Remote Viewing

Color is so subjective: not only our individual perceptions of specific hues and tones, but also how we describe those specific hues and tones to others, especially to others sitting in a color grading session.

For instance, this creative’s idea of ‘warm’ might be a slight yellowish-red tint., whereas her colleague thinks of ‘warm’ as a deep golden wash. Then there’s my concept of ‘warm,’ which is a LUT I made called Sun-kissed. What does Sun-kissed look like? Well, I guess it’s somewhere in-between a slight yellowish-red tint and a deep golden wash. At least it is for the purposes of this color session with these guys. After all, we’ve got a bunch more scenes to do and it’s already nearly lunch time. We don’t need to get hung up on differing notions of ‘warm.’

Fortunately, we all love Sun-kissed once we reduce the overall saturation just a squidge. We can even agree that the scene is now nice and ‘warm’ without looking too burned and frazzled. However, there’s one more thing. Sun-kissed looks great on this studio monitor but what will it look like projected on a big screen in the basement of Marriott function room? Will it look the same streaming on my wife’s laptop? How about when it’s uploaded to social media and seen on some kid’s mobile device?

‘What does it actually look like?’ is the question I’ve been asked more than any other in this job.

Sitting in a sports bar watching a big deal spot you color graded appearing on five different TVs is a spine-chilling experience. You’ll want to bury your head in the peanuts because you’ll be seeing five very different looking images on those five different TVs. One image is way too dark, another image is far too bright, that image is much too green and the image over there is washed out. Meanwhile, the image in the bathroom doesn’t even bear thinking about, so you can’t run and hide there. None of the TVs looks correct yet they are all receiving the same signal.

So what does it actually look like?

This is where color grading gets really existential, because all I can do is point at the vectorscope and mumble that ‘it looks like that.’ The map is definitely the territory here. But that map of undulating lines strung across a numbered graticule provides very little consolation for clients who can’t read the map, which is probably most clients in my experience. Consequently, they need to trust blindly that I can follow the map. That I’m capable of taking the image where it needs to go. And without aging myself too much, rest assured that I’ve been reading scopes for thirty years (luckily it’s a new story every time), so I know a thing or two about Rec.709 and P3 DCI video represented as a graph. I’m even somewhat certain that I understand HDR Rec.2100. Just don’t get me started on exactly how bright 4000 nits is.

FYI - my monitor is Calman verified and color calibrated … but I’d still trust my scopes the most if they were arguing with the monitor about ‘warm.’ They’ve never done me wrong yet and they won’t lead you astray either.