I started out in Digital Compositing, film clean up. At the time Apple SHAKE. A friend an I leased two X-RAIDS with the X-Serve as a controller and setup a gigabit network in a tiny space, a couple headless MacPro's as Render Nodes. I think G4/G5, intel MacPro wasn't out yet... We where able to underbid every post studio in LA and had a pretty decent run. Mind numbing work. Paint and Roto type work, clean up, beauty work, tv comps, some light CG. During that time I was doing all the film outs at a facility that had a Lustre Grading Theatre on SGI hardware. I used to try and get as much of our film outs to go through Lustre just so I could sit with the colorist. This was a junior guy, but still I was pretty hooked. Also from SHAKE I learned about LUT's ColorSpaces and DI workflow.. All skills needed to be a good at Grading and DI. When Apple Aquired Silicon Color I jumped right on board.. It was a pretty good run with Apple Final Cut Pro, Shake and Color.. Around 2009 everyone knew Apple was killing Final Cut Pro Studio. Updates where few and far between and it wasn't something they cared about as much. Then Blackmagic bought Davinci and I got a Resolve System up and running... Finally The Foundry Bought NUKE and everyone using SHAKE had to jump to NUKE.. So I mean Apple was great to give high end tools to young artists at the time, but in the end everyone had to jump to different software.. Sometime different hardware as well.
Coloring is great, i like it a lot more than Compositing, and having my technical knowledge from Film compositing helped me not have to be a junior at a big facility and jump right in.
As for getting good at it, nothing will get you better at color grading than having 4 producers and a creative director sitting behind you for 10 hours a day for a few weeks..
So go grab a free version of Resolve and watch the Warren Eagles tutorials.
https://www.warreneagles.com.au
I am not sure how much they cost, but they are worth it if you want to learn to color.
Really helpful post - thanks very much! Looks like his complete tutorial package is $300. I'll get it early in the new year when I have some free time to digest it - thanks again! I know he works in Resolve, but it looks like there's a workflow between FCPX and Resolve, so I'll look into adopting that too!
It's fascinating to hear your story and know where I was at that time in my life. It's also fascinating just to learn your journey - it's amazing where life takes us as we pursue our own interests. My bf's sister's bf is a compositor. He worked on the movie, 'The Martian', but I've watched him doing it, and it does look pain-stakingly boring - colouring is much more fun!
I was too young at the time you were working to get Final Cut when Color was still in use. I used to look at the applications along with Aperture on the Apple website in my teens, and I think the cost pushed me more so towards photography than film, as I wasn't too far off saving up for a Mac just after I finished my studies in Computer Science, and Aperture wouldn't take too much longer to purchase after that. When I finished university, I knew I preferred using applications rather than creating them, and so I went on to, 'Make a difference' and became a primary school (elementary - I think) teacher, whilst also picking up cameras / lenses and the like to go travelling with. After about 4 years and two travel films later - using the just-introduced Final Cut Pro X, I shot a friends' wedding, and I've been doing it ever since.
I love everything about film. Today, I'm about to sit down and create a 20 minute feature, which I'll probably finish by Sunday. I've done multi-cam edits of the ceremony, speeches and first dance, and re-imported to favourite those, so everything is ready in my library as favourited clips to drop onto the timeline and piece together a story using dialogue - I love it! Once that's done though, I spend about 4 hours getting the best grade I can using FCPX. I do have Colour Finale, but I still stick to FCPX's tools, as my computer can't really handle Colour Finale at the moment.
My standard, 'Go to' for the films I produce is to add +5 saturation to shadows, midtones and highlights, and then use the colour board to get the look I want, after ensuring my exposure is where I want it. I find the whole process to be challenging and enjoyable and I'm always surprised that I'll sometimes adopt a cooler grade, rather than a warmer one when weddings should always be 'warm' to a large extent. I love nothing more than seeing my raw cut come to life in the colours I've chosen - the difference in this final step is huge! I'm always amazed by how much of a difference it makes. Because it's all live event recording, you're always treated to some nightmarish situations. I've gotten to learn a lot more about white balance and colour matrix when recording an event, and so I'm never too far away from where I want to be... that said, there are some environments where there's multiple colours coming in at many different points of a frame, and it's difficult to get right in-camera. Therefore, knowing more about grading and making the right choices with where I position the puck on the colour board will be really helpful in the long run.
Great to learn your story! Thanks for telling me about it!
