Work Experience: Technicolor Post-Production Services, Soho

During the October half term (28th Oct- 1st Nov) I managed to get myself a work experience week in the Technicolor Post-Production House in Soho, London. During the week most of my time was spent as a runner, in which I had to cater for business clients every needs, however on one of the days I was given the chance to shadow one of the senior colorists to see what they did and what color grading involves.

The work of a colorist involves the manipulation of the reds, greens and blues (RGB) in order to change the colours within the shot. The reason for a client using a colorist could be that after reviewing the footage they have realised that there one shot is too bright in comparison to all of the others and so either the one shot can be darkened or the rest of the shots can be made as bright as the single shot. Another reason for a colorists use could be that a whole scene needs to have its tone changed completely, for example if a comedy duo are filming a sketch about two awful cops that is filmed in a cross between the styles of a late night Turkish drama and Starsky and Hutch they might film it at night, but this still may not look right, and so a colorist would use various tools, such as lowering the gamma, gain or lift, in order to bring the colours down to the blacker part of the RGB spectrum, which would give the scene a much darker and grittier feel. I was able to see all of these processes occur on various future television projects, as well as sit in on client meetings with directors who are more famous in the broadcasting world.

It's fair to say that this experience completely changed the way I see film and television production because when you sit there watching a show many will think that all of the colours in the shot, including lighting, are natural to when the project was being filmed. However my time proved this to be wrong, as during the day I was shown how to turn a shot that was filmed on a bright summers day into a convincing frosty winter morning. This made me realise just how important post-production is when creating moving image as various processes can be used in order to give the shot a darker feel, or to completely change the tone of the work.

The week at Technicolor has made me want to make the post-production side of my project just as important as the filming in order to get a more solid feeling that the scene is part of a noir thriller instead of a more basic thriller. This means that in my project I will use DaVinci Resolve Lite in order to color grade my work to give it the classic noir look.