The Offset Podcast - The Offset Podcast EP060: Listener Question - Breaking Into The Industry

Episode Date: August 2, 2026

It’s our 60th episode!  Thanks to our amazing audience for keeping the show going over the past 3 years.  Huge thanks to our sponsors @flanderscientific, @conform.tools.  Thanks to our editor Stella that cut so many of these episodes.  We have 100 episodes in our sights.  Thank you - Robbie & Joey———In this installment of The Offset Podcast we’re addressing a message we got on Instagram from 16-Year old budding colorist Mehdi who asks:‘(I) would love to know if you guys could talk more about getting into the color industry, breaking through, any advice for young colorists trying to make it’First, congrats Mehdi for being so motivated at such a young age - and thanks listening to the show. We’ve covered this topic in various ways over the years, but in this episode we thought we’d take a look at some of the personal characteristics and attitudes that working in post requires.  Specific topics covered include:Overview of desirable personal characteristicsBeing a sponge, self-motivated, and a team playerOwnership & not making excusesKnowledge & demonstration of learningAttitude & professionalism And more!Check out offsetpodcast.com for our entire library of episodes. You can also follow us on Instagram & Facebook - just search for The Offset Podcast.Be sure to like and subscribe to the podcast wherever you found it and be sure to check out our growing library of episodes.  If you like the podcast it'd mean the world to us if you'd consider supporting the show by buying us a cup of virtual coffee -https://buymeacoffee.com/theoffsetpodcastSee you again in about two weeks for a new episode

Hey, everybody, and welcome back to another installment of the Offset podcast, and today we're revisiting the idea of breaking into the post-production industry. Stay tuned. Support for this episode comes from Flanders Scientific and Gaia Color Direct Connect volumetric autocal. Calibration of reference displays is critical in our industry, and there's no easier way to calibrate than by using Gaia Color, which is standard on DM, XMP, and XMPC series. monitors. Guy color calibration allows supported probes to be plugged in directly to the monitor for fast, accurate, and automated calibration with no computer or operator expertise required. You can learn more about this powerful system at flanderscientific.com. Hey, everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Offset Podcast. I'm Robbie Carmen, and with me, as

always, is Joey Dana. Hey, Joey, how are you, man? Hey, everyone. You know, Joey, one of these days we're going to figure out how we can get you to do the cold open rather than me to do the cold open. It's one of those things that every time I think about doing it, I'm like, why doesn't Joey do this? But anyway, I digress. Welcome back, everybody. We are set to talk a little bit about a topic I think we've talked about in various ways over the past 60 episodes or whatever. And that is sort of breaking into the industry, just to frame this up, Joey, a little bit.

We got a question on Instagram, actually, or a message on Instagram from a 16-year-old aspiring colorist, first of all, being 16 and like paying attention to this stuff seems ridiculous to me, but good on him. I'm going to totally ruin or mispronounce his name. I think it is Medi Talab or Medi Talib, maybe. Anyway, Medi wrote in and said he's a 16-year-old aspiring colorist. He's working as a color assist at a shop in Paris. Working in Paris sounds lovely. And he just wanted to know, like, hey, if we had any advice for him, you know, he loves the show. But if you had any advice for him about breaking into the industry and things he could do.

And, you know, as I thought about that, I was like, wow, you know, we have somebody who, like, our advice could really, you know, inform them. But at the same time, I was like, I feel like we say the same things about this all the time, right? like, you know, like, oh, network, you know, go to art museums or whatever. And like, it just feels like tired advice to me, you know? So I thought maybe we could take a slightly different spin on this. And as, you know, the resident middle age guys in the room, we could maybe give some advice through the idea of sort of like character traits and things about people that companies, directors or whatever look for because I think it's more than just you know hey you got to be good with

resolve right yeah yeah and I think you know to be perfectly honest I you know I I definitely understand the question the feeling because as we've talked about before I started the industry very young around 16 as well but it was a very different industry then and you know we can't really give good advice on, oh, this is how you get into a post house and network and tell people, you know, how to use the latest equipment and how to learn how to, you know, run a linear room because we grew up in an industry that was drastically different than it is today. But what we really can talk about is, like you said, what are the aspects of the individual and behavior, work ethic, learning, educating yourself, all the different kind of things.

that you can do to make yourself better to be prepared to get in to the industry and move up in the industry quickly. Yeah. Because I don't think that stuff has changed. No, I don't think that stuff's changed at all. And I think, you know, you're right. I mean, like, if the idea of breaking into a post facility or studio

is not just challenging because those are, you know, sort of exclusive companies or they hire only, you know, people with years, you know, decades of experience. That's partly true. but it's just that there's not as many of them around anymore, right? I mean, like, if you're going to want to, like, if you're going to want to break into the world of color at a big facility, you know, you're talking about the company threes, the harbors, maybe the nice shoes. Like, it's not, you know, 20 years ago, there was hundreds of these companies. Now there's maybe a couple dozen of them all together.

And the way into the industry doesn't have to be a big facility anymore. Right. Total. 100%. The idea that you had, when we were starting out, it's like, well, the only way I'm going to get in. front of that Sony 90100 or that Henry or that that SR deck or whatever is by going to the big facility now I mean you're rocking a you know an M5 MacBook Pro and a you know and a reference monitor and you're you're rocking and rolling you know so I agree with that I agree with that

now before we get started just as always same same usual housekeeping you can always head over to offsetpodcast.com and check out our full library of episodes all of our episodes are also available video portion over on YouTube and you can check out audio only on platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, and any other major major streaming platform. You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook. You could be, you know, submit a question on one of those platforms if you'd like to. We're always listening and always willing to take some ideas for topics. So if you have those, please, please contribute. And I'll mention this again at the end of the show, but support for the show is from our

gracious sponsors, Flanders, Flanders, Scientific and Conform Tools. But you can sort of be a sponsor as well by heading over to this link on screen here to go over to buy us a cup of virtual coffee every dollar pledged over there supports the show directly so we really appreciate that as well all right so let's dive into this and I think the first thing that I kind of want to hit on and I have to say that I want to put sort of two lenses on this subject about I'm going to just generally call it like personal characteristics one lens is that of somebody who has hired people in the past, looking for young people to come in, help out, etc. The other lens that I want to put it through is just like a colleague, you know, fellow employee kind of lens because I think both of

those kind of things matter. And I wanted to start off with the idea of good communication in all forms. If you've listened to this show in any form, there's a good chance at least once an episode, we mentioned the idea of good communication in some flavor, right? I think that good communication in all forms is literally a key component of any job in post, but maybe in particular sort of at the post-production psychologist role that colorists tend to play. And it seems to me it's a couple of different things about that. It's not just you talking, you know, being able to talk well, speak well, et cetera.

It's also listening, asking good questions, not talking over people, being polite. Like, how do you feel about, like, how would you some kind of that need to be a good communicator personal characteristic? It is probably the most essential, so I'm glad we're starting out with it. And it's the thing that a lot of people struggle with the most, whether they realize it or not. I've made no secret of the fact that my communication skills from a brand, rash young, 16, 17, 18 year old in the industry have changed drastically for, in my opinion, the better over the past, God, near 30 years I've been doing this. So if you're starting out and you kind of find yourself getting into some communication problems,

having interpersonal issues, you've got to look inside a little bit and figure out early on what you're doing wrong and how to improve it. And that's something that, you know, you're never going to get right every time. But if I had taken a more active, you know, self-look role in my own communication when I was his age, I feel like it would have gotten rid of a lot of struggles that I went through and open up more opportunities. Because people don't want to work with somebody that's a pain in the butt. And sometimes your ego gets in the way and turns you into a pain in the butt. And you might not think that you're being a pain in the butt.

You might think, hey, I'm saving the day. I'm being cool. I'm being, you know, I got my work ethic. We'll talk about that a little bit later. You know, I'm, you know, to the grindstone. I'm doing everything I'm asked. But if your attitude isn't there, that other stuff doesn't get noticed. Your attitude gets noticed first.

See, there's a lot to unpack there. There's two parts that I really take from what you just said. So number one is, or actually three things. Number one is the old Joey, old Rob, the current Rob, the current Rob, and I feel you, man. I think that one of the things about communication is that ostensibly it's about how effective are you at communicating a problem and issue and receiving feedback back. But it's also communication also tags you as kind of like sort of what kind of person

you are if that makes sense, right? Yeah. Where does the organization put you? Is it from the clients? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. away from the clients.

Yeah. So if you're somebody like looking back on, you know, 18, 20, 22 year old Rob, I feel very similar to you in that I was over, overzealous, overbearing, gregarious, kind of loud. I still, to this day, still step on people. I interrupt, like my brain's working overtime or whatever. And I think because of that, especially in the middle part of my career, I think I definitely I was like, oh, it's that guy. He's the know it all.

He has to walk into every room and be like, oh, you guys are doing it all wrong. Let me tell you how, you know, whatever. And like, I thought at the time that that was good communication, right? I was telling people, I don't want you to make a mistake. So do it this way. But like in my old age now, I realize that that kind of communication talking a lot, oversharing, inserting yourself in places, kind of has the potential to brand you as,

it's the guy who just will never shut up and was always talking about how right he is. Can I tell you a story? This is real life. This really happened. 25 some years ago. Offline Avid suite. You know, like AVR 3.

Somebody's in a session. I had like, you know, really gotten up the knowledge. I felt, I felt ready, you know, and somebody, one of the other, one of the editors in the facility, much more experienced than me, was having some technical troubles with this, you know, if you remember the offline avids in the ABBV era of like Mac 9600s and 8500s, they were not reliable, they were not very predictable, they were temperamental little machines. and I went in to help and I knew the exact answer

to what this editor was doing wrong and why it was not working for them client was sitting in the room I thought I was saving the day I was like no you just got to do this and this and this see I'm awesome look at how impressive I am here's the editor here's the bus I can see this happening yep meanwhile I am completely throwing my colleague under the bus because they were focused on what was more important,

the client, the creative, the actual job. I had it in my head that I'm going to show everybody how smart I am. Another editor who was even more senior than the both of us, after this went down, pulls me aside and gives me a pretty good dressing down for my behavior. And not only, it wasn't like, hey, you screwed up, you know, you're in trouble. It was like, this is why.

And he actually very, you know, to his credit, made me understand where I had really screwed up. And I went from thinking in my head that I was cool and I was smart and I was saving the day to, oh man, I really understand how I screwed up. Go in, talk to that editor. Clients going, you know, apologize. Look, I'm sorry. I was, you know, tried to explain myself, but essentially just kind of fell on my sword and apologized. And I still know everybody involved. in that interaction to this day,

and I have great working relationships with them. But if somebody hadn't been there to stop me from myself, that could have been a career ending or career damaging moment. Yeah, and you, and you, and I went into it with the attitude of I'm trying to help. I'm also trying to be hungry and show how good I am. Yes. But my communication skills were not ready to express that. Yeah, and I think the thing is,

I think there's part two and three what I was going to react to was that I think that there's a tendency for young folks in general breaking into any industry. It could be banking. It could be, you know, football. It could be whatever. Is that, you know, the young gun always feels like they know a little bit better, has a newer, better, fresher perspective. And the reality of it is, is that when, if you are, you know, going back to, you know, 16, 17, 17 year old Joey talking to, I'm guessing, you know, a 35, 40, 40 year old editor, um, there's a lot of assumptions that that that young person's making about the experience that that other person has. And it might be true at the time that you had more technical knowledge about that experience or that situation.

But they sure as hell had a lot more experience of the subtleties of dealing with a room, clients, perspective, you know, to the general like, you know, look of the client into judging the facility and the people way more than you could. And it just, it makes me think about something that you know, because we talked about. this all the time offline that I really am trying to be better at. And that is just keeping my mouth shut and trying to listen, even when the tendency of every fiber in my body is to interrupt and say something. And think before you talk, how is this going to be interpreted? Because when you're young, and, you know, like you said, sometimes the youngs, the youths think they know everything.

I don't want to be the old guy who's saying they don't. Oftentimes, most times, there's things that they know and can offer very valuable stuff to the interaction, right? I'm not saying that if you're young in the industry, you don't know what you're doing, you don't have anything to offer. I'm saying you have a lot more to learn from everyone else than they do from you, but what you have to offer still has value. So how do you frame it in a way where you introduce value

without introducing friction? And when you're young and you're trying to move up, you often, at least in my case, I often was trying to make people notice me, which obviously is a good thing. You want people to notice you so you can move up in the industry, get better opportunities. But the way you do that needs to be so carefully measured. And I think it's very easy to go wrong, trying to make a name for yourself in a facility, in a business, in any kind of interaction. you know, you got to either be quiet, like you said, or really think before you speak. So what you say has positive impact for the organization and no other side effects. You want to just be in there enough that you're moving the ball forward, you're helping, but you're not pushing too far.

Support for this episode comes from conform tools. Conform Tools allows you to convert timelines between Premier, Resolve, and other NLEs while automatically solving common issues that normally need to be fixed by hand. Avoid time-consuming trim and transfer issues and securely send large media files to collaborators at a fraction of the size in minutes instead of hours. With a growing toolbox of features, let Conform Tools handle the tedious stuff so you can focus on the creative. Built by post-professionals, Conform Tools helps editors, colorists, and Conformartes.

artists, move faster and finish stronger. Learn more at conform. Tools. If I could just sum that up, the communication and the characteristics of communication, I would much rather have hire somebody and interact with somebody that at least in that provisional period, you know, the first six months to year, et cetera, is a total sponge, right? You know, it's just like absorbing everything else. And I think that's my next point about this is that sort of absorbing things, but also, you know, you can tell when somebody is just reacting right then in the moment versus having a considered opinion and a thought about something. I would rather, let's say I'm teaching somebody, I don't know, hey, here's how you do

packaging for, you know, a Dolby Vision IMF or whatever, right? I would rather give my spiel, explain it, et cetera, have them consider it, maybe try it out, and the next day come back and go, hey, cool, I just wanted to, I had a whole bunch of questions coming out of our session last night, right? Because one of the other things, too, is that I think that people tend to, for the reasons that you just said, getting notice, shown, like looking like they have some competency, etc., are very quick to react. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it. I get it. Uh-huh. Sure, I get it. Yep. Makes total sense.

When in reality, they haven't had enough time or practice to process it, try it out, etc. So rather than saying, like, yep, I totally get it. be like cool let me walk away practice try some things out and come back in a day or two here my like that just shows to me i'm putting on my employer hat for now that like oh you really took the time to let everything we spoke about sink in process it maybe there's some things you could figure out on your own maybe there's some things i need to help with right but like that person that's like right off the bat like yeah man easy i'm like no it's not it's probably yeah when you're at that more junior level, nothing needs to be as fast as you think it should be.

Right. That company was going to figure out how to do this workflow with or without you. You know, you need to focus on being helpful, but you don't need to rush through everything to get to the finish line. Yeah. And there's there's no, there's all. I mean, I can't say that it never happens. But employers hiring young entry level job seekers generally aren't doing that with the expectation of. oh, I'm going to hire you as a 22 year old and expect you to have the knowledge and be able to shoulder the load of somebody who's been in the industry for 20 years.

Now, if they were hiring you walking into a shop, yes, there would be certain expectations that you've been through, you know, you've done all this before, right? But like that young kid, no, I don't think so. So the next thing I want to add to this personal characteristics list, and this is a big and tangible and I don't really know how to. quantify it, but you know it when you see it. And that is self-motivation, right? I really react bad to the attitude of just, I'm just sitting here. What do you got for me now?

Like, if you have the opportunity to be around nice equipment, fancy monitors, really talented colorist, editors, mixers, et cetera, that whole sponge idea is like, yeah, you need to be. sitting in the back of that room, watching, come up with that list of questions that you can hit them, you know, the next day when they have a free moment, etc. That whole idea of self-motivation, it's hard to put a finger on, but I think it is something that I really look for. And that is, no, you know, you're going to do things outside of the five things that I asked you to do because, one, they're going to make you better at what you do. You can fill gaps that you've identified that we might have.

Like, you know what I'm saying? Like, just doing a little more than just sitting around. goes a long way for me. Absolutely. And I, can I, so I told my, my 30-year-old story or 25-year-old story of me screwing up. Can I tell you a story of me succeeding at that age? Sure. Of course.

In this context, you know, at the time, computers in post-production were relatively new in terms of being used for the actual technology aspect. So I came in, you know, more on a technical side as a computer nerd than on a creative side initially. So one of the things that I did, and I kind of took, this was something I took upon myself when I was kind of young in the career in the post house, if I didn't have something to do or just at the end of the day before I left, and this doesn't apply to every workflow, every facility, but what I did is I walked around to every room and if they weren't like, you know, you kind of judge if you can walk in and talk or not, right? You make that judgment. You walk in. Is there anything I can help you guys with? That's it. I walked to every room and asked if I could help. Whether it's a client couldn't figure out how to use the printer, whether it was somebody wanted coffee,

whether it was, hey, this avid's been acting a little slow all morning. Do you have any advice? Can you check something? It was literally just, and I usually did it like in the middle of the day. I did it every day before I left, but in the middle of the day,

if I had nothing going on, I would do it again. I would just make, make rounds of everybody that I could and just not pushy, literally just, you guys need a hand with anything? Anything I can help? Oh, no, we're good. Cool. Then I'm out. I'm not going to sit there and shit chat. I'm not going to waste your time, but I made sure I made myself available to basically everybody in the facility whenever I was not busy. And that opened up a ton of opportunities for me. Yeah, and that's self-motivation, but also goes into the idea of being a team player, which is another thing.

I would say like, you know, so, you know, I think in the day and age of really large, you know, 100, 200 person facilities, yeah, you kind of had to stay in your lane. But I think for the most part these days, like being a team player means kind of the opposite, kind of taking on, you know, like whatever needs to be taken on. We're a team, we're a small group trying to make things happen. So that might be that doing the crappy things that, you know, you don't want to, it might be, I mean, like one day you might be learning color the next day. you might be learning, you know,

QuickBooks a little bit or, you know, whatever, a customer CMS or something like that, you know, and I think it's a magic question, you know, what can I do to help is a magic question because it opens you up to opportunity. It opens you up to learning and it makes you useful immediately. Another thing that I think is a personal characteristics. And again, this is going to sound a little old man get off my lawn.

But it's the idea of like ownership and no excuses. about things, right? Like, I really react negatively to the idea, like, okay, here's something to do. Okay. Then how are you, you're making progress on that? Well, there was this problem. There was that problem. I didn't know this.

I didn't know that. Like, of course, some of that, there's going to be natural blocks of things. Right. Well, I'm talking about the general idea of just like, well, you know, I'm not getting paid enough for that. or, you know, I just didn't want to, like, get started and mess up, so I didn't start. Like, you know, all sorts of problems like that. And I think that most employers and most colleagues would say, no, man, we want you to be

that self-motivated go-getter started. Like, I would much rather have somebody experiment with trying to take ownership of a process or a project or whatever than just sit around and twirling in the thumps. And, you know, the idea of not just. ownership but no excuses. And that doesn't mean no mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes. How you handle your mistakes is the one of the biggest differentiators I think on if you're

going to be successful or not. You're going to make mistakes. I wrote an email to a client with like three other colleagues and editors for a project I was working on literally today because a clip had a color jump in it where I had a bad keyframe. First thing in the email, sorry, complete operator error on my part. Here's the fix. Here's the why.

Own it. It still happens. The idea when you make a mistake is, one, identify it as quickly as possible. Two, identify potential solutions as quickly as possible. And then three, let the people in charge, the people who your mistake will impact, know and be involved in the decision-making process after. that. Hey, I just accidentally erased this source file that we had. Uh, I know we have it on another drive over here. How should I handle getting that back into the system? Right. Then you're letting them know. You're taking responsibility. You're offering a solution. But because you've

already just made a mistake, you might be out of your depth in fixing the mistake. And sometimes fixing your mistakes can lead to more worse mistakes. So you've got to bring in the more senior people to say, hey, here's how I think I'm going to solve this. What do you think? Let's solve it. Because they might say, oh, yeah, but if you do that, it's going to unlink the whole timeline and then everybody else is going to be messed up. So if you hadn't taken ownership and just tried to fix it with no one noticing,

you could have made it worse. But if you had just ignored it, you would have also made it worse. So it's like identify, diagnose and tell. There's some crossover that goes here. Since you're telling stories, I'll tell one that's kind of funny. I was working at a facility when I was recently out of college, and there was this engineer, he's actually a really lovely guy, this guy, Mike Provenzano, but an engineer, engineer. And I was about to lay something back to tape, and I was freelancing at this facility, right?

So I didn't have a full grasp of all of like the machine room particulars and the router and all that kind of stuff. and so I And real men don't preview Right I put a tape I put a tape at a deck Thinking that the deck

Was The one that was Wired up to my room So when I hit You know insert That I was inserting My show onto that tape and deck

Not realizing That the router Was connected to my room But routed to another deck That was currently being used for another process.

Also had tapes in it. Also had RS422 controls. So you can guess what happened. I go to hit record and then down the hall here. What the hell? What the crap? And then some anger footsteps or whatever after he figures it out that I had been insert editing on his tape on his deck because you know what I didn't do?

I didn't walk my fat butt into the machine room to check it out to verify, etc. Now, what you just said is totally true. true. I tried to make it less bad, right? So I went into the machine room and I was like, oh, fuck, I realized what's going on. I start plugging anything. And I made it nine times worse. I had rat, like, they were doing something special on a deck. So it needed like analog audio, not SDI audio. And I was doing things at the patch bay. And eventually it was just, get the hell out of here, man. And in those moments, they happen to everybody. I think that, you know, you don't like, tucking your tail and, you know, walking away might be the right move in that particular

moment of anger and angst. But what I think is important is what you said is coming back later and going, you know what? I totally did X, Y, and Z wrong. I made your life harder. I apologize. I'm going to learn from it. If there's any tips that you can give me to, like, not have this happen again or things I need to check. And like, you know, he was mad at the moment, but I think I handled it better because after asking some questions or whatever, you know, learning experiences. Nobody can be perfect. And I think that that's a really big part of this is just,

it's a balance act between all these characteristics, right? It's, you know, and that's a hard thing to learn. Now, let's switch gears a little bit to the next big thing about this. And I think that's just knowledge. Yeah. And I think that, as you said at the top of the show, young guns, maybe Medi is like this as well, you know, and I'm guessing at 16 working at a facility already.

he's probably a pretty sharp, pretty sharp guy. And that is, you know, knowledge comes in a lot of players, a lot of flavors, rather. And I think that you and I, for a lot of reasons, I think we tend to pride ourselves on our technical knowledge. But I think that actually technical knowledge is something that can be really, it can be taught, right? Like you can teach somebody, this is how you plug this thing into this thing. This is how you configure this thing. I think from a young person, what I think is more, slightly more attractive is that creative knowledge, right? That like you can, and I remember years ago, I was on a webinar with the great Tom Poole from Company 3.

And he said something that's stuck with me for, you know, I don't know, 15 years since he said it. And that is, you can't teach taste, right? and you know I think for a young colorist or an editor breaking into it into the industry that's that's really it right there right like you have to learn and take the time to build up taste and quality and the creativeness and you do that by consumption consumption consumption you do that by discussion you do that by comparison right that's a hard thing to really because I think a lot of people confused I know resolve really well as being a good colorist. Those two don't equate. Like, yes, you can be the best resolved person in the world, have the most resolved knowledge. You could still be in terrible colors.

Now, let me clarify this a little bit, because I think it's important, because when you say, you know, technical knowledge can be taught, you can't teach taste. That's true. It does sound to the youth a little defeatist. It's almost like you're either bored,

with this artistic knowledge and skill or you're not. And trust me, some people are born with incredible creativity and some people kind of struggle with it a little bit. That's totally normal. However, just because you can't teach someone taste, they can develop taste. And that is a internal work that you have to do, like you said, analyzing things that you watch, trying things, experimenting, getting into the art and failing and trying again. You build that taste over your entire career. And yes, nobody can be like, this is the right look that looks cool. But don't let that make you lose hope that, oh, I'm not really feeling creative today. I can't just get this to feel right this grade.

You'll get there if you keep working at it. It's something you can work at and improve if you try. It's not a you have it or you don't, which some people, some artists have that attitude of, I'm wonderful either you have this or you don't you're born with it because I'm the greatest and I don't think that's true and you're you're totally correct that it's not one or the other and I think one feeds the other

I mean like certainly you know we've all had that experience you know at least in my point of my career where like technical doors get opened that open creative doors right like I remember when like ACE's dot 7 or dot 8 or whatever like right before the release came out

And I was like, I felt so, like, there's one of probably only three or four times I can imagine that the technical part really made, really made me feel empowered, right? And that was one of them when I was just like, holy crap, this makes sense, tag a shot, work in this space, output this space. And like the whole like idea of like color management just clicked. And it made like, oh, now I'm bringing consistency to my. So I think it's not one or the other. one feeds it. But my point is, is that I can teach somebody the finer points of, you know, color management system or how to, you know, break down Dolby metadata or whatever. I can't necessarily, I can't be Tom Poole necessarily and see through his eyes. I can't be, you know, Dan Moran or

Steven Sonafeld or whatever, right? I'm not saying that you have to be those things, but I do think that what I find more interesting as you look at the top tier people in our industry, that they care a little, a little less about all the technical machine stuff, computers, monitors, et cetera, than they do care about what they're, the product that they're making or whatever. And I think that it's easy to hide behind technical stuff in favor of being, pushing your creative boundaries. I guess it was what I would say about it. And building that creative tool, sorry, building that creative tool set.

that in your head. It's a lifelong pursuit. Yeah, and flip it the other way, too, I think, because it does play this way. I think it's equally bad. I don't know if that's the right word. The person that is always the artist, and I said, artist, I said artist, and shaves technical things as that's just, like, the fact is the day and age that we live in, you cannot divorce the two. You cannot be a good, creative in post-production and just go whatever computers like whatever can like that you're not you probably don't have an engineer working for you you probably be a masterful architect without some knowledge of material science yeah or i don't know some math right like you know you got to you got

you got to have some of those skills so i i think that for you know some for a young person starting out i think if i had to wait it i would i'm all i'm saying is that i would wait creative competency and knowledge a little higher than I would the technical knowledge because the technical knowledge can really ebb and flow and grow the eye, the taste, etc. That is something that takes constant feeding and development and reframing to get better at it. And if you get stuck in the technical world, you know, it makes it that much harder to learn the creative.

My next big thing here, Joey, is besides the knowledge part, is the demonstration of this, right? I see a lot of young folks come in and being like, yeah, I can totally do that. I can totally do that. I can totally do that. And then they fall down on it. I think that there's an idea, you know, those are your mom or whatever you used to say when you're a kid. Like, you know, actions speak louder than words.

And I think when I'm looking at somebody trying to break into the industry, that's clear. I don't need somebody to tell me I'm working hard. I want to see you. working hard. I don't want somebody to tell me that, oh, I'm looking into this. Like, demonstrate it. Like, what have you learned about X, Y, Z? Like, what do you know about, you know, 15p, 70 mil IMAX now that everybody's talking about it, right? Like, those kind of things, I think, you know, the actions speak louder than words. And I think that there's a couple tells for me. And, you know, this kind of goes back to some of the technical stuff. I think the way

that somebody brings themselves to a project in terms of organization and workflow says a lot about how much they are gronking technical and creative needs, right? If you're just the kind of person that's sort of like, oh, every project's a one-off, I do this little different, maybe like that disorganization part drives me crazy because it demonstrates to me that you don't have the commitment to the craft to even get organized enough to have repeatable outcomes, right? That drives me crazy. Number two is that if your attitude is bad,

that's a big one that I think we should probably unpack a little bit more. Support for this episode comes from Flanders Scientific and the XMP 270 and XMP 310, the accessible, lightweight, and versatile monitors helping to bring HDR monitoring on set while also being very well suited to post-production work. Learn more.

at Flanderscientific.com. I had a situation, 2010, maybe, where I had hired, I was real busy period, and I'd hired a freelancer, and I remember the client came up to me at long, I was doing something else,

client came up to me and lunch, he's like, hey, can you talk for a minute? I'm like, yeah, what's up? And they're like, we're having a problem in there. We've been trying to go in this direction, and he just keeps telling us that we're wrong. You know,

And I'm just like, what do you mean he keeps telling you they're wrong? Like, yeah, he just doesn't like our input. And I'm just like, oh, my gosh. You know, at the end of the day, I think if you're going to have a successful career in post-production, you know, or production or whatever, you have to realize. And we say this a lot. Not everything is art. And also realize that it's not your project. Yes.

Right? It's like, would you, like, if you hire an electrician to come over to your house, I mean, you probably would do this. but like, you know, would you look at somebody and go, you know, I prefer to use this style of, you know, wire nut versus that style of wire nut, right? Like, I can sum it up very, very succinctly. Be a yes person in public, right? Be a contemplative thinker in private and working through problems, right? And in general, that attitude of I am here to help.

you realize and finish your project goes a lot further than, no, that's a crap idea, man. I wouldn't do that, right? Like, we've talked about this on other episodes, right? Yeah. Try things. Experiment. You never know what somebody else's ideas bring to the table. And if you have a crap attitude going into it, you're never going to realize those creative

breakthroughs or even those technical breakthroughs because this is just the way you do it or whatever, you know? And put it back to what we were just talking about, learning that creation. art of this side of the business, like we said, is a lifelong pursuit. If you become dogmatic and bad attitude, you never open yourself up to expanding your creative palette. So you're shooting yourself in the foot when you do that, both with your relationship with your clients and your co-workers and with your own artistic taste. Yep. And that's like, you know, attitude can be confused for the next thing I think is on the list here is the idea of professionalism, right? Um, professionalism to me is slightly,

different than attitude in that it's you are doing the things that set you up for success getting into the you know getting it being prompt getting into the office or your machine on time right um you know always managing like can i just stop for a second here like if there's one thing that you can do that be on time like it's the you're you know it's the you're you easy sometimes obviously sometimes things happen right and in those cases you explain like i said earlier about owning your mistakes right but be on time and take that seriously it it matters so much to every you might not feel like it matters to you it matters so much to everybody else involved in the entire process of this endeavor of post production that we're doing and if you are not on time

for something or if you miss a deadline or whatever, it can put so many people either best case inconvenienced, worst case, deeply financially impacted if it hurts the project, just be on time. Take it, take it seriously. Yeah. And I think that that's a key component of professionalism. I think another key component of professionalism is the idea that you just hinted at of you tell somebody you're going to do something follow through right that commitment that ownership thing that we had said about you know just being like oh yeah I started it but I kind of

I just got whatever it wasn't cool anymore so I just love like no like I mean that that is a tell that plays through in so many different parts of posts I think the other one is that um being the same professional in a lot of different situations is a key to sort of like integrity right like you know it's like one thing to be like, cool, I'm working with, I don't know, Christopher Nolan today. Like, ooh, ah, like I'm going to throw it. I'm going to be the perfect, you know, whatever. And then you next day you're working with, you know, Bob Smith making a crappy documentary. And you're like, yeah, your footage is crap.

This probably, like, one time I was working with Chris on, you know, whatever. Like, no, being consistent, being professional also means being, having a consistent application, a consistent attitude, a consistent work ethic, no matter if it's the biggest direct film director in the world or it's somebody just getting their start on, you know, a student film. You wouldn't want a dentist that phones it in. Right. Exactly. Exactly. You know. And I think I think the other, um, the part of that professionalism too, and I, I see this happen with young colors all the time because they get put into situations that are kind of the crap work, right? It's like, cool, like you're going to sit in with Christopher Nolan, but then I'm going to leave and you're going to

spend the next seven hours tracking, you know, tracking windows or whatever, right? Like, cool. Christopher Nolan doesn't use windows. I know. Everything's practical. He just uses mirrors from space to like people. My point is, is that if you're a pro only in the situations that are cool and fun

and not the situations that are crappy and difficult, people can tell that really easy, right? Easily. Like, you know, if you're always going to be the one who's begging out, like, you know, it's not fun anymore. Can I just go home? Like, no. Like, that's just, we've all been there. And I think the disconnect for a young person getting into posts in production is that it's a,

and this is the last thing I want to kind of discuss is this idea that there is not a path to follow to get to the higher level. What I mean by that is that I always think about, you know, the top, you know, the Dave Hussies of the world, the Nakamuras, the Sonn-Felds, right? It's really easy for us where we sit to go, gosh, those guys have it all, right? They got a team

of people, they got color scientists, they got, you know, their idea of a bad shot is, you know, you know, glorious, perfect shot in our world, right? And it's very easy to be like, if they can only have to work to do the things that I

have to do every day, there might be some truth to that, but it's also very easy I think as breaking into the industry to think that those people never had that same hard road and path to experience. I have news for you. The reason that a Dave Hussein. They had it worse. Or an Ian Vertevac or any of these guys are at the top of their game. They've already navigated that path to the top.

Nobody just was like- They did your worst nightmare on a computer or a tape deck that had a tenth of the functionality and a one hundredth of the speed. exactly and they made it look incredible right so like the attitude that like you're just a boomer you don't know what it's like is it's just it's so incredulous to me because i'm just sort of like yeah it was different but those people didn't nobody handed dave hussy a gold medal and just said dave you're cool you're going to grade the most iconic music videos all time just because you're like no he was in the chair for long hours he was working his ass off he was doing a positive about all these intangibles that we've spoken here.

And I think that if you're coming into a new facility looking at somebody who's higher up than you or maybe has a little bit of a brand recognition that some of the people I mentioned do, it's easy to look at to them as like, oh, they have it so easy. They just get to do the best projects. They get to do the best projects

because they paid their dues and they did all of the things that we're talking about, right? It's not by magic. They didn't win the lottery. They did all of these, things in some shape or fashion to get to that point. And if you find yourself in that, that situation, you just won the lottery because you've got someone you can learn from. Oh, I mean, if you can tolerate like the rigors of being in a big facility like that and the

pressures of it, absolutely. And I think, but that scales too, to a certain degree, right? Like, yeah, it doesn't have to be the greatest facility in the world. You're in there. You're learning from the top, top, top guys. Where have you? you are, whatever workful you're in, there's probably someone there with more experience than you that you can learn from. Right. Like I would never make the assumption. I would never hire somebody and be like, I'm going to teach you how to be Dave Hussie. I can't teach that, right? But I can teach what I can teach in my experience and my things. And oftentimes, surprisingly, especially if you're, if, you know, going back to Madi's question about like, hey, want to break more into the world of color, I have news. And this is not something that we have, we've said to us. a million times before, that the color on screen that you create is like actually a really small

part of the overall pie of being a successful colorist. I know that sounds like counterintuitive. It maybe doesn't sound right to a lot of you, but it really is. The human factor, the communication factor, the work ethic factor, the attitude, all of the intangibles that we've spoken about, go so much further than you're the best color. Because the reality of it is, is that when you get to the A plus plus level that a lot of these people are that I just mentioned, their job isn't actually technically that hard, right?

From a 10s pushing the images around. But holy crap, is it hard about managing the personalities, the attitudes, the existence. I mean, like, think about a big. stakes are higher. A big time commercial campaign, right? Somebody comes to a company three of the world. They're paying, you know, tens of millions of dollars for a famous actor, its campaign, whatever. Like that pressure that is focused now on this person sitting behind a control panel trying to make Joe actor look perfect because there's tens of millions of dollars, that is pressure and managing that, that no amount of learning resolve or learning color science or what. whatever can possibly handle, right?

It's more about that person and what all the intangibles that we've mentioned. Yeah. And like if I were to sum it all up, you know, I want to put a more hopeful attitude on this than I feel like if you add up everything I've said thus far might imply. All of the pitfalls that I've mentioned, all of this comes from 30 years of hard-earned experience and mistakes. like I've talked about, I had bad attitudes and bad communication skills

when I was younger. I had a boss that used to use the phrase very often with me, you stepped on a rake. I stepped on many, many, many rakes in my career. And I still think I turned out pretty well. And I still think I'm improving and I try to improve every day.

If I can do it, if I can get through with, with my horrible attitude when I was younger and my, my screw-ups and all the mistakes I've made, I think anyone can. And I think, uh, if you're able to look into yourself a little bit and take lessons,

you know, learn from your mistakes because you will make a lot of them. Obviously, hopefully some of the advice we've given you in this episode can help you avoid some common mistakes, right? You're going to find other ones to make. You know, everybody will make them and how you react, how you learn, how you prevent that from happening again,

how you improve from those is 100% what will drive your career. Yeah, and I just think a lot about, I mean, it's cliche, but I think a lot about integrity, I think a lot about, uh, positiveness. And I, and I, one thing you just said, I think is, and honestly, sorry, not to interrupt, but I just one, one last button on that, I'm really proud of how far I've come if I look at myself 30 years ago compared to today. I feel I've gotten a lot better at this.

And I think I'm still getting better. I'll give you a pat on the back for that one. But that's what I was going to actually say is that I think it's easy potentially for our audience to listen to this episode and go, oh, these, these mid to late 40s guys telling us like they know it all. all the hard one secrets.

The reality is that I work on it. You work on all of these things all of the time. I mean, just for full transparency, I've been working on this kind of stuff more in the past two, three, four years than I have at any other point in my career. Because I've realized some, I've had some, you know, some, you know, I got diagnosed with ADHD, RSD. Like I had, also, I've had some.

I've had some depression issues, some anxiety issues, whatever. And it's like all of those things, man. Like, it's self-improvement. Just because you get to be a senior colorist at Harbor or Company 3, whatever, doesn't mean that you still can improve. And I think that that, you know, any career that you enter in, I think that's a good attitude to have that, like, it's a career path. It's a journey.

It's never a start to end, right? You know what I'm saying? That at 55, you can still be learning. and doing new things and getting better at this stuff, just like you were at 25, right? It's never a static thing. And if anybody takes us as like, we know best, no, we're just sharing our experiences.

And I think that, you know, it would be great to learn a little bit more from others, you know, how they handle this stuff. So on that end, if you do have some feedback for us, you can always leave comments about this stuff on YouTube. That's where the video version of this show is on. You can also head over to Offset Podcast. Podcast.com, check out our entire library of episodes, find some additional show notes, et cetera.

You can follow us on social media on Facebook and on Instagram. You can always leave us a note there. And one more thing about Offset Podcasts, if you go to the website at the very top of the page, there is a button to submit a question or an idea. If you do have some topics that you'd like us to cover, like this great one that we got from Madi. And thanks again, Madi, for the input. You can drop us a line over there or anywhere you can find us and we'll definitely

consider it for another show. And then lastly, if you wouldn't mind supporting the show here on screen by heading over to the Biasa, a couple of virtual coffee link here, that would be greatly appreciated. And as always, huge thanks to our sponsors, conform tools, and Flanders Scientific. Couldn't do the show without you guys. So Joey, good, good chat as always. I love talking about these kind of big picture conceptual issues. So hopefully we've helped out Madi a little bit.

And again, just when I think back on it, 16, working out a post house, like, that's a go-getter right there. And I wish you nothing but the best of luck in your career, Modi, and hopefully some of the little bits of advice and things to look out for that we mentioned here help you and others down the line as well. So for The Offset Podcast, I'm Robbie Carman. And I'm Joey Deanna. Thanks for listening.