Colorist

What they do

On a well-organised job the work starts before the shoot, with camera tests alongside the cinematographer and a show look or LUT handed to the DIT and editorial so dailies, visual effects and the grade all begin from the same place. Later the conform arrives: an EDL or XML against the camera originals, checked shot by shot, with anything the conform missed rebuilt by hand. Then grading, in Baselight or DaVinci Resolve, on a calibrated reference display in a controlled room. The structure is a node graph or layer stack: a balance pass that brings every shot to neutral and matched, then the look, then shape work with power windows, tracked mattes, keys and relights to put light where the frame needs it. Waveform, parade and vectorscope run beside the picture. The pipeline is colour managed, often with ACES, so the display transform is fixed and the grade sits in front of it. The awkward material is a large part of the day: underexposed night, mismatched archive, a phone clip, a day-for-night, a visual effects shot delivered on a different day. Review passes happen with the cinematographer and director, notes come back on a shot list, and then deliverables: HDR and SDR passes, trims, and QC against a broadcaster's luminance and chroma limits.

What they decide

The calls that belong to this role and no other.

• The final density, contrast and colour of every shot, presented for approval by the cinematographer and director
• Where the eye is led: which parts of the frame are lifted, darkened or desaturated
• The node or layer structure, and therefore what can be reworked cheaply after a note
• How mismatched sources are brought into one look
• Whether a shot goes back to visual effects or can be solved in the grade
• Which colour-managed pipeline and display transform the job runs in, agreed with the facility and the cinematographer

Principles of the craft

• Grade from a reference and the story's arc, not shot by shot: choose the anchor frame for a sequence and match to it. A reel graded one pretty shot at a time has no shape, and an audience should feel the film brighten or cool because the story does.
• Respect the display transform: in a colour-managed pipeline the path from scene-referred data to the display is fixed, and the grade belongs in front of it. Fighting the transform, clipping highlights to force contrast and then rescuing them, is why a grade stops travelling between HDR, SDR and a phone.
• Contrast before colour: putting black, white and the mid-tone where they belong does most of what people call the look. Hue moves made before the tonal range is set have to be made again.
• Shape the eye's path: a frame is a hierarchy. Windows, tracked mattes and small desaturations decide what a viewer looks at first, second and never. This is closer to lighting than to painting.
• Latitude is finite and belongs to the story: log camera negative holds a great deal but not everything. Spend the recoverable highlight or shadow range where the scene needs it and stop reaching for more.
• Shots match when the faces match: scopes keep you consistent and legal, but the judgement is made on skin, sky and any object the audience already knows the colour of.

Common mistakes

• Grading shot by shot on a well-lit hero frame and never watching the reel at speed
• Judging on an uncalibrated display, or in a room with a window and a white wall behind the monitor
• Saturating to make an image look better on a bright monitor, then failing broadcast chroma limits at QC
• Pushing every scene toward teal shadows and orange skin because it reads as cinematic in a still frame
• Ignoring the on-set intent and the show LUT, so the dailies everyone approved and the final grade are two different films
• The competent colorist's mistake: building the whole look inside one enormous node with no way to hand the director a version that is simply twenty per cent less

How to learn it

Exercises and routes in, not a reading list.

• Download DaVinci Resolve and the free training books and lesson files Blackmagic publishes, and work the colour lessons with the supplied media rather than your own, so your judgement is not flattered by your own footage.
• Grade a five-shot sequence from log footage twice: once shot by shot with no reference, once by grading the anchor shot and matching the rest to it. Watch both at speed. That difference is the whole job.
• Grade a scene, then view it through an HDR and an SDR output transform. Note what breaks, then rebuild the grade so both survive from one set of decisions.
• Take one shot and build three versions of a look: one using only lift, gamma, gain and curves, one using only hue and saturation tools, one using only windows and shapes. Compare which route changed the image most.
• Grade a sequence that mixes a log camera file, a phone clip and a piece of black-and-white archive into a single look. Note which element set the ceiling for the whole sequence.