Miscellaneous Wisdom - The Art and Technique of Digital Color Correction - page 470

Photographers love it, but I hate it. Light doesn't travel predictably
through it. So when you filter a light source—especially if you mix
incandescent or mix practicals in a lighting scenario, like right here—
you've got this green light coming from maybe a practical, maybe a light-
ing source and you've got this cleaner source over here and if you were
to walk through there his skin and his face and his body would change
color because smoke dissipates the light quite a bit, so it quite often cor-
rupts whatever it is that you're trying to do. And most of these color cor-
rectors are set up with hue, saturation, and luminance, and the smoke
affects HSL in a way that's really unpredictable, and color correctors have
a really hard time with it—which makes you have a really hard time with
it,” Leffel concludes.
Keeping Butts in the Seats
In the end, the colorists that make the most money are the ones that keep
the butts in the seats. In other words: new clients coming in the door and
old clients coming back.
Chris Pepperman describes what he thinks delivers that desired result.
“Clients respond to colorists who work quickly. Colorists who get them
what they want and stay within their budget and deadline. I assess what
I have: I look at the rough cut. I look at the film. I look how it's shot and
I say, 'This isn't going to take as long,' or 'This might take more time.' But I
typically always run quicker than slower. Because I'm the kind of guy who,
once I get an image the way I like it, I'm gone. I'm not dicking with it. If
you like it and you're happy with it, I'm moving on. I'm not going to teeter
around with it any more. I go to the next scene. And then, depending on
the kind of client you are and what you like, because all my clients are
different, I tend to move quickly, and therefore, instead of doing the job
in eight hours, I've done it in ive and they're still getting what they want.
I want to get it done, because if something goes wrong, now we're ten
hours into a project. My eyes are tired. I'm compromising the look of my
project the longer I'm in the room, the more frustrating it becomes for
the client. For me, once I like the image and they like the image, we're
moving! If that takes five minutes, then it takes five minutes. I'd rather
always have the extra time in the back end of the session to say, you know
what, I wasn't happy with this shot, let's go back and tweak it, rather
than get to the clock and have five shots still to go and then you've got to
rush through them. And that's something I learned in New York, working
under the gun with agencies just kind of lined up at your door, waiting to
come in, four or five a day, because you can really get yourself in a tizzy
if you're slowing down and it's five o'clock and there are still clients out
there waiting.”