Marc Wielage
Well-known member
I agree very much with what Mike Most says above. It would behoove the original poster to try to visit a major post house in LA, NY, or Chicago and observe an "A-level" transfer for a commercial, feature film, or TV series. You'll very quickly get an idea as to the pressures and skill levels involved. If you know a working DP in those areas, maybe they'd let you tag along to the session and watch how the colorist interprets what the DP asks for in terms of how he or she wants the shot to look.
I've always said: it's not just the skill of knowing the equipment, the monitors, the scopes, and the software. As much as half of being a good colorist is knowing how to deal with people, how to understand the DP and director's point of view, and how to tactfully steer them away from making potentially-problematic decisions while still finding a compromise that will work for their project. Knowing the basics of photography, lighting, lenses, and filters helps a great deal, because colorists constantly walk a fine line between technical and creative worlds.
I would also strongly recommend the Telecine Internet Group, founded by longtime LA colorist Rob Lingelbach:
http://tig.colorist.org
Membership to the list is open to anyone, and many of the 2000+ members are very experienced colorists with very impressive resumes.
I will say that Apple Color is OK as a learning tool, but every other major color-correction system out there uses vastly-different paradigms. Most of what you see in theaters or on Blu-ray was probably color-timed on a Baselight, a Lustre, a daVinci (2K or Resolve), or a Quantel Pablo, followed by Speedgrade and Nucoda. High-end projects demand this kind of power and speed, and the lower-cost systems have a lot of compromises in both areas.
I've always said: it's not just the skill of knowing the equipment, the monitors, the scopes, and the software. As much as half of being a good colorist is knowing how to deal with people, how to understand the DP and director's point of view, and how to tactfully steer them away from making potentially-problematic decisions while still finding a compromise that will work for their project. Knowing the basics of photography, lighting, lenses, and filters helps a great deal, because colorists constantly walk a fine line between technical and creative worlds.
I would also strongly recommend the Telecine Internet Group, founded by longtime LA colorist Rob Lingelbach:
http://tig.colorist.org
Membership to the list is open to anyone, and many of the 2000+ members are very experienced colorists with very impressive resumes.
I will say that Apple Color is OK as a learning tool, but every other major color-correction system out there uses vastly-different paradigms. Most of what you see in theaters or on Blu-ray was probably color-timed on a Baselight, a Lustre, a daVinci (2K or Resolve), or a Quantel Pablo, followed by Speedgrade and Nucoda. High-end projects demand this kind of power and speed, and the lower-cost systems have a lot of compromises in both areas.
