Miscellaneous Wisdom - The Art and Technique of Digital Color Correction - page 466

assistant editors, they're all familiar with Final Cut—maybe it'll seed the
industry at an early age and these people will all be influenced early on
that there's no reason to pay big money and spend an inordinate amount
of time slinging film. I think it's like anything else, if you look at every-
thing from the Beta to VHS revolution to compressed delivery systems
like DirecTV, we're always selling out in little steps, and quite frankly, I'd
rather have the flexibility and the speed to make contributions that are
possibly not quite the same quality but are equally satisfying on a more
artistic level.”
Trying to understand his point, I ask, “Because you'd do more color
correcting than waiting for the film to get set up on the telecine?”
I've only got so much patience left and I'd rather spend it color
correcting something in context than threading film up.
- Bob Festa, New Hat
“Yes. The way I see it, I've only got so much patience left and I'd
rather spend it color correcting something in context than threading
film up. I think we're really witnessing the Avid-ization of telecine,
where hopefully color decisions and color correction as we know it
can be a lot more interactive and face to face and project-based as
opposed to service bureau-based. Quite frankly, I'd be much happier
if I was working on a per-project basis, face to face, much more inter-
locked with my client as opposed to just acting as a service bureau. I'm
excited about the future, because I think that's what it's going to be,”
concludes Festa.
Festa also discusses the changes in acquisition formats in recent years,
“What's become more and more important in digital acquisition is tex-
ture: 80 percent of my work is Alexa, 10 percent is RED, and 10 percent is
film. Digital acquisition is clean; there's no traditional film grain. I have a
library of grain, roll out, flash frames or I could have picked a stock, high
speed or low speed or 16mm or Super 8mm. Eight out of the ten jobs I
do with Alexa; I spill in a little bit of grain and it creates a less antiseptic
look, sometimes putting it in the highlights or the blacks, depending on
whether it's underexposed or overexposed.”
This change in acquisition formats and in the traditional color correc-
tion tools for colorists is illustrated in an informal poll taken by Warren
Eagles, an Australian colorist and founder of the International Colorists
Academy, which does color correction training. Warren and I do a video
tutorial on the DVD for the topic. Warren walks through some of the
powerful ways to exploit the node graph in Resolve. Warren's poll was
done before Adobe acquired and integrated Speedgrade into Production