Established in 2005, Johannesburg-based Mushroom Media is a boutique digital post-production house focused on the commercials and feature film market. Warwick Allan, renowned colourist and owner of Mushroom Media, has worked on a host of accredited feature films. Here are a few things he thinks every colourist should know and have in order to succeed.
For a colourist the most critical tools are your monitor, software, hardware, control surface and environment. “Firstly an A-class calibrated monitor is of most critical importance if you are serious about colour grading,” says Allan. “The monitors you grade off need to provide a reliable and accurate representation of colour day in and day out, you need to trust the image you are looking at 100 per cent in order to grade with confidence.” Allan says that calibration should be done regularly (every three months or so) using a hardware calibration device that has a probe that accurately reads the monitors consistency and colour by being placed directly onto the screen.
The adjustments to an A-class monitor such as a Sony OLED will be minimal but need to be done regularly to make sure all is lined up 100 per cent. “Consumer TVs, even expensive ones, will shift over time and depending on the environmental factors such as temperature they will even shift during the day. You may not notice this as a general consumer but when you are working on very subtle changes in colour it will impact your ability to know exactly what you are changing,” Allan explains. He goes on to say that the most accurate and reliable technology available at the moment is OLED (Organic LED) and the best monitors made by Sony, Flanders Scientific, Canon etc. all make use of this type of screen technology that represents black as 100 per cent black – meaning the pixel is actually turned off versus the brightness turned down which leaves the black areas looking slightly milky or dark grey. “This affects the contrast of the image and is the case for LCD monitors which are cheaper but you get what you pay for. So OLED is currently king,” he states.
According to Allan, software has levelled the playing field in the area of grading in recent years, with the availability of DaVinci Resolve and a number of other software only applications such as Scratch becoming increasingly more prevalent. “The reality is that a good colourist can achieve a great looking image in any software, it is more about being comfortable in the software you use. That being said, Resolve and Baselight are the two most used applications for grading in the international arena. Resolve requires less hardware and Baselight is a turnkey solution that comes with its own storage, machine, GPU’s and even monitors, but is exponentially more expensive. Resolve can be built up with the right hardware to run just as fast as a Baselight system or can be run as software only.”
What is critical from a hardware side, says Allan, is to ensure that you have fast storage available in order to playback the high-quality files that you will want to be grading off. “It is hard to assess the grade without being able to watch your footage on the run and therefore make sure you have sufficient power in your system to watch the files playback smoothly in high-quality. Most systems make use of multiple GPU’s to boost playback power and real-time processing of the grade layers or nodes that you have applied, but you still have to have a hard-drive or RAID capable of pushing that footage to and from your machine for processing,” he explains.
The next thing one would need as a serious colourist is a control surface. These generally contain many knobs, buttons and three to four rollerballs. These give the colourist a very fast and tactile tool through which you can very finely adjust the colour and contrast with dedicated buttons. “Once you have graded with a control surface you will never be able to grade with a mouse again. The fine control that you get with a control panel allows you to really craft the image to exactly the levels of colour and contrast your client requires,” Allan says. “The speed at which one can operate the software also radically increases as each button is actually a shortcut straight to the tool you need to use.”
Lastly, but by no means least important says Allan, is the environment: “In order to take in every beautiful pixel of your masterpiece that is being perfectly represented on your 100 per cent calibrated OLED monitor you need to make sure there is no natural light entering the room at all. Keep all light sources at 6 500k colour temperature. This will make sure the white point of your monitor is not confused. Use high-quality ballasts and fixtures if they are dimmable so as to avoid the colour of the lights shifting. The light level in your grading room should be very low so that you are able to clearly see the finer details of contrast and colour on the monitor. Make sure you take regular breaks for your brain and eyes as your eyes can start to self-correct after long uninterrupted sessions.”
Also of importance is the wall colour. Allan explains that our perception of colour is based on the surrounding colours, therefore as a colourist, you ideally want to have a perfectly neutral grey with absolutely no colour bias in your wall colour. “This is also known technically as 18 per cent grey, commonly found on the colour charts used to test cameras. To the eye 18 per cent grey looks more like 50 per cent grey – a perfect mix between black and white with no colour bias,” he concludes.
All the technical speak aside, for Allan colour grading is really about artistic expression, your eye and creating compelling images that support the story. “It is a very subjective craft, what looks good to one person may not to another. Learn to work with people and be challenged to try new things and find new looks you would never have thought of. Filmmaking is all about collaboration at all stages and it is also the case in the process of grading too,” he concludes.
