The Offset Podcast - The Offset Podcast EP032: When Is A Grade Done?

Episode Date: May 19, 2025

In this episode we’re exploring a audience member submitted question about how to know when a grade is done and ready to present to a client.  It’s a more nuanced and complex question than you’d think! Specific topics discussed in this episode include:Color is very subjective thing - how to balance your ‘done’ vs a client’s doneThe importance of pre-grade goalsHow initial project evaluation is a vital part of the grading processGetting to know a client’s preferences, aesthetic, and things they focus onThe immense value of working in passesFocusing first on ‘tone’, white/black point, and overall shot to shot contrastMoving to large feature matchingDetailed work  - beauty, clothing, small features shot to shotShowing the client for the first time - balancing confidence and accepting constructive criticism  Putting the project back in front of client again after addressing notes and gauging successEvaluating ‘translatability’ on consumer devicesPreparing for big changes, disasters etc with project backups, duplicated timelines, and versionsBalancing perfectionism with staying on schedule and deliveringThe long term value of being committed to your workIf you liked this episode be sure to check out our growing library of shows. Also be sure to like and subscribe to The Offset Podcast where ever you find it!

Hey there, and welcome to another episode of the Offset podcast. And today we're talking about how to know when you're done with a great. Stay tuned. This podcast is sponsored by Flanders Scientific, leaders in color accurate display solutions for professional video. Whether you're a colorist, an editor, a DIT, or a broadcast engineer, Flanders Scientific has a professional display solution to meet your needs. Learn more at flanderscientific.com.

Hey, everybody. welcome back to another episode of the Offset Podcast. I'm one of your host, Robbie Carman. And with me, as always, is Joey Deanna. Hey, Joey, how are you in? Hi, everyone. Joey, today, well, first of it, actually, before we dive in, I want to apologize to all of our viewers for being a few days late on delivering this episode.

I thought that it would be wise for me to completely tear apart this room and start over from scratch wiring everything with the idea that, oh, yeah, sure, I'll be done in a weekend. And here we are like 10 days later. I'm still sort of 90% back together. So the delay I getting this episode out is 100% on me. I apologize to all of our viewers. But the good news is I have consolidated, I guess, three different racks down to one rack. I've rewired with the latest HDMI, SDI, the whole nine yards.

So we'll have to, Joey, one of these days, we'll have to do a updated room design. because not having done this in a number of years, I've learned a lot, but I can also say I never want to get back under a desk ever again. I'm a little, as you say, a little sore, and the knees hurt a little bit extra today from all that rolling around. So it's there. But on this episode, we wanted to dive into talking a little bit about, I think a subject that we hear about every once in a while, but this actually, I don't know if you know this, but Joey, this actually came from

one of our audience members. Andres, he's based in South America. He didn't say where. And he just said, basically, I have a problem knowing when is the right time to present a grade. Should I be doing more to refine the grade before putting it in front of a client?

And then he says, related, how do I know that I'm really done and we can put a button on the project? And I thought this was a great subject because this is something that I struggle with sometimes, how much more are you going to futz with something before you show a client? But then also just like, you know, there's a comfort level that needs to be achieved by the colorist to know that like, all right, well, I'm feeling good about this. I can let this out into the world.

And so I kind of wanted to talk about that. And, you know, along the way, we'll go down any tangents like we usually do. Of course, for all of you listening and watching, if you like the show, please follow us on Instagram and Facebook and wherever you find the show on various podcast platforms. Of course, you can always head over to offsetpodcast.com and follow the show there, get show notes, and so on and so forth. Hard to believe this is episode 32 or 33. We've done a bunch of them. So check out the library of past shows as well. All right, Joey. So, you know, my thing about this, and where I always start on this question or this subject is colors are really subjective thing, right? So my done might be different than your done, which might be different than the client's done. I mean, we've all had clients we've all had clients we've set there with and gone,

really? They like that? They think it's good. They think it's ready to print. Like what? And you're like, I'm just getting started. And then vice versa. Or yeah, you have the opposite of the client that wants to change one pixel plus 10, then minus 10, then plus 5, then minus 5, et cetera, into infinity.

Yeah. And I think when I think about this, it's that old adage of, you know, no film or no project is ever really finished. It's just kind of abandoned. And that's kind of like really, everything we're going to talk about at rest of today, that's kind of really how I feel about this is that you can always revisit stuff and start, you know, pixeling it to death, right? With the idea of like, hey, I'm going to refine this. I'm going to refine this. But it's a case of diminishing returns to. But more to the point.

And sometimes it's a case of more harm than good. You know, sometimes your first instinct or your early instincts or the client's early instincts are, you know, that gut reaction. Once you've experienced the project enough times, right, your gut reactions are naturally not a gut initial reaction anymore. And you could be looking for problems that don't exist or even creating problems where none were. Yeah. And I think, you know, related with something we've talked about in previous episodes, but it's worth reiterating here again. again is that, you know, one of the problems I think that a lot of colorists have, especially younger colorists who are doing their best to really make the most robust, refined images

they can. They don't really understand the idea of adaptation and the longer that you look at something, the worse you're going to actually make it, right? And I see this happened all the time where people like, you know, they don't even actually get done with the project because they're like, you know, they're hyper-focusing on certain shots or what happens more often is they hyper-focus on a number of shots, you know, and you can get those perfect in their mind. And then the rest of the film or the rest of the project suffers because it becomes a time management at that point, right? So I think, you know, we'll talk about it a little later today, but I think the idea of passes is an important thing, too, in this discussion. But, you know, knowing that this is hard and

knowing that it's a subjective thing. I think the very first thing we should talk about that I think will help on this is the importance of kind of like your pre-grading goals, right? And I think this can mean a few things. I think number one, it can mean, okay, what about the discussion that you had with the client about look and feel and that kind of stuff? It can mean things like analyzing references and discussing those references. It can be even stuff like, you know, you testing color management pipelines on your side,

testing different lookup tables, testing different levels of grain. Like that pre-grade work and getting everybody on the same page, I think goes a long way to getting to a place where like, yep, we're in the ballpark, this is good. I mean, do you agree with that? I think that like the pre-grade stuff is vitally important. I've always said that that prep work is oftentimes as important or more important than the actual work.

You know, when you paint something in, real life with real paint, you spend 10 times the amount of time preparing the surface before you actually lay the paint on. And that prep work. Yeah. Yeah. That prep work in our field can take many forms, but they're all really important. One of them is figuring out color management and workflow because you don't want surprises halfway

through or running into a shot that breaks whatever pipeline you've built for this project. So the amount of testing with the footage, making sure. you have the conform right and maybe you're accessing the right camera originals. You know, I've had situations where a colorist will come to me, hey, why is my whole grade changing now that I open this project? Because maybe they were accidentally started half the project on proxies that had a different color space and didn't realize it. So having all your ducks in a row, both on a technical side in terms of having workflow and

color management figured out before you start your grade, but also on a creative side and knowing what the client likes, what the client expects, can just have huge dividends when you get to the end of a project where you're trying to get this thing approved and out the door. And there's a bunch of different ways to kind of gauge the client's expectations, and it really depends on the project, right? We've got clients that I've worked with forever. I know exactly what they want.

We don't need to do test grades. We don't need to do stills. They don't need to talk to me about references. they say, here's another spot. I come back at the end of the day. Here's the spot back. Give me any notes. You know, there is no back and forth because we've worked together long enough that the aesthetic is already established.

I know what they like. They know kind of how I usually work. And unless there's some exception to that, which they mention, we can just move the project through. Whereas if you've never worked with a client, it's really important to set those initial creative goals and say, hey, you know, what kind of aesthetic? you're looking for. Are there any references you want us to compare this to? And maybe try to get a few shots or a few scenes if it's a long form thing kind of through an initial review and back and forth process because the worst thing you can do is grade a really long form project,

like a half hour show or an hour show in a specific style that you're really in love with. And it's the first time the client sees it. And they're like, yeah, why is the whole thing And that's, and that's the bigger, that's the bigger, that's what I really mean about the pre-grade thing. It's because like, you don't want to be in that situation at all. Like, it's, it's devastating for several reasons. It's devastating to your confidence that you know what you're doing, right? It's devastating to the client because they're like, oh, crap, now we're way behind. Now we need to reinvent the wheel and that it bleeds confidence from the whole thing, whatever.

And I do, I do agree with you that there, you know, you have to gauge this a little bit. But let's just assume for a second, it's somebody you've never worked. with, those discussions and that pre-grade stuff really goes a long way. And I'll give you an example. Years ago, and I'm not trying to pick on anybody, but this was just, it always stuck my head because it's super, super funny. I had a, there was a student film. I was trying to do somebody a favor, a friend of mine who was a professor. And he's like, I got this really good bright student. Will you do him a favor? I'm like, sure, well, I'll grade the film. And, you know, I went through this process. I was like, I'm going to talk to him, get, you know, do a kind of pre-grade interview,

get some references from him. And so I'm like, hey, tell me a little bit about the film. He's telling me the story of the film and it was kind of cool, whatever. I'm like, okay, like, all right, so what, do you have any references? And he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And he, you know, sends me all of these Roger Deacon shot plates, right? You know, one's like, you know, Skyfall, like that burning barn building in Skyfall, right? Like, all this kind of stuff. You know, he sends me, I think, some Blade Runner examples of the stuff in Vegas where everything's neon orange, right? And I'm like, cool, right. And then the next question is, cool. What did you shoot this on? Oh, we shot it on three go pros, right? So sometimes my point is that sometimes the reality of desire for look and feel

is not actually in line with the technical part about it either. Like, we shot with three go plows with no lights, right? That's clearly not Roger Deacon's ass. Maybe it is, but, you know, and achieving those looks. So I think part of this process in pregrade two is also to separate fact from fiction and to understand that like, you know, it's a part of the process where you can try to, You're evaluating the rough cut. You're evaluating the shot. Some of that goes into bidding and the financials, but a lot of it goes into having frank and honest and open discussions with the client about what they actually captured,

what you can actually do with it, right? Like if there's no lights, sorry, there's not a whole lot we can do. We're going to have to do a lot of noise reduction or whatever, right? And having those discussions, because as you said, you don't want to have that pop up later. But also, I think it pays dividends to have those discussions because it allows clients, It allows clients to feel like you're engaged with them rather than just their project being part of the sausage factory. You know, if you're just like, cool, no questions, we'll grade it. We'll have it on Tuesday.

Like, that's not collaborative, right? That's not getting them involved. Clients always, I think, you know, not all clients like the same thing, but all clients appreciate honesty and taking ownership of a project. Totally, totally. So I think it varies depending on where you are with the client, but references, some test grades. And just a note on test grades, we'll actually go ahead and budget time and a little bit of money for that, especially if it's like a longer form project that's going to be a little, like, if it's something that like, nope, just make it balance, like whatever. Like, we don't need to spend a lot of time on that. But if they're like, I'm envisioning this Wes Anderson type look, like you're going to have to do some test grades, right?

And try to figure out what that aesthetic is. Because honestly, what you might like for contrast might not be what the client likes. What you like for saturation and like, like, you know, sort of, you know, depth of colors, they might not like. I've done several projects where, you know, even though I've done all that pre-production work too, you know, it's not until they've actually seen something in that test grade that then they have the vocabulary to converse about it, you know? Yeah, and I think it's really important back to the original subject of how do you know when you're happy with the grade. Yeah. You know, you need to, depending on the client's aesthetic and the clients wants and how they want it to look, you need to be able to, as a colorist, detach yourself from your own tastes sometimes, right? You need to get an understanding of the look that they're going for.

It might not be something that you like. It might not be a style that you like. So if the question is, I don't know. If the question is, how do you know when a grade is perfect? You might not ever think that it's the right thing, but you need to understand the client's desires enough to say this is in line with what they wanted. Yeah, and I think at this pre-production sort of testing stage, like the line in the sand for me on that is, because you're right.

Like you might do something like, oh man, this doesn't look great, but it's what they want. it's more about learning the client's aesthetic at that point in time and that is a measure of success. So when you're sending them the test grades or even in the conversation, if you're saying the right things to them and they're reacting to, oh yeah, that's what I mean or yeah, I love that look or I love this bit about it. But one more thing to keep in mind about this, it's also your job as the colors. We joke all the time about the color says the post-production psychologist, right? I think it's really our job to ask those probing questions a little bit deeper than you might think, right? So like on the surface level, like, okay, how do you feel about contrast of this reference, right?

It's like one step deeper. It's like, okay, cool. Do you like the highlights, how they roll off a little bit? Or like, do you want them a little clippy? Or like the shadows, like, are you okay with crushing some things every once in a while? Or does every shadow detail need to be, you know, to be seen? And like those a little bit more detailed stuff will get you a long way to where when you're ready to present that first version of the film to them, there's no major surprises. And I think that's like there's always going to be changes, right?

But you're trying to avoid what you said earlier. The, this is not really what I envisioned conversation. Yeah, we don't want a start over. We want incrementation. And that kind of brings me to, you know, we've talked a little about kind of the theoretical side of this. Yeah. Let's talk about the nitty gritty of in your color session, how do you build up to from starting a project to being ready to show the client and then getting through the client review process. And we mentioned it earlier.

I'm going to mention it. We're going to mention it again and again and again in this episode and probably every other episode we do. That is the importance of working in passes. I think that working in passes and being able to kind of figure out the balance of how much to do every. pass and how to optimize your time versus, you know, every shot versus the entire piece is probably the single most important workflow concept that is going to go into getting a good finished product as opposed to a good one shot. Yeah, let's dive into that because I think it's great. And I want to give credit to where credits do because I think I had always sort of worked in passes, but the best I've

ever heard this articulated was at this point is probably 10 years ago. I was doing a presentation at NAB and Andrea Clayback, who is a fantastic colorist. She's now at Harbor Picture Company on L.A. And at the time, she was doing a lot of Neil Blomkamp's films. She'd done Elysium. I think she did Chappie as well. And she was talking, in her presentation, she was talking about this very thing. And I forget the number that she quoted. But it was like some ridiculous number. Like, we watched this film 250 times or something, you know, something like that. I mean, that's not the exact number, but you get what I'm saying.

And it struck me because it's like, oh, I thought I would, you know, at my low level crappy cable television, I thought that was the only one who I needed to watch a show 200 times. But no, like she went on to explain that every time there were specific pass goals, right? Oh, we're trying to neutralize the whites or we're trying to balance the blacks here or we're, you know, trying to equalize the blue and all the sky. Like, whatever. She gave a range of things, right? But that way, you know, that kind of thing I really believe in. And internally, we talk about that all the time, right?

Because I always say just inside baseball, I say to Joey all the time, wow, how did you get through that so quick? Like, how did you get, you know, from shot 1 to shot 1,500 in like a day and a half? It always reminds me of like big strokes, man. I'm just banging through it. Like, you know, not even worrying about any details. you know, transform, lift gain a game, you know, saturation, move on to the next shot or whatever. The control is easier.

It's a sculpture. You start with a block of material. Your first pass, you take off the biggest amount. And then every subsequent pass, you take off less and less and less and less. Yeah. And I would say, you know, how many times you do that is based largely on the project. But I, the way, here's how I think about it. I think about it as long, complete passes.

initially, right? That initial get through touch every single shot, right? My next pass is going to be an entire project watch too, but this time I am pausing and stopping for the major bugaboos of like, yeah, that's one, that shot's yellow, this shot's green, and trying to refine those. It's not until probably passes three, four, five, six that I'm even worried about things like windows, tracking, you know, keys, well, kind of stuff. And when I'm at those stages, I tend to be more scene-based, right? Like, okay, I'm taking this three minutes and refining this and going back and forth and playing back and whatever and then moving on. And that's, you know, in a narrative kind of thing, that's pretty easy to do because it's very clearly the scene, that scene, that scene, you know, in something like, you know, a doc where you might have a lot of interviews, it might just be, hey, I'm going to focus on all of the interviews, getting them in the same range, even though they're spread around across the film kind of thing. And it might even be the opposite. It might be, I'm filtering

my timeline and ignoring the interviews. I'm getting everything else in good shape. Then tomorrow, I'm going to deal with interviews. Yeah. But I mean, I think the larger point, though, is to just not try to bite off more than you can chew, because I think it goes back to the first thing that we talked about. And that is, so many people waste so much time, so much time trying to get one shot or a couple shots perfect, that they run out of time this way. The way I think about passes is if, you know, the hammer fell this afternoon and I had to turn this in, right?

Had to show somebody, at least I've touched every shot and added some value, whether it's right or wrong or perfect, it's not the point. I've at least touched every single shot. And like, I could begrudgeonly be like, all right, well, it is what it is. And I think that goes to the original topic that we're discussing, you know, how do you know when to show the client? You were saying that like, you know, your later and later passes

or when you get into specifics like windows and tracking, those might not be as necessary for the overall tone of the project as general shot matching and overall flow. So yeah, it's so much more important to get those fundamentals down first, then dig into the details. Because also, when you start digging into those details,

that might be when you want to get the client involved. So basically, depending on the project, when are you ready to show the client? It could be after all of your initial balancing passes are done. And you're right at that point where you want to get into the nitpicking stuff because you want the client's perspective on that. It might be, depending on the client, you might want to get that nitpicking done before you show them. Yeah, and I think that's largely informed on base of the things that they told you, right? So like if they say something to you, like, it's really important.

I want the skin tone on this main actor to be perfect throughout the whole film. Then, yeah, you want that handle. You want to have that handled before. Or if it's something like, you know, like in like reality stuff, like, you know, God, we're going to have to blur all these license plates. They're distracting. Like you might do a pass on the blurs before you send it or something like that. Right.

It's a little bit informed knowing the client. But I think, you know, when I think about it, I think we can kind of call this down to probably three, four, five, six kind of like kind of tips, I think. in my head about how this kind of how this works, keeping in mind all the previous stuff we talked about, the clients, the references, the test grades, the passes, right? And the

very first thing, again, that first pass, yeah, who cares? Just touching every shot, kind of treating it at its own island and proving maybe a little bit of back and forth, but not a ton. The biggest thing that I look for on that second pass, starting the third pass

or whatever, is about matching, I'm to generically call it, air quotes here, tone, right? Yeah. Tone in contrast. And that's harder than it seems, but it's actually, it's actually a pretty easy thing, right? And I do this on two levels. I'm curious about how you do it, too. So number one, I think the biggest mismatch oftentimes between shots is less to do with color and more to do with exposure and contrast, right? are we're just the way our brains work the way our eyes work you know we're more sensitive to that right so if you go from a shot that has you know contrast ratio up here to one that has one down here and it's not informed and i'm using that loosely but not informed by the lighting or the creative decisions then yeah we need to balance it out and i look at that on scopes right so i'm using like a luma waveform to like okay here's where my peak white is here's where my black is and just i don't know trying to get you know, them basically in the, in the, the ballpark. I'm not obsessing about it at this point,

but I'm trying to get, okay, let me just try to get everything right about the same levels, right? And then this is, you're going to laugh at me how I do this. I do the squint test for this as well. Because sometimes, like I feel like, especially if things are like fast cutting or like relatively like, you know, quick cuts or whatever, I just find like, I don't know. I feel like when I'm watching it in real time, like eyes open, I miss something. Every time I just kind of just do a little squint like this. And if something pops out in that squint, like it doesn't look like one continuous thing, right? I tend to, I tend to go back and figure out what the problem is.

Okay. Yeah. And there's some tools for this, by the way. Like, you know, I know that there's some like timeline, like timeline like luminance mapping tools in scopes like Omniscope and scope box and stuff, right? Where you can see a history over time of like, yeah, this was my exposure. Like I'm trying to get, you know, in a scene anyway, trying to get. a pretty even line across that. Yeah, the only thing I would warn about that is that doesn't tell you the whole story.

Because most of our perception of an image is based on contrast, that one line might show you the raw numbers, but it doesn't show you how you perceive it. And you can only see that watching it down in real time. And that's why I utilize the... And especially you don't see kind of mismatches, right? Like, you can have two images that yield the same, like, average level that look completely. completely different. And that's where, you know, the ingredients that go into making that total amount of contrast or amount of luminance are important. And my two tips for this are if you're using contrast controls in your grade, be aware of where the pivot is. I think pivot is something that gets forgotten a lot. And I don't mean just the contrast in the pivot knob. If you use lift and gain, then the pivot between those two is the dead center of the signal. And if you're working on a log image in, for example, log C or S-log, that center is actually in a different spot.

Yeah, yeah. So you might not want to rely entirely on lift and gain. Or, you know, you might make all your contrast adjustments and be very happy with the overall tonal range of the shot. But the one kind of giveaway shot to shot that I think people, they'll feel it, but they won't be able to articulate it, is if the black level bounces up and down, dramatic. And I should rephrase my earlier comment about contrast because you said something about the middle values and not, you know, that's not the whole image. And I agree. I should have said setting black and white level because everything in between to me is subjective in the matchy part, right? I'm just trying to get those peaks to be about the same. So nothing kind of pops out. Yeah. And I feel like, you know, bouncing black levels, that's kind of the biggest giveaway in terms of shot matching with contrast.

that is not just obvious, but also a relatively easy fix. In most cases, you can grab like a log control and just kind of tweak that. Yeah, I agree. And I think that the other thing about the sort of the tone is, because part of that is the luminous component, the brightness component.

But I also think that some of this has to do with color, of course, too, right, if one shot's more red or pink or whatever. And I tend to, just like that, like we spoke about earlier, I tend to do that same kind of thing with like big strokes to small strokes, right? So I might do it initially with like an offset control. Just, oh, okay, yeah, now I'm much more in the range, right? And then smaller steps out, smaller steps after that, right? I might go, okay, now I got that. Now I'm going to go to my HDR wheels or my, you know, my log wheels or maybe I'm even going to printer points if my color management pipeline set up to optimize.

minus color printer points. You know, and just one click back of red, two clicks of green, whatever it may be. So, you know, wide to small kind of thing. My biggest tip for that, you know, you've got your contrast dialed in. That was one pass. You know, now we're trying to match shot to shot. Your initial move, like you said, is essentially white balance, right? It's the overall balance of the image.

How much red, green, and blue relative to each other is in there. Is it really warm? Is it really cool? But one thing that I think a lot of times get lost is especially in documentaries, you know, this isn't really a thing in most, you know, artistically shot narrative things where everything is intentionally lit. But in documentary land, you've got sources coming from everywhere and they may or may not be the best sources. So your color management might not get everything what we consider volumetric color-wise in shape. So when I look at shot to shot in a documentary, once that contrast and general color tone is together, I look at volumetric changes. Are the blues more teal or are they more magenta?

Are the yellows and the oranges pushing more towards red or more towards a pure yellow? Look at grass and green trees. Are they pushing more towards yellow or are they a deeper green? And then I'll get in and use things like the color warper or my hue versus hue or even Hugh versus satin loom curves to kind of sculpt the shot in a color volume way to where things match. So in an ideal world, again, back to the beginning, when is it ready to show? It might be ready to do. When you've got all the contrast done first, then you've got all the white balance matching,

and then you're happy with all the volumetric matching at the fine level, right? That kind of three stages, I think. and then maybe you can start thinking about showing the client and getting into even more detail. Yeah. So that's the next thing is after that sort of initial tone and contrast, I think that you're right. I think for a lot of projects, especially if you have a sense from the client that they want to be really involved in the grade, that's a great point to stop and present, right? Because like anything you do, like might you be surprised about the things that bother them,

the things that don't bother them? You're like, I didn't even see that. That bothers you? right you also have the potential if you don't you know not presenting that that stage if you don't know the client very well you also have the potential to work yourself into you know a corner and a problem and an issue that's going to require a lot more work to undo right so i think it's a little bit of a fine line but like if you do know the client i'd say move on to the next thing which is the the the major objects or the detailed objects of clothes uh skin tone uh colors of

eyes or, you know, cars or other objects in the scene, like, a lot of times people won't be able to articulate those differences, right? But you'll be surprised how much that goes into successive shot matching. Like, I was just working on something the other day where it's like, okay, this person had a black coat on on the A cam, and in the B cam, it just had a little bit of pinky, kind of, you know, magenta-e. Just, I mean, just, like, if you weren't looking at them side by side, you wouldn't really notice it other than feeling that like something's just a little off in those two but what is it

right and it's like oh yeah it's just there's a little more red in the code or the contrast level on the code is off or whatever that's the next step of refinement that i'm getting obsessed with right and to be clear i'm doing that as a whole separate pass after i've done that initial balance pass after i've done that you know shot matching tone and contrast pass like the the big steps now i'm starting to get into those details. And at this stage, Joey, I'm creating a lot of stills. I don't really create a lot of stills for those initial passes. But at this stage, I'm like, yep, okay, jacket, still. This is the reference for the jacket. Let me go through the scene, match everything else to that. Skin tone, yep, that's the skin tone I like. Let me go through that and match everything in the

skin tone. You just have to be careful, I think, of A, spending too much time on shots, but also, and I know this goes counter to my OCDness, you got to be a little careful of not over-engineering at this stage, right? Yeah. I think that you find the big things, the things that matter, the things that have a lot of value, like the coat I just mentioned,

but you know what? Nobody's going to really notice the eyelashes that are slightly out of focus because you're using a fast lens on somebody, right? Like, like that level of detail, probably not worth at this point. But I will. See, when I'm at that point,

I'm doing something similar, but slightly different. I'm not pulling stills. I'm using playheads and bouncing between like three shots in a scene, and I'll have them mapped to my little Elgado foot pedal. So I'm like tap dancing with my feet to jump between different shots on a playhead. And likewise, I use, I use stills and I use, and we've talked about this in a previous episode, I use split screens a lot for that same, that same reason.

But also, more to the point, is that when I start dealing with these small little items, you know, it's a lot of micro passes. Okay, five shots, let me get them in line, start back at the top of those five shots and go through, right? I'm not trying to, okay. The pass can be a scene, it can be a group of interviews. It doesn't have to be the whole film.

Yeah, and I'm slowly at this stage, once I start getting these details work, it's like I'm starting in the middle and cut, not the literal middle, but, you know, like the wherever I start, I'm working out from there slowly but surely incorporating more and more of the project into that detail pass to try to get it to match. And honestly, at some point with this work too, I find that I do a lot of rippling too because I'm trying a lot of things out. Right. I'm like, okay, well, what happens if we push the jacket this way or whatever?

And that's all fine. That's good. That's the good way to work. Yeah. So, okay, we've gone in. We've refined it to the point where we feel that it's time to show the client. Okay. Now we go through with the client.

We start doing our review, getting their feedback. I think the next really important thing, consideration here is you don't want to, when you're dealing with your client notes, one, freak out if they have a lot of them. because whereas you've been dealing with this project and doing your passes and you feel like you've been with this grade for a long time, they've been with their offline for a long time. This is their first time seeing the whole thing together. Don't be afraid of notes. Don't be afraid of trying things and don't react negatively to those notes. But when you are working through those notes with the client, do not paint yourself into. a corner. Do not have, for example, if the client says, I don't like the way the shadows are

sitting, don't ripple a change to everything that will make it unrecoverable if you end up going back on it. Be very cognizant. And honestly, this is something that we should think about the entire process from the beginning is you never want to paint yourself into a corner so much that you are committed to a direction because that's when you can kind of lose client confidence. If they're like, well, now I need two hours to go undo the thing that we just tried. Dude, it's so true. I remember I've been in this spot myself, you know, trying, wanting to try out some new technique, some new tool and lean too heavily on that, right? And, you know, then the comment is, well, it works, but, you know, I'm not in love with it. And then just that

horrible feeling of like, cool. Well, that was so integral to what I'd created here that if we just turn it off, it's going to look nothing like what it's supposed to look like, right? So, like, yeah, that's something definitely want to avoid for sure. So I think that at this stage, when you've, so you've done, you know, your detailed watch, the big tone watch, you've worked passes, you put it in front of the client, they've given some comments. I still think that there's like a level of satisfaction that you as the colorist need to hit even after you've integrated in the notes. So number one is putting it back in front of the client again after you've addressed the notes just to get their gut feeling. And if it's a win, in my mind, it's a win if you can hit,

you know, if you're at 85, 90% on the notes, right, of like, yeah, that looks great. You've done your job exceedingly well, right? Most projects, it's probably closer to like 60, 65%, and then the rest is still up for discussion, you know, kind of tweak a little bit. But at that stage, before I present again, the thing that I'm fixated on is not the details, not even the tone. It's about flow. That as I'm watching it, nothing takes me out of it, right? I think that's like, like, the last kind of step that I do is like a, it's just, the flow is the only way I can say it. You might say continuity. You might say whatever, but I don't want to sit there and watch the film or the show and at all be bothered by

something. If I'm bothered by something at all, right, I'm looking at it and making the decision worth fixing, not worth fixing, you know, can I do this? Can I not do it? Because sometimes there might be things that you just had no control of, right? Like, I had one the other day where it's like the mat box was like in part of the frame. They're like, well, okay, well, that part of the frame is across somebody's face so we can't really paint it out. Like, you know, you have to make decisions of what you're going to live with. But even after I address those notes, I'm still doing yet another pass to make myself feel confident that it can go out in the world and nobody's going to be like, oh, well, Rob graded

that, that sucks, right? Yeah. And I think, you know, one thing that can be really helpful for that kind of, we're nearing the end of the client notes. we're approaching delivery. I want to make sure this thing is ready to go out in the world. That's when what I consider kind of the consumer style watchdown is really important. If you have a big client monitor in your suite, sit in front of it on your couch, right, with no distractions.

Watch it like a viewer would watch it. That means you're not looking at scopes. You're not looking at UI monitors. you are watching it on TV. And if that means dropping markers for yourself with a little keypad, if that means writing down notes of anything you want to go back and readdress, but it doesn't mean I'm halfway through, I see a problem in a shot, I'm going to jump back to my desk and fix it,

and then jump back to the couch. No, you need to get into that zone of, I am a viewer, I am watching this as a viewer would watch it, I'm going to go from beginning to end, and then I'm going to address anything that I saw afterwards. So sitting on front of the couch in the suite's a good one. At home, here at home, I've taken that a step further and you're going to laugh for me.

I don't have ever think I've told you this. I've actually, for many years now, had my setup wired where I have a home run HDMI cable going upstairs to the living room on a separate. Oh, that's clever. On a separate input. So I actually remove myself from all the fancy control surfaces and everything all together. And I just sit in my action. living room where I consume content regularly just on a different input on the TV and I sit up there and I watch it.

When I do that same thing in the suite, one thing, I don't do this at home because my wife would kill me if I wired it with a stream with a living room with a stream deck. But at the office, I have a little stream deck that has transport controls and a marker control. And I just got in the habit of I have like two or three colors of markers that I drop. and I'll just I'll just drop those for different things and then I'll go back and usually it's you know any given grade at that stage it's probably maybe a dozen half a dozen to a dozen things so I'm not worried about naming them whatever I know what they are but that stage like you know it's funny our audio team talks about this same process too and I'm always reminded up the stories back from like mixing and mastering engineers working with audio that I know who you know would always

and they still do this but now the technology is a little different but the car mix, right? Yeah, burn it through a CD, listen to it in the car. You got a mix perfected? Well, let's look at that translatability, right? And so watching it in that casual environment, like you said, is good one. The other thing that I do these days, just, honestly, just because it's how people are going to be consuming it anyway, I have an iPad permanently set up at the desk, right, to where

I'm constantly streaming over NDI or, you know, Black Magic streaming or whatever, to that iPad, just so I'm like, okay. cool, cool, cool, just a quick glance down. Things are translating well. And they're not going to be perfect, maybe. There might be limitations. But, yep, that's translating well. That's my intent.

Move, you know, go forth. Because you'd be surprised how different environments, how different monitoring solutions can impact some of this. And you want to just kind of try to replicate what your clients might be looking at it, viewing in, et cetera. Because the last thing you want to do at this point, too, is if they still have a problem with something, be like, oh, yeah, it's monitoring. No, it's fine.

Don't worry about it, right? Yeah. Like, you need to try to, like, you need to try to, like get in their their shoes a little bit too. And that's the thing like, yeah, we're talking about, we're talking about heresy here looking at our grades on consumer devices. I know. But we shouldn't be looking for overall, okay, I'm going to now adjust my entire look because

of where it looks on the iPad. It's, oh, I watched on the iPad and I saw one of those little volumetric matching things that I didn't notice when I was going shot to shot before. I was sitting down watching it on my couch, and I noticed, yeah, the sky looks a little bit weird in that one shot. It's just something I didn't see before. And that's what I meant by flow, is that I'm just, you know, and it might be not even the need to change anything. I'm just like, that bothered me for some reason. I'll come back and look at it on reference monitoring and go, you know what?

I actually think it's close enough. That's probably just, you know. Yeah, maybe my TV sucks. Yeah, that's a peculiarity of that environment or that display. I'm not too worried about it. like it looks fine. Like so like if I make in that past, I mentioned I make like a dozen markers,

I might actually do something about one or two of them, right? It's, you know, the majority of it is just to catch it out. So I think we're on the same page with that. I would also just say at this, at this stage too, just to reiterate this, we've talked about this in previous shows.

And you mentioned it a moment ago about not paying yourself into a corner. It's worth mentioning that at every stage prior to showing clients or delivering to clients or whatever, whatever, that you're making a project backup or however you want to work of it, timeline backup, project backup, et cetera. So when the inevitable comes, like, I had the situation three weeks ago.

The producers I were working with, they were like, this is great, love everything about it, let's roll with it, right? It was a TV commercial for a big food chain. Great, awesome, feeling great about myself. Oh, the client took a look at. at it and now wants 48 changes, right? And here's what I was thinking in my head. Sure, they do.

They don't really mean that. They just have to say something because that's their job as, you know, the ultimate client just to say something. So if I had in this particular case, because of the nature of the changes, if I had just continued on, not saved out a version, I would have had to done some, you know, gymnastics in terms of versioning, et cetera, because the changes were so substantial that, you know, whatever. So I delivered this change version and we know what happened?

Yeah, no, we were wrong about that. Can you just go back to the way the first deliverable? Sure, I can. Let me just re-import that DRP that I saved earlier and go with that. So, like, also, you know, as you were thinking about this refinement stuff and passes, think about every pass maybe as a new save as, right? Or a new duplicate of the timeline, right? Because even if you're really fastidious about this, all of us make mistakes with how we manage

our grades in terms of nodes, you know, ripples. all that kind of stuff, but having a full complete backup of a snapshot in time, always worth it. Yeah. I cannot count the number of times. Like, I do backups of everything all the time in like triplicate because I'm so paranoid. And I've never had it be really required because of a technical failure. But because of operator error. Totally.

Oh, many, many, many times. And I'm better with this. I'm better with this now. but man, when I first started using Ripple, it was like, oh God, God, I know. It was like a daily occurrence of me re-importing the RPs back in the database, man. I used to screw that up so much. So, yeah, if the, if the answer to the overall question of the day is,

when are you happy with the grade? All of this comes back down to you've gone through, you've done your due diligence on everything. you've done your passes, the client is happy, you're happy, and at the very end of it, you can sit down on your TV and watch it like a viewer and it's something that you feel you can be proud of, then it's ready to go out into the world.

And that doesn't mean you wouldn't, a week later, look at it, be like, oh, I wish I had nitpicked that sky a little bit more because every time you look at it, you might think, oh, well, maybe if I tweaked it, it would be better, but maybe it wouldn't be. You know, at some point, you do, who have? have to lock it down, like you said in the beginning, it's never finished, it's abandoned. But you want to abandon it at a point where you're feeling good about the whole, not just some of it.

Yeah. And I tend to avoid that whole problem, Joey, by just never watching anything that I work on. So I don't have, I don't have buyer's remorse, you know? But no, you're right. And I think that, you know, you also can get a feel for the project. Like, if you're, You are, you know, some projects are, and we've said this phrase before, but some projects just aren't art, right? Like, it's just got to get done. It's got to get out the door, right? And, you know, the ones that I really obsess about are the ones that I really feel passionately about. I feel like I love the filmmakers.

I love the subject. I love the photography. You know, and a lot of those shows, like, you know, I don't want to make any, any concessions to anything. I want to fix everything and have it be 100% perfect. But there's some projects, whether it's limited by time or limited by, budget or limited by just what they got in the can, you know, sometimes like success and being ready is just client acceptance, right? Like there are going to be projects where you get the client to accept what you've done, but you're not 100% of it, 100% with it. And that's just a

fact of life being a colorist, right? You're not going to be in love with every single grade that you do and be like, that was the best thing ever. And that's where those kind of projects are where this past mentality, this mentality of making sure it all flows, works as a whole, I think is maybe even more important because, yes, it may not be perfect. Every shot may not be perfect. There may be problems that were unfixable, but it's still a done product that can be watched down. And most of the time, the viewers wouldn't notice those things. Or if they're in context of the whole being together and good, they just won't matter. You know, I will say one really funny thing,

and I should start paying them because they have been invaluable to me. My other co-workers besides you, you know, Cheryl and Jeremy and those guys, as well as my family, my kids, have been incremental to my mental sanity sometimes about projects. And what I mean by that is that I'll be obsessed. about something and going that doesn't match it really bothers me and sometimes you can get so into the weeds with that stuff it's like um you know i it's analogous to me like checking sync i like lip sync right sometimes you can convince yourself that there's a problem when there's not

really a problem yeah so if you are if you're in a stage about you're and you're wavering like is this is this good is this bad like that's actually a good tell to get it in front of somebody else right and I'm just saying that there can be a middle ground. Like, I use my family. I use my other co-workers. Like, hey, can you watch the scene down? Not tell them what I think the problem is, but it's just say, just let me know if there's anything that bothers you.

Play. And nine times out of the 10, they go, no, that looks great, you know? I don't see any problems. And you go, really? And you're like, yeah, no, no problem. And then when you point it out, they go, oh, yeah, that doesn't bother. I didn't see that at all. Like, that's so quick.

It's like four frames. Why does that bother you? And you're like, oh, okay, cool. You know, so, you know, I think we have a tendency just to be perfectionists. And sometimes you have to balance out that perfectionism versus a lot of other factors, cost, schedule, and actual impact on the project, right? You know, pardon the French here. It's a bad phrase, but it's one that we use internally all the time. You know, seldom does pixel fucking deliver, you know, a hundred percent.

above and beyond results. It might make somebody feel good about themselves, but those four pixels in the upper left hand corner are not a make or break to the grade. And if you convince yourself that they are, you're in for a bad time, right? Just so just, you know. Put it this way.

Would you rather all of your shots are 100% better or one shot is 110% better? And the rest are not. Right, exactly. No, we're on the same place. And the last thing I'm just going to say about all of this before you show anything to anybody. no matter what stage you're at is,

be committed to what you have, right? And I actually say this for positive reinforcement for myself because I'm literally the worst at this. I'll go in and sit on the couch and go, cool, ready to watch? Well, let me give you 91 caveats before we watch the show, right? And it's like, shut up, Rob, just let them watch, let them say something. I've gotten a little bit better over it over the years,

but it's one of those things where, you know, trust me, there are worse colorists than you. Even if you think you're the worst colorist in the world, there are colorists worse than you. Two, you always have to remind yourself no matter what, you're probably adding value. That discussion about that back and forth is the nature of being subjective. I don't like to caveat anything to a client unless it's technical, right? If it's, oh, we still haven't gotten all of the up-res sources for this one, this one real. So that's the one that has burn in time code, ignore that. That's a reasonable caveat to tell the client before they watch down.

But if the caveat is, man, I don't know, this footage is really hard and I don't think it all matches really well. That's something you don't want to put into their brain. Here's Joey's emails to clients. Hey, how does this look? Link. Thanks, Joey. Right? That's literally all his emails are.

My emails are like, hey guys, just got a first pass done about it. Here's 11 bullet points. And it's like, oh my God, why do you do this to yourself, Rob? So, I mean, I think that there's, it's a fine line with this stuff. Overcommunication is a problem that I have for sure. But, you know, it's about like, because you do want to, you need to figure it out for that. Just as we talked about before, with the technical part and the creative stuff, you also need to figure. and we did an episode on this about client communication, right?

Figuring out what the client, how they like to communicate. Some people might be feel like they're being taken care of if you give a lot of detail, right? Some clients might be like, this is just noise. Let me just watch the damn thing and I'll get back to you, right? So you've got to figure that part out as well. But just regardless, being committed to it and going, yeah, this is the best I could do at this stage, at this budget, at this amount of time, and go forth of it and be confident with it. So good stuff, man.

A lot of good tips here. like I said, it's a hard. It's a hard thing to put your work in front of somebody else, right? And that's never going to get easier for anybody. It's always a challenge of like, you know, put it in front of somebody. Are they going to love it or they hate it, right? And I mean, that's one of the reasons, by the way, just one last thing about this that I want to pay you homage as well. I have stopped, completely stopped, sending end of day, like six, seven o'clock emails with review links, right?

Here's why. Because if I send that review link at 7 o'clock at night, right? I am waiting a baited breath the rest of the evening to see if any notes come in, right? So do yourself a favor. present things when you're ready in the mental space to attack it and approach it. Don't do what I do sometimes, and again, don't do it anymore.

Send it and now just wait around going, oh my God, are they going to comment? Are they going to comment? Anxiety is no way to live. Yeah. Good stuff. All right, man. Well, good discussion.

I appreciate it. Hopefully our listeners and reviews found this one interesting as well. Just as a reminder, we have a growing library of content. We mentioned a few of those shows about client communication and others, feel free to go back and view past episodes. A lot of good stuff in there, a lot of related things to this discussion. And, you know, I would also just mention that if you have some ideas for shows, you can always head over to Offset Podcasts and use the submission form as well.

Thanks to Andreas, who gave us the starter for this episode. It was a good discussion, I think. You can find the show on all major podcast platforms as well as YouTube. Please like and subscribe wherever you find the show. A little bit goes a long way. So yeah, thanks Jerry for a great conversation. This has definitely got me thinking about my process a little bit too and how I could probably be a little more efficient and refine these things. But hopefully it helps fewer.

So for The Offset Podcast, I'm Robbie Carmen. And I'm Joey Deanna. Thanks for listening.