being you know you're walking up to the cliff edge of where you feel comfortable and being told no a little further a little further a little further I know plenty of colorists who would maybe nicely maybe not so nicely say this is ridiculous this isn't right you don't know how to you don't know color grading filmmaker so we're gonna do it my way right you know which is of course would be a terrible way to act but like I think we're all guilty of at least having that inner dialogue is coming absolutely this this person doesn't know like they need to trust me more let me do my thing but you ended up finding such an amazing visual World in collaboration with these filmmakers because you're like okay let's try it let's go there yeah why not I mean it's it's not you know these are not life and death situations right it's like it's not brain surgery and I mean I got into the work sort of naturally but I think also like I really I have a lot of fun in what I do I I like the the experience of finding that you know people say like what's your favorite thing about it about color grading I love just like what it's all to me it's like it's hard for me not to like use metaphors all the time or like the analogy of like my parents were Bakers my mom was a baker and I often think that I use food a lot would you like go into like going in the oven like you put a bunch of ingredients in you shut the door and you just hope Something's Gonna Come Out you know it's gonna work out you know and you you have the science behind it you understand how baking soda works and eggs work and all those things and you that's all there um so you throw that in and you just you know you hope the temperature is right and you're gonna open the door and somebody's gonna come out and I always think about that like when we first go into our you know our session it's like here we're gonna go in and like we have no idea what's gonna happen I like approaching it that way because to me that's like where the fun happens if you kind of get into it too to me if I too if and it does happen like sometimes I'll get a little caught up and like I gotta get this done I want to make sure that they this is the target look that everybody likes and we're gonna we're gonna hit that I want to make sure everybody's happy sometimes if that takes over you kind of lose that that spontaneity of finding something and it kind of coming through you a bit and like what you give to the project I think gets lost if you're kind of trying to match um take this and make it look like that if you take yourself out that's sort of taking yourself out of the equation so for me I love the idea of like okay I'm gonna be in this okay put me in the middle like okay I'm going to hold one hand and the other hand and I'm going to like try to conduct this so that's I almost see that as like what I do more these days than than before but it's it's to me what's like that's where the magic is of it it's like you don't really know what you're going to come up with you just have to trust that you're going to come up with something that's going to make sense you know so oh that's so cool that's that's that's the good stuff that's the essence of The Craft it sort of takes a project like a mandee though I think to to make you realize I think sometimes what your skill is and what it isn't you know I think for me I really was like oh like developing looks I love that like I love that sort of experimenting pushing something really far but then also having like knowing myself and the tastes I have to sort of say like I'm still pushing this far but it's within a realm that I think is still beautiful or looks really interesting or works well for this story or this you know scene in time um or it's serving a purpose like I I like to be able to sort of look at it from those angles and also feel like okay yes we pushed it but it's not just for the sake of pushing it yeah you know and we make jokes I have a few filmmakers that are always like from zero to Mandy we're thinking the names um so when you like start using it as a verb you know it's sort of um you know you've made it right yeah you know you set a bar a good bar set up I've actually gotten a lot of projects because people sort of said like I know I can trust you because you've been you've been able I could see that you you were willing to go there without like ruining the film right and it could be in another you know and I like obviously kudos to the other colorist too I think that you know it was definitely a collaborative effort and I don't think that you know you any one person to be honest it was such a group is really the director at the end of the day who knew how to push us in the way where we had to find the the answer yeah you know and I think that's really it's really his his visual is his vision and the DP obviously as well created the whole base point from which to take it obviously it's collaborative but I think it's just it's nice to when people recognize like he took it really far but you obviously stopped at some point and I liked that I want that you know I want and I've had people hire me for completely different projects like I got a sports documentary you know not really sports but it could have character-driven documentary about an athlete and it was from that project and that project didn't look anything Mr Magic Johnson project no that's another one no um this was uh Naomi Osaka actually oh yeah I haven't seen it yet but I'm dying to check it out it looks so cool it's a three-part series and it was completely not from that perspective but Garrett Bradley who's the director and creator of that series her big thing working in sort of approaching me which was like really early in the game uh was like just the fact that I could see that you're an artist and she comes from the art world she you know obviously is a filmmaker but she's really a visual Artist as well um and she was kind of like I liked that mind space and I want somebody to work with me in that mind space and think approach it from like what is this need and not just like apply something but to like literally find the the thing and she obviously had a visual like she wanted in mind and we had a process of getting to that place and it wasn't like any other one you know it was its own unique little you know I always say it's like your unique flower everybody is that but it was like very sort of special experience where you're kind of like okay like this no like this like okay stop trying to think about it just try to like see what she's referencing and things that she likes and that's kind of where I ask people like tell me just show me some stuff you like even if it's not what you think this is going to look like just show me what you like like instead of to get a bit of a sense of that aesthetic that I'm working Within and then I try to like remove the sort of targets of that and just try to go with like what is what is sensory or whatever like how do I feel when I think about that film or that series oh it's texture okay she's looking for texture she's not looking for that color that palette that contrast if I look at all of these films that she's talking about it's the the grain or the texture that she's really interested in she wants to build that into the film and that was really at the end of the day the key that we discovered was like okay we're gonna instead of starting with color we're gonna start with texture that's interesting which is like not usual but it is definitely comes up a lot more you know than I think it used to we used to try to emulate film that went through a phase of like no we're gonna make everything look nice and clean and now we're at the back of the stage where people like need to feel something more in the image and because it is so clean and tidy and Things Are things are uh higher you know like higher quality and higher K all the things yeah how many k are we gonna go let's make that joke 8K now yeah I need all the K's um all the case um but that definitely creates you know sharpness and things that people don't like doesn't feel like real life if you want to feel something that feels real but we don't always want to have an atmosphere and we want to feel like Cinema we don't want to feel like a documentary film camera necessarily is in the room even if it's a documentary yeah and so I think that's like is becoming more important again in my world not necessarily to match let's say film stock but to create a feel that's not necessarily with color you know yes absolutely and so in that project was that just a matter of like a custom grain cocktail that you guys came up with basically yeah I mean and that was another example of sort of using halation and using these sort of tools to generate a layer of of texture that kind of it actually was a dynamic great green if that makes sense yeah that kind of undulated throughout the the project in and at higher speeds depending on when it was more of an intense scene or when it was more of a drawn back like verite so that's kind of where I was getting to it's like oh it wasn't really necessarily about color I mean it was what we wanted the colors look great of course yeah but it's it's a different type of look um for if a project like that if you get to see it I'm excited to check it out I I'm such a fan of for a lack of better term what I'm going to call like that what you're talking about to me is sort of like mindful or selective emulation of film where it's like no uh we like this thing and we're gonna do our take on that thing not because that's what film would have done but because it's something we've seen that we like that we want to do our take on that's so cool um another project I'm really dying to ask you about is the girl from Plainville that one is you know if we compare it to certainly Mandy although anything compared to Mandy is going to be a little more subdued but actually what movie think of it is Mandy in a way because there is this underbelly of like of subtext and there's this whole you know it's a it's a dark story ultimately and yet we're looking at you know more sort of like conventionally attractive subjects and like more more sort of like attractive frame contents for lack of better term so like what was your what did you try to bring to that braid what was the process of creating that look or that that world that one you know would at the end of the year when I was sort of looking back at all the projects that that one started the previous year but it it definitely was really a a good bulk of the beginning of last year for me um I I really look at that as as being a pretty like in-depth creative process in subtlety like using Color to treat something right you know the big thing about that series is that you know it was based on a true story it's obviously a very dark kind of difficult story um and it's it's because it's based on a true story there's always new bits of details that are coming out that um based on the truth or what have you or what's been revealed that you know the filmmakers were trying to take care uh in telling the story and the big thing was trying to almost uh elaborate on the character that El Fanning was playing because in in real life she was kind of vilified obviously ended up going to jail and was convicted at the end of that um but uh basically you know it was about trying to sort of take another angle another dimension on that story and sort of you know bring light to it but without sensationalizing the story you know um these are real people this has really happened it's pretty sad and difficult and everybody involved a sort of one person is still alive and and can see it and I think there are some series out there that that sort of um get into the subject matter of depression obviously but like mental illness suicide drug use all of these things especially in teenagers that kind of Galore not glorify but glamorize it a little bit in its beauty right yeah and I think as filmmakers we always want to make something beautiful like you never want to be like I want to make this look terrible um that's just not like you just can't do it like yeah just make it look awful yeah um and so so it's a real it's a real sort of like push and pull with you you wanting and sort of we had you know one of the the cinematography Masters um in front of us Frederick Elms who was our lead DP in that show who was basically taking you know the story and trying very to be very cautious about how to photograph somebody like Elle Fanning as a real person but then of course taking into consideration like we still want this this to look good yeah we wanted to have Beauty to it you know and there's so but how do you bring Beauty to a story like that and I think so for me it was really about not necessarily restraint but like the discipline of really being mindful like you said I'm conscious of I'm gonna do this thing it's just going to be adding a blue adding blue or or maybe like tweaking some skin tone or whatever and being aware of like what am I doing what is it doing like what is it giving to this story right now you know is this making her look better you know is this making the two characters is it going to give more romance to this story whatever luckily in that series there was a really um creative use of fantasy like cinematography where because the two of them their whole relationship it was based pretty much on text messaging instead of having you know the audience look at screens and somebody holding a phone most of the time we do get those in in the series but they did a really cool thing where they chose to put the characters in the same room so they choose one or the other but usually you know one side of it where Michelle Carter who's the the main character in the story is um you know she's texting and all of a sudden Conrad would appear in her space and then they would have the conversation there and that sort of fantasy so we could really like in those cases because a lot of those those discussions were heightened dramatically or or romantically or whatever we could really like do a lot of interesting things with color there and I think that was an opportunity to kind of push things a little bit where you're like I really want this like to be gorgeous so I really want to have these like flares and I want to I want to feel good in these scenes those are opportunities to get that out whereas the other things were much more like okay this is a very subtle moment moment this is like slightly cooler but we want it to feel different so we're trying to keep that in there you know or this is a weird this is kind of a strange moment we want to make it a little bit darker because we don't want it to feel too like visceral or whatever you know like different things like that but really like every episode was a process of just like diving into every almost every meaning of every scene and then I remember towards the end being like I kind of need to step away in it you know um and three different cinematographers too I mean they're all so different stylistically uh um with Fred Frederick Elms leading the charge I think that was an amazing opportunity for me um to just have to be able to work with somebody with that yeah what a legend experience um and how he sort of works with everybody and and communicates and what he shoots to how what he does to the image at the end um it was just like it was like a master class for me on that side of things and then then taking that with cat westergard and then Elijah Christian and each of them bringing their own thing to each episode we even had a session where all of us were involved um working on one DPS episode but we were all trying to sort of figure out okay when we get to your episode and we do this part of it this is what we're all thinking and do you like that idea and can we all get on board or contribute to this conversation which I thought was really cool like you very rarely get everybody kind of in the same room at least figuratively um to talk about we're all staring at the same image what do we think we all was our gut instinct on where to take this so yeah so I'm curious like when you talk about the the discipline that you uh were trying especially in the those non-fantasy scenes what are the sort of the things that you're eyeballing is it like color contrast and tonal contrast like making sure you're not going too popping and like yeah beautiful with that stuff I think it's sort of there was such natural beauty in like just the lensing you know and I think it was like let's not try to overdo like there's not you know an insane amount of work on skin tones and Beauty work and stuff but you know things that you might do just naturally yeah drama where you're like oh I want to fix that yeah try not to get too caught up in fixing things that are sort of because there's a bit of a rawness to this obviously to the story that we wanted to be there and I think sometimes on a different film I worked with a different cinematographer who had that like I kind of like that it's like you're here and then you change angles and it's sort of not like perfect like I don't want it to be too perfect I want it to feel a little bit like loose it's like a little bumpy yeah and not like and I'm like okay but I'm like the queen of like match like it needs to the white balancing to be perfect um yeah so I had to get over my house what do you mean and which way it's like no maybe it's like a little contrast thing and I think in this in this project they had a little bit of that too where it was like you'd want to be exacting when I have a little bit of like looseness with you're looking at this way maybe there's more of a flare We're not gonna try to match the contrast point exactly but it had more to do with that just like certain saturation of color like let's not go so far as to make it really desaturated even though this is a really depressing moment we just wanted to play more like true to just photography so let's not over extend something we might normally do because we're trying to push an emotion yeah so it's actually like restraint in using Color to push somewhere you know if that makes any sense you're not being like well if I add blue it's going to feel like you know we're going into like a cooler space like yes we would do that but it was not it was much more subtle than we would go far and then you'd pull it way back and that would be exactly where you know everybody felt comfortable in it landing and I think that was to me the interesting thing is like I'll usually push something and then you cannot come halfway it's like no you come like 90. I just want like two grains of salt exactly exactly but it but to me that it was like the perfect combination because you're like go where you want to and then you know and I used to do that's a conversation and like a process I used to work with Neil blomkamp a lot on us like he wants to have like this reality-based kind of action site you know science fiction movies these big movies but we want to we want there to be sort of sort of an honesty to it so our process would always be like push it to here I'll have a reaction I'm gonna push it back here and then we're gonna find somewhere in the middle and that's where it's gonna land and instead of finding those um places I guess in that range or that scope I think is sort of to me where I I it's it that's what I really worked on in Plainville was like okay what are the what are this what is the sort of like the full scope of this look where would I probably take this if it wasn't based on a true story yeah and it was just a drama where would I take this if it was you know a fantasy and then sort of trying to find the you know the discipline in being really honest with the story you know does this need this is it kind of just working on its own can we just sort of like let it sort of play as it was shot I mean obviously there's things that need to be fixed or whatever but I think it just sort of that like finding the way through that and then again when the sound became involved that was a big thing too like we brought the soundtrack in a bit towards the end because it was such a like texture and it was like oh this is really extreme like this needs to look way less colored you know and let's make it so there's no hand on this it just feels like a you know almost like you were standing in the room and I think that you know that was really I mean it was really great for me because again it's like every Project's different and that was one where I was like okay now I'm really getting getting these super subtle you know where I normally feel like I'm the only one doing that like I just hang on one second I just okay now I feel good about it everybody's like I don't even I didn't see nothing I did what did you do but we were doing that you know everybody in the room being like just a little bit more you know and I think that was just like it kind of increases your sensitivity um even more you know in terms of what you do and why you're doing it oh that's so cool yeah I mean I feel like that's that's one of the hardest moves in the colorist trade to be like do is anything needed and you know to back way off and do just those little nudges and you know I I in the the end result Andrea like that's a show that that's one of the few shows that I can like it's it's a rare example of something where I want to complement your work on it and I can't simply compliment it by saying oh it's gorgeous I mean it looks lovely like it's it's it it compels the eye you know like it draws in the eye but it's not like you know like beauty mode you know it's not cranked to an 11 but it's perfectly fitted to the story in my opinion so well thank you for the complimentation yeah really really nice work it's all about to me is in that one especially it's just yeah like finding what you need to do what you need to contribute and you know what it needs to feel like yeah right and I think like that's where for me as I got to the end of the towards the end and I was like I'm too in this like I understand this world a little bit too much based on like the reality of it it's a little bit dark you know and but it's to me that was a testament of like I really did it immerse myself in it to get there and you kind of have to because I think it's hard to feel your way through something if you're not like invested so um but that is a little bit of you know sometimes the difficulty in um what we do if we get again that's why I love doing different genres and and sort of like having the diversity in the projects because if you get kind of you know a lot of horror films or a lot of sci-fi's or a lot of dystopian whatever um you can if you are like me and you get yourself in it you know you can be on that track it can be your year of dystopian films and you look out in the world you're like I don't know what to do anymore Everything feels a little Bleaker or whatever yeah well you know it's funny I feel like every time I get the opportunity to talk to a colorist who I really admire like you two things that I always kind of walk away with I'm like okay wow Andrea has even more fun than I thought she has but also Andrea's job is way harder than I sort of like had idealized in my mind like you know it's clear you love what you do and it's also clear that you work your butt off like in a unique way for every single project you take on so um yeah it's it's just really cool to hear from you what your process is and and how you have navigated all these different really cool projects that you've done um so thanks for coming and hanging out in my garage with me love it it's my pleasure it's nice to be able to talk about it sometimes because when you uh when you work in it you don't really realize sometimes what you've learned and what you're doing into laughter so it's it's great to have the chance to to talk to you yeah and we get to cover you know like a good 15 of your body of work so we just have to do five more and then we'll have it covered yeah yeah yeah we've got time yeah very good well thank you so much for uh being here today and I'm sure we'll get to hang out again soon yeah awesome thanks Andrew

Channel: The Color Code

Views: 3,246

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Id: c4Rsc7-lgPw

Length: 85min 47sec (5147 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 17 2023