Telling the Story - The Art and Technique of Digital Color Correction - page 336

Talk Like a DP
One thing to note as Falcon was describing the image was that she often
used terms that a director of photography could relate to. The creative
arts are filled with jargon and specialized language and colorists, and DPs
are no exception. The trick in becoming an effective communicator and
collaborator is to learn the language of your collaborator, who in this case
is the cinematographer.
The trick in becoming an effective communicator and collaborator
is to learn the language of your collaborator, who in this case is the
cinematographer.
Specifically, Falcon mentioned the words “tobacco” and “ProMist.”
Both of these are filters that a DP could relate to. Cinematographers like
photographic terms, so learning these terms is a valuable thing. Instead
of referring to a general sense of how bright something should be, cin-
ematographers will often describe is specifically in terms of f-stops, say-
ing, “That needs to be a stop brighter.” Or sometimes they'll discuss an
image in terms of the film negative, as in, “That image seems a little
thin.” A thin negative is the result of underexposure or under develop-
ment. The resulting print will be muddy and low contrast.
Understanding color in terms of some of the filters that a DP uses is a
valuable skill. Although some filters vary in color, you should be familiar
with some of the popular colors and filters and what affect they have on
an image.
David Mullen, ASC, explains that the relationship can go both ways: “I
find that the more I sit in on color correction sessions, the more I can talk
to a colorist on their level. I don't tell them how to turn the trackballs on a
DaVinci or any of that stuff, but generally when you're looking at a scene,
you're either adding or subtracting primary or secondary colors, so I tell
the colorist, 'That warm light needs a little more magenta in it.' Or 'It's
warm, but warm with a yellow bias.' Or 'It looks like the shadows have
a little cyan in them.' If you talk in terms of red, green, or blue—a little
more or a little less, it sort of gives them a good idea of what you want.
If you start talking to them in terms of colors that don't have any photo-
chemical or electronic sense, if you say, 'I want that light more turquoise
with some chartreuse color cast or burgundy' then everyone's going to
start to wonder, because we sort of know what those colors are, but we
don't sort of all agree on what those colors are. And there's another ten-
dency for cameramen to use photographic terms, like filters, like 'That's a
coral filter.' Well, a colorist may not have any photography background,
and they might not have ever seen a coral filter, and even coral filters