EP043: Interpreting References

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:12:10
Robbie
Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of The Offset Podcast. And today we're talking about interpreting references. Stay tuned.

00:00:12:11 - 00:00:31:01
Joey
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 Flanders scientific.com.

00:00:31:03 - 00:00:40:16
Robbie
Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of The Offset Podcast. I'm one of your hosts, Robbie Carman. With me, as always, is Joey D’Anna. Hey, Joey, how are you, man?

00:00:40:18 - 00:00:42:14
Joey
Hey, everyone.

00:00:42:16 - 00:01:03:00
Robbie
So, Joey, today, coincidentally, I had outlined an episode, and then you had said before we got on there, hey, I think we had a, a viewer submission about the same subject. Indeed we did. And that is talking about the idea of references, what they're good for, how to use them, how to interpret them, where they fall down.

00:01:03:02 - 00:01:23:20
Robbie
And I thought, well, since I had already outlined this, that the users, the, the viewer submission, lined up perfectly. So that's what we want to, explore today is a little bit about using references, how to use them, and all the various bits about that. Just as a reminder, everybody, you can submit your own ideas for an episode by heading over to the offset podcast.com.

00:01:23:20 - 00:01:40:19
Robbie
And at the very top of the page, there's a little submit button, that opens up a little form you can pop in. Any questions, ideas, concepts, tell us what we're doing good, what we're doing bad, or anything else that you have on your mind. We'd love to hear from you. And, possibly incorporate those ideas into, to another episode.

00:01:40:21 - 00:02:03:14
Robbie
Also, we are on Instagram, Facebook, all those fun places. And you can find the show on Spotify, YouTube and all major, podcasting platforms. And then lastly, if you like the show, we'd really, would love it if you would consider supporting, the show by heading over to this link right here on screen, to buy us a cup of virtual coffee, every, every dollar that you support goes to, supporting the show painter, editor, etc., etc..

00:02:03:14 - 00:02:30:13
Robbie
So, we really appreciate that support. So, Joey, I want to start out with a little bit of an anecdote before we get into, the nuts and bolts here. And, that is years ago, when I was, you know, young colorist, my probably my early 30s. So this is, you know, a long time ago now, I had, been working with the university to do student films.

00:02:30:13 - 00:02:48:07
Robbie
Right? And student films are. They can be fun. They can be a little bit of a drag, but they can be fun, too. And I talked to this young, college age filmmaker, and he was like, alright, tell me about tell me about the film. Right? And he's like, yeah, let me tell you about the film. He's like, so we shot the whole film on five GoPros.

00:02:48:09 - 00:03:08:11
Robbie
And we didn't have any stabilization gear, didn't really have any lights. But, you know, we're happy with the way it turned out. I'm like, okay, cool. Do you have any references? And at the time, this was a big film. He was like, yeah, I really, really want it to look like Skyfall. The James Bond, Roger Deakins shot, film.

00:03:08:11 - 00:03:26:08
Robbie
And if you've ever seen any of the behind the scenes, you know, shots of the, the rigging and the gassing that went on in that show or that film, you realize that it's like it's no joke. It's unlimited budget with, you know, pretty widely considered the best DP, you know, to ever live. And those were the references.

00:03:26:08 - 00:03:57:19
Robbie
Those were the frames that they sent over based on something shot on a couple GoPros without lights, etc.. So I bring up this story to start our conversation about references by saying that, you always have to do the very first thing. I think of references when I asked for them is that that there's a bad reference, but references, the best references are grounded in some sort of reality for what was shot and what is in the can.

00:03:57:19 - 00:04:24:05
Robbie
Right? Because I think that a lot of people have very grandiose ideas about what their projects should look like, and then that's often disconnected from the reality of what they recorded. And it can be as simple as something like, oh, we really want to have this be super colorful with a lot of bold colors. Okay, cool. Well, you shot, people in white t shirts against, like, neutral color walls, like, what do you want me to do?

00:04:24:05 - 00:04:41:22
Robbie
Right. So I think that's my biggest, overarching thing. Before we jump into the nitty gritty here, is that references are great when until they're not right, and that a lot of times that references need to be grounded, in reality to get the most out of them for what we do and what we're going to discuss today.

00:04:42:00 - 00:05:11:20
Joey
Yeah. And sometimes that kind of takes the form of talking with the client about the references to saying, hey, you know, maybe diving a little bit deeper and saying, okay, we we know you like Skyfall, but let's talk about, maybe some other things that you've liked, and maybe just try to explore a little bit deeper than just because if you just ask somebody who's, who's especially newer filmmakers or even experienced filmmakers, hey, give me a reference.

00:05:11:22 - 00:05:45:12
Joey
They might now be racking their brain trying to come up with something to give you, right? Yeah. And it might not really fully encompass what their creative vision is. And yes, there could be some parallels with the reference, but there could also be some perpendicular, if you will. And part of that might also be that there has been a lot of discourse in like the general filmmaking community as of the past few years relating to references and essentially whole hog copying a reference.

00:05:45:14 - 00:06:16:02
Joey
Right? Because it isn't until an interesting intellectual, you know, exercise to look at a frame from a feature film and see if you can beat an existing still image into really looking like that frame from a feature film, that kind of interaction with a reference, really, one doesn't have any creative relevance to an actual project, and two, doesn't ever actually work in terms of making the whole project look like that.

00:06:16:06 - 00:06:40:03
Joey
So while references are incredibly useful, an incredibly important part of what we want to talk about through this episode is how to actually make them actionable in terms of a project, not just in terms of, hey, I saw this cool YouTube video of someone exactly copying this frame by brute force. That's what we never want to use references for an exact copy, right?

00:06:40:03 - 00:06:44:08
Joey
We want to use them as a driver of the creative process.

00:06:44:09 - 00:07:09:19
Robbie
I agree, very well said. So we're going to dive into that of course too. But let's start way back at the beginning. What is a reference and why is it important? Okay. And specifically why is it important for finishing operators. And I also, by the way, I think, you know, obviously we talked a lot about color, but I want to be clear that I think references are useful for a lot of parts of the finishing process right there.

00:07:09:21 - 00:07:30:10
Robbie
You know, hey, here's a mix. Here's a score for the, you know, the audio team. You know, here's some type treatment, some typography or some motion graphic design that I really love for lower thirds or whatever. Right. So it's not yeah. We're going to talk about it today in the context of color, but like, you know, references, are useful in all parts of the finishing process.

00:07:30:15 - 00:07:55:02
Robbie
And they largely serve they serve the same purpose. So I want to give kind of a definition of what I think I will reference, what a reference is and why it's important. Right. So, you know, in any given project, any film, television show or even a commercial, right. Like there's been a lot of time spent thinking about the, all aspects of it, the, you know, the technical aspects, the emotive aspects, the the look aspects.

00:07:55:04 - 00:08:21:05
Robbie
Well, before you were probably ever even involved in the process. You know, you might be one of the lucky few who is involved at the front end of a project doing camera tasks and, you know, maybe doing some in-camera Luts or whatever, like you have a little bit more gravitas in that situation. But for a lot of us, you know, we're coming in under a project and a lot of that thinking has already gone through the machinations of, hey, let's try this, let's try that.

00:08:21:05 - 00:08:46:03
Robbie
Oh, it's orange, it's green, it's whatever. Right. And so to me, what a reference does is it attempts to be a communication tool between the principles of the project. And that's oftentimes a director or a DP or somebody who's really into the nitty gritty about the look of the film or the sound of the film or whatever, trying to communicate to others down the pipeline from them.

00:08:46:08 - 00:09:15:21
Robbie
This is what we are going for, right? This is what we like. And to me, that serves as the colorist or the creative operator's first opportunity to get inside of the head of the principles that are involved for things that they like and dislike and want to bring or not bring to the project. In my opinion, it doesn't mean what you had said at the at the intro for the show.

00:09:15:21 - 00:09:40:05
Robbie
It doesn't necessarily mean. Here is a reference. I want you to copy this whole hog and make it look exactly like that. Very rarely in the 25 years that I've been doing it, has anybody ever asked for that very thing, right? They've talked about parts of it, the you know, a lot of times it's more of like, I love this feel, I love this some other, motive aspect of it that they can't really explain, but they want if they want it.

00:09:40:05 - 00:10:00:12
Robbie
Right. So, you know, it's I think part of our job is to take that initial peek into their psyche and kind of interpret it. We joke all the time that we're post-production psychologists, and this is one avenue working with references. We're 100% that psychology part of it, as that play is trying to figure out what why did you give this to me?

00:10:00:12 - 00:10:26:05
Robbie
Okay. What is it about this thing that you like or dislike or wanted to show me about it? And sometimes sometimes it can. They can't describe it. We'll get into that a little bit. How to break it down. Right. But oftentimes, you know, there's, there's references are being put in front of you are your first peak. And when I said at the top of the show or sometimes it's like disconnected from reality, that's also your first peek into what potentially kind of clients these folks are going to be, right?

00:10:26:05 - 00:11:03:02
Robbie
If they have these unbelievable, grandiose references that don't line up at all. You know, like they shot a talking head in, you know, you know, you know, a hotel room or something. And they're like, hey, we want this to look like, you know, you know, the matrix or something, you know, like, okay. Right. And then related to that, I think that references, are the client's first attempt to whether they realize or not the first attempt to also learn how you communicate, how you, talk about things.

00:11:03:02 - 00:11:20:05
Robbie
Right? And I have found over the years that at that reference stage, that's my first opportunity to also educate the client a little bit about the things that we take for granted. Contrast ratios, black point, white point, color temperature or texture or whatever. Right. I don't know. Do you agree with any that what what's what you're feeling?

00:11:20:05 - 00:11:22:15
Robbie
What like what is a reference to you?

00:11:22:17 - 00:11:53:04
Joey
Yeah. I mean, a reference can be anything from a movie. Still from a show, a painting. I've actually had to add numerous references of paintings, a photograph and add anything. And hopefully, hopefully this was thought of before it was. I need references for just the color grade. Right. Like you said, you know, the principal creatives of the project have been with the project long before we have.

00:11:53:06 - 00:12:19:07
Joey
So hopefully they've been thinking about this a little bit and what they're going to give us as references also informed their photography decisions, their set design decisions, their wardrobe decisions, etc. that's not always the case, but we we love when that is the case because it gives us not just a grounding in what was actually shot, but it gives us direct reference points between the reference and the footage.

00:12:19:07 - 00:12:39:05
Joey
If they say, you know, we were always looking at this photograph thinking, this is kind of how the palette is going to be. That's why we chose this wardrobe. That's why we chose this paint color in the set, etc. now we can start to draw lines, right? The reference point is here. The on screen point is here. We know these two are connected.

00:12:39:06 - 00:13:01:17
Joey
Now we can go to think about how to creatively bring that together in the color grade to make the whole feel like that. And I do think, you know, obviously we early on cautioned about having over grandiose, references, but that doesn't mean you can't kind of shoot for the fences. A little bit. And we yeah, wouldn't be dismissive.

00:13:01:17 - 00:13:02:03
Joey
Right.

00:13:02:03 - 00:13:02:22
Robbie
Because, yeah, if.

00:13:02:23 - 00:13:20:15
Joey
You like the hypothetical example of we want our verité GoPro film to look like Skyfall, they might come back after a little bit of back and forth and be like, well, we were really talking about kind of where the black point was sitting and the overall saturation. Right. And those are parts of that reference that we can apply.

00:13:20:15 - 00:13:21:15
Robbie
Yeah, yeah.

00:13:21:17 - 00:13:41:12
Joey
So like you said, it's the first like even before we do, we talked about a few episodes back, a look setting session for example. It's the first initial communication about creative goalposts between you and the client. So always I want to look at it as an exploration. I don't want a knee jerk react to anything. I don't want to be like, are you crazy?

00:13:41:12 - 00:14:23:04
Joey
Or that sounds dumb. You know, I want to explore all these ideas because my initial reaction might be completely disconnected to what they were actually thinking and using that reference. And I want to start looking for those direct lines between what was shot and what is in the reference of okay, is it texture? Is it color palettes? Is it this particular color that we're building something around, anything that we can kind of anchor the actual footage we're dealing with and this reference image and kind of draw a line, you draw enough of those lines, you get kind of a mental 3D picture of where the client's head is at look wise before the great is

00:14:23:04 - 00:14:24:05
Joey
ever even started.

00:14:24:07 - 00:14:43:13
Robbie
Totally. And there's a lot to unpack in some of it. We're going to do a little bit later in this episode, but I, I agree with everything that you just said, and I think that, you know, it can be I think as a, as, creative, you know, finishing person, it can be a little intimidating. Some like both sides of that coin for both ends of the field.

00:14:43:13 - 00:15:05:13
Robbie
Whatever analogy you want to use, I can be intimidating, right? When you have people show up with zero reference and just go, show me something cool and amazing. That's that's intimidating and pressure filled. But at the same time, clients who show up and go, you know, here's my lookbook of images that I've created, you know, or captured for or curated for this project for the past seven years.

00:15:05:15 - 00:15:27:10
Robbie
And it's this thick and, you know, going through it, it's like, oh, you've thought about this way harder than I. I mean, I thought about it, you know, and that can be also intimidating. And I find I find that, this next thing I'm going to say is integral to the, the more intimidated by too much part of it.

00:15:27:10 - 00:15:47:05
Robbie
But before I, before I get in that, I just want to also say that reference that you had mentioned paintings or whatever. In my opinion, references can take a lot of forms, right? They can obviously take the forms of actual motion picture move, you know, moving. Here's a video file or whatever. Stills, of course. You know, I recently I've had a lot of people using What's Up website shot deck.

00:15:47:07 - 00:15:54:10
Robbie
Which is I don't really understand legally how they work, but they somehow curate, you know, frames from famous movies and projects and music.

00:15:54:10 - 00:15:59:18
Joey
I've had a client bring in fashion and design magazines filled with little post-its on various pages.

00:15:59:22 - 00:16:17:00
Robbie
I've even had people, you know, same thing. Like, I remember years ago, I had somebody I was like, yeah, it was like a Ikea or a pier one ad or something like that. And there was like this yellow sandy color pillow, and they were like, that's the color, right? That that's it right there. So they can take all forms.

00:16:17:01 - 00:16:39:16
Robbie
But what I was going to say is that, you know, okay, client has some form of reference, and they, you know, maybe they put a huge pile over to maybe it's just a few things. But the first thing I think of and I given the the current state of world affairs, I don't use this in the, the, the police sense, but I say, are you like to use the word interrogate, interrogating the clients about the reference.

00:16:39:16 - 00:17:01:02
Robbie
Right. And you could use the word interview. And there's a lot of other words for it, but I, I like to have the client. So if a client pushes over, let's say it's five images. Tell me the story of these five images. Right. Why did why did you choose them? What is it about them that you chose, and why is it germane to the project that we're about to work on?

00:17:01:02 - 00:17:17:07
Robbie
And that's a that's a kind of a key thing to me is that, like, I think that the reference point can kind of come and it naturally kind of comes at a few different stages. Pre-production prior to you starting the grade is the obvious one, right? We talked about a little bit of that in our episode on Luke setting, but it can also happen during the process, right?

00:17:17:07 - 00:17:32:15
Robbie
Like you start developing the film and start working on it and then it hits somebody be like, you know, you're on to something cool. I went home last night and I watched, you know, whatever, some film, and I really like it, and they're doing something similar. Let's get a little more of that so it can happen at that stage, at that stage, too.

00:17:32:17 - 00:18:00:23
Robbie
But I like to to really kind of ask them a lot of very probing questions about it. Okay. So like just for, for example, I really want the theme of this to be warm, super generic comment, right. What like warm could mean anything to anybody, right. Does that mean like yellow red desert. Does it mean, like mahogany and like, kind of deep and like woody?

00:18:01:03 - 00:18:16:21
Robbie
Like what does that mean? Right. And so like oftentimes you'll find that people describe things in very high level, relatively generic terms. And what I mean by interrogation is trying to get more out of them about that. Right.

00:18:16:23 - 00:18:44:19
Joey
So because we've talked a lot about client communication, decoding non-technical language in terms of creative input, right. Like what is warm, what is cold, what is desolate, what is, you know, what are these words describing? Well, when you take those words and what they're describing, what they want verbally, and then you look at their references, now you're kind of giving yourself a, again, you're drawing those lines that I was talking about.

00:18:44:22 - 00:18:50:19
Joey
You're giving yourself a mental translation guide of what the client means visually.

00:18:50:21 - 00:19:12:05
Robbie
Totally. And I think related to this, in that in that interrogation process of trying to dive a couple levels deeper about the words that the clients are using and what they're showing you. I also like to separate the concept of like, separate the concepts of practical references versus inspirational references. Right. And I think there's I think there's a very big difference between the two.

00:19:12:05 - 00:19:34:03
Robbie
Right. Like, so, you know, you might be working on, on a, you know, a corporate video, right. And you know, you're like, well, here's my, you know, couture fashion, you know, frames that I love. Right? And you're like, man, there's so, like, the makeup artist alone is more than your entire budget of this project, right. Like, you know, things of that.

00:19:34:03 - 00:19:59:09
Robbie
So I think there are things that like, we love how this makes us feel, but we realize this is not what we have versus, oh, no, I just love, love, love the grain on this frame. And I want to copy it wholesale over to our our project. Right. It's it's very important. So just like you get to know when we talked about look setting you know getting to know clients likes and dislikes.

00:19:59:11 - 00:20:21:13
Robbie
This is another opportunity to do that. And I would just separate it out to things that are practical, things that are actually going to be to port over to the project you're working on versus things that are inspirational. It makes it's in that vibe. It's it's really like I worked on a film recently where, the there was a lot of references to Terrence Malick, you know, very famous director.

00:20:21:13 - 00:20:52:20
Robbie
You know, one of the things that came up was Tree of Life all the time, and it wasn't about a direct copy of that look and feel. It was we want to be tangential to this. Right. And that's a very big difference in what you said at the very top. Right. And what I want and why I want to come back to what you said about, kind of the idea of like, you know, not doing it wholesale copy because I think when somebody says, yeah, this is in the family that we want to be in, that's a much different story.

00:20:52:20 - 00:21:02:02
Robbie
That's inspirational reference to me versus something of like, you need to copy this person, you know, verbatim, which would be a much more practical reference, if that makes sense.

00:21:02:07 - 00:21:21:16
Joey
Yeah. And I don't know, a lot of filmmakers who are in the business of trying to whole hog copy somebody else's work. Right. You might run into that ad client that is just trying to, you know, send the sausage through the meat grinder. And, you know, it's just it's very much more just.

00:21:21:18 - 00:21:22:13
Robbie
Right. Yeah, yeah.

00:21:22:15 - 00:21:41:20
Joey
You know, this is what it's supposed to be. And sometimes those references for that kind of product, most of the time those references are internal stuff they've already done where you are copying a whole hog for content. Continuity purposes. Right. And that's totally fine as well. But what we're talking about here is much different than that, right?

00:21:41:20 - 00:22:08:01
Joey
We're not talking about executing a very specific brand. Look for an ad. Right. That's a very technical equation. Right. We're talking about how do we do for a more creative project, how do we get the best version of the client's image that they have in their head onto the screen using their references? And I think, you know, the next step for that, after we've kind of had that general conversation, right?

00:22:08:03 - 00:22:27:15
Joey
We've started drawing some of those lines. We've started figuring out the parallels. We've started decoding the language. Is now we need to kind of break those references down into their constituent components. What I mean by that is we need to figure out where the client wants things like black point, white point and overall contrast. Right. We got to nail that down.

00:22:27:19 - 00:22:46:22
Joey
Right. That's kind of the most basic thing. And then from there we dive down deeper and deeper and deeper. And we can look at each one of these as we talk about the references with the client in kind of that overall conversation. But it's kind of important, I think, to separate them. Right. So first let's talk about overall contrast.

00:22:46:22 - 00:23:12:10
Joey
Black point. White point. Do you want a heavy heavy contrast where you don't need to see all the detail of the shadows? If there's something kind of in the back of the image that fades into complete black, that's totally fine. Or or all of your reference is super detailed in the shadows. Maybe some lifted blacks, right? What's their opinion on near clipping highlights or just under clipping highlights?

00:23:12:10 - 00:23:34:03
Joey
Most of the time you don't want clip highlights unless it's for something really stylistic, like you're trying to emulate a specific 1990s music video, right? But yeah, you know the distance between where your peak white most of the time sits. And clipping, I think, is another taste thing that needs to be generally consistent throughout a film or a project.

00:23:34:07 - 00:23:51:22
Joey
And that's one of those places where we start looking at these references and saying, okay, where are you throwing away detail? Where are you insisting we keep detail, and how can we use that to figure out where you want your overall contrast? That's kind of the first stage, I think when we dive deep into these references.

00:23:51:23 - 00:24:15:12
Robbie
Yeah. And I mean, I'll take it further. I mean, I think that it's, you know, the same equation can be done with, as you said, color balance and temperature, warm, cold, you know, things of that skin tone, texture, that kind of thing. You know, unfortunately, some of the things that you might have reactions to might be a little out of your control at that point, like so, for example, not a whole lot you're going to really be able to do.

00:24:15:12 - 00:24:35:05
Robbie
I mean, there is of course, but like, you're not going to be able to reframe and recompose the shot, right? You know, things of that nature. There's there's limitations there. But, you know, things like the other one that I think that's big besides the contrast, black point, white point, color balance and texture. I also, I'm always curious about focus and mood.

00:24:35:05 - 00:25:02:01
Robbie
Right. I think that helps tell a lot of the story to because, like, I think it's very easy for a colorist to look at pictures and in videos and not really gronke what the mood of the, the particular thing is going to be that scene or that, you know, that part of the film or whatever. And I think that's also important to be like, I'm showing this to you, Mr. Colorist, because it's not I'm not trying to take any particular part of this.

00:25:02:03 - 00:25:25:17
Robbie
I just like the mood of the scene. Right. You know, here are my five references for, you know, dark, cold sci fi. Right? Here are my, you know, five references for, you know, romantic comedy, like, whatever. Like it's more about the way that, the way that these characters like this helps the character come out. This is how I want people to feel about this color.

00:25:25:22 - 00:25:52:21
Robbie
And though some of those things are they're old. They're old stereotypes, right? You know, okay, fine. Like, you know, the spy movie is supposed to be desaturated and kind of cool, right? And, you know, romantic comedy is bold colors and bright and high key, like, you know, some of that is just kind of inferred, but it's I also, when I'm working with a client and trying to understand the references, that is a big part of the interpretation to me as well as like, why did you emotive relate to this?

00:25:52:21 - 00:25:58:08
Robbie
What is it about it that you like from a mood and kind of a focus point of view as well?

00:25:58:10 - 00:26:25:08
Joey
Yeah. When you get into those kind of mood or feeling description of a reference, that's when I think the lines you're drawing to the actual footage become what was done on set in lighting that we want to accentuate versus what we want to accentuate. Right. Because no, no, no, no capture will be 100,000 million percent perfect, right? Right.

00:26:25:09 - 00:26:51:03
Joey
Because just like our work, eventually you run out of time and money. So there might be okay, we didn't quite be able to light this area of the set as much as we would have liked to, but we can enhance that by bringing it up a little bit in color. If you feel that, you know, if if that kind of decision pushes it towards the mood that the references are giving, then I think that's a good direction.

00:26:51:03 - 00:27:11:03
Joey
Whereas those references could also put you in a mood where like, oh, it's almost obvious on set they were trying to de-emphasize this. So I can help them with that and de-emphasize this part of the image to bring us into the feeling that the rest of the lighting was doing. So it's just another way, you know, I don't think there is.

00:27:11:05 - 00:27:32:17
Joey
When you talk about the overall mood, you might not even find any direct parallels to, okay, well, that mood is 50% desaturated and slightly cool in the shadows. No, no no no, that's not what you're finding out here. What you're finding out here is what parts of the image are you going to focus on. Because that's what they're reference.

00:27:32:17 - 00:27:35:13
Joey
Also focused on that type of thing.

00:27:35:15 - 00:27:52:00
Robbie
You know, I never really thought I guess sort of innately I do this but never really thought about it. And what you just said kind of rang some bells for me is that like, you know, we often talk, we often quote our friend Walter Villopoto when he's like, you know, this thing he says goes on about respecting the photography.

00:27:52:00 - 00:28:18:05
Robbie
Right? And I kind of think that sometimes dealing with references is, is is less about how you're going to engineer the images to add, and sometimes it's more about what you're doing to cover and subtract from the things, the things that were there. Because, you know, you might you might work really, really hard to develop this look, that spot on to whatever the inspiration, the inspiration look.

00:28:18:05 - 00:28:36:21
Robbie
And it might be near perfect. And the client still goes, dude, I hate that corner over there, man. Like I because because they know when they were on set, right that they worked really hard. They got in the fight with the with the gaffer about it. And there wasn't enough time. And the, you know, the, the assistant director was yelling at him about moving to the next set up or whatever.

00:28:36:21 - 00:28:54:19
Robbie
Right. And it's always bothered them. Right. So part of, you know, sometimes part of the reference process is also as you, as you pointed out, figuring out those pain points and not adding to but, you know, obscuring, taking away from etc., those things that bother or for the time.

00:28:54:21 - 00:29:20:15
Joey
Yeah. If our goal, our stated goal, which I think in almost all cases it is, is to respect the photography in the context of giving the creatives what they want. Right? We can use references, especially those more mood, less specific references as our way of interpreting the photography so we can understand it better.

00:29:20:17 - 00:29:52:07
Robbie
You know, along with all those other technical things about black point, waypoint, etc.. I think one of the well, not one of two of the hardest things to nail down, from references and putting that over to the work that you do, one is temporal soft. And what I mean by that is that like, obviously frame rates are an obvious one, but that could be also things like shutter speed and kind of like that flow of motion that can be really, really difficult to interpret and get right.

00:29:52:07 - 00:30:09:15
Robbie
I think that's you know, I think the obvious is okay, well, we want it to look hyper real. Okay. Well let's shoot 60 or 120 or whatever. Right. But I, I, I, I find this problem all the time with 23.98 and 2997. Right. People are like, oh, well, we we shot everything 29 nine, seven, but we want it to feel like more filmic.

00:30:09:17 - 00:30:45:21
Robbie
Well, okay, shoot 29 eight, you know, like wherever those kind of things. And then the other one is, is texture part of it. I think texture is a really hard thing to pull, especially from stills, because you're looking at a one frame at a time. It moves right. You don't really understand how that works, but also, you know, going past, you know, connecting this to where I was said about being careful about where references come from is that by the time you see something, it could have gone through 27 different compressions and noise reduction passes, etc. and now it's that grain structure, and that texture is nothing like it was, in the original.

00:30:45:21 - 00:31:01:21
Robbie
So like, that's also something that's hard, I think, to pull from still references but references in general. And you just got to be aware of that. Now, I want to get into a couple technical things here because I think that they're important for this discussion. So, you know, I think it's always, you know, we don't always get this right.

00:31:01:21 - 00:31:32:01
Robbie
You know, best case scenarios, higher end productions. There's, you know, a DIT with logs and that flows through to, you know, other parts downstream. But, you know, sometimes you have to ask the questions about, okay, what you know, what camera systems. That's an obvious one. But what lenses were used, what lights were used or whatever. Right. And I also find sometimes, to be honest with you, if this sounds like cliche, but yeah, some behind the scenes, like just still imagery photography of like the setups can also be super helpful.

00:31:32:03 - 00:31:49:12
Robbie
Be like, oh, I had no idea that that was a huge I out that window. I thought that was real sunlight. Now it makes sense why I was struggling with it or whatnot. Right? Like having some of that technical information I think about the production itself will also and I will I'm going to steal your phrase and use it from now on.

00:31:49:12 - 00:32:10:11
Robbie
Draw lines from reality to what those references are. Right? Like, oh, now I get what you were going for because you use this kind of instrument and this kind of set up, you know, whether maybe, hey, maybe it was spherical versus anamorphic, makes total sense now. Like, I get it. Why you use that? Because you're trying to match, you know, whatever.

00:32:10:11 - 00:32:13:07
Robbie
Lawrence of Arabia. So you know what? I'm saying? Like.

00:32:13:09 - 00:32:24:00
Joey
And those things. Right? Those are the situations where you can kind of help yourself to judge if you might be going down a rabbit hole to fix or modify something that was intentional.

00:32:24:02 - 00:32:24:11
Robbie
Absolutely.

00:32:24:11 - 00:32:35:18
Joey
And that's the worst thing a colorist can do, right? The worst mistake we can make is look at how cool I am. I fixed all your problems when all the problems were actually creative.

00:32:35:18 - 00:32:55:18
Robbie
In oh my God, imagine how I felt a couple more like 2 or 3 months ago. It was middle of summer and I did this project and I had this like, oh my God, I'm the worst feeling like it just it snuck up on me and stopped me in the face. So there was this interview with these these, these, like kind of panning tracks, track shots going like left to right, right.

00:32:55:20 - 00:33:22:18
Robbie
And every time the camera went to the right, this gigantic lens flare would come in and like, you know, take a pretty healthy contrast and just flatten the hell out of it and get everything kind of washed out. Right. So what did I do being the smart color or some like, well, keyframe that exposure. So it's not as drastic and it's not as heavy as when I don't even sit down with the client and they just look at it like flare.

00:33:22:20 - 00:33:38:12
Robbie
Where did where did the lens flare go? What do you mean? Well, it's still there. You see the ring right there? No no no no no. What. It was supposed to like the like you're supposed to get real flat and kind of washed out looking. Really? Yeah. Why do you think we shot it that way?

00:33:38:14 - 00:34:10:01
Joey
And that's one of those times where, like you said, we might not be like, okay, there's not a color space transform input purlins. Right? Obviously, the lens does not drastically affect what we are doing on the technical level. But if you get in that conversation with them. Yeah. Hey. Oh, we shot on lenses from 1935 to have a little bit of haze in them because we kind of wanted that this low contrast look, you can kind of start putting your detective hat on of what parts of the image were intentional and what parts of the image you need to enhance versus the enhance.

00:34:10:05 - 00:34:32:08
Robbie
And, and some of that. Sometimes it takes that interrogation process that I, that I was talking about. Right. So like if you're lucky enough to see, you know, on a higher end production, you might be able to lucky enough to see some test footage of some test shoots, do different lens, different camera systems, you know, you might say to yourself or ask the question to the client to interrogate them about this, why is this side of the frame so soft?

00:34:32:10 - 00:34:52:05
Robbie
Oh, you know, yeah, it's a good question. We were we were using these, you know, 1960s, you know, Russian lenses or something. And that's just what they do on the edge of the frame, right? They just get super soft. Oh, okay. Do you like that? Yeah I love it okay. No. So don't sharpen that. Don't enhance it. Like, you know, those, those kind of things.

00:34:52:07 - 00:35:10:08
Robbie
But from another technical thing I want to talk about is so if you get this pile of references hand it off. How do you how do you actually technically work with those as, as a colors. Right. And I think this is a little bit of, a can of worms. So I want to be careful about going too far in this.

00:35:10:08 - 00:35:32:01
Robbie
But, you know, I think you have to take references in how they arrive to you. Oftentimes, if you can't trace the chain of custody, if you will, on them. Right, you have to take them a little bit with a grain of salt. Right? Like if somebody is like, oh, I pulled this down from a website that's now defunct, but like there was a GIF of it or whatever, right?

00:35:32:01 - 00:35:50:12
Robbie
Or Jeff or whatever. I don't need that argument. Maybe that's not like you can't trust that 100% for tone and tonality and color and all that kind of stuff. So kind of the same way I feel about like the shot tech stuff, right? Like, I'm sure some of it's better than others, but it's like, okay, did this screenshot come from a DVD pull?

00:35:50:14 - 00:35:53:12
Robbie
You know, in 1993, like probably, yeah.

00:35:53:12 - 00:36:04:22
Joey
And then you kind of need to make a judgment call of are they looking at the reference in the context of the file they're looking at, or are they taking the reference in the context of I saw this in the theater and I really liked it.

00:36:05:04 - 00:36:28:07
Robbie
Yeah. So when I bring those references, you know, I first of all just look at them, you know, but if I decide that I need they're important enough to bring into resolve or whatever, I just need to be careful about a few things. Right? I need to be careful that, I'm maintaining the image integrity of that. Like, you know, that if I let's say I'm in a project wide project, right?

00:36:28:07 - 00:36:42:23
Robbie
And all of a sudden the transform is applied to that reference that makes, particular color to a wacky or whatever. Like, that's not reality. That's a mistake in how I was treating the reference. Right. So we have to be careful, careful of those kind of things as well.

00:36:42:23 - 00:37:07:06
Joey
We need to sanitize our inputs to a certain level. Right. And and that's also really helpful when you're having live sessions with the client to be able to pull up those references. So when your reference monitor, having converted them to whatever you're working color space is so they don't look extremely weird. And maybe having adjusted the sizing or cropped out any distracting screen grab problems, kind of sanitizing those inputs.

00:37:07:06 - 00:37:12:18
Joey
So you're really only thinking about the image can save you a lot of heartache and trouble down the road.

00:37:12:20 - 00:37:43:10
Robbie
Yeah, and I think the other the other thing that's useful to set up is that, you know, if it's going to be a project where, you know, you're relying heavily on the references and you're still trying to figure it out with the client, you know, setting up a timeline where you can whether it's, you know, through split screens, whether it's wipes, whether whatever technical way you want to do it, setting up a timeline that you can easily recall and pull those up specifically in that look setting session or like that initial discussion with the client before you, you know, trying to get to know them, that kind of stuff can be really, really, really, really

00:37:43:10 - 00:38:07:18
Robbie
useful. Like, I, a couple weeks ago when I was doing this, you know, I brought up a whole bunch of references, brought them up in selected clips, split screen so we could look at everything all at once and then like, oh, you're right, that we really didn't shoot this how we thought we did compared to these references, I get like, they the client to me, we get what you're saying now it is very different.

00:38:07:20 - 00:38:16:21
Robbie
Hold the hold the phone. We don't want it wholesale. We just want this sky or we just want this contrast or whatever, those kind of thing. So that can be, that can be super useful.

00:38:17:03 - 00:38:32:23
Joey
So when you the next thing I want to talk about because this I think is this is very related to this kind of technical idea of, okay, now that we've had the discussion with the client, we kind of have a much better idea of what the purpose of these references are. Yeah. How do we get into the technical nitty gritty of actually using them in a session?

00:38:33:01 - 00:38:59:21
Joey
And we talked about black point. White point in contrast, that's probably the most important, but also the most simply easy thing visually to look at. You can see it on your scopes, you can see it on the screen. Right. But where I think a lot of colors fall down, well, I've fallen down in the past. Is focusing too much on your kind of basic color balance lift, gamma gain, style of white balance adjustments, right?

00:38:59:21 - 00:39:21:11
Joey
Whereas the client might want a perfectly white balanced scene. And you do that and it looks still nowhere near the ecosystem of their reference, right? Even though if you got the exposure and the white balance to be dead notes. Perfect. So where do we go from there? You can't okay. If it's feeling less blue, you can't just white balance the whole thing.

00:39:21:11 - 00:39:49:19
Joey
Blue because we already looked out. The white balance is good right. So my go to and what I've I've talked a lot about this recently and I keep thinking more and more about it. I think it's just so important is thinking volumetric really about the colors of the image. And what I mean by that is the combination of three dimensional combination of hue, saturation and your level or luminance or luminosity, whatever you want to call density, whatever you want to call it.

00:39:49:19 - 00:40:13:06
Joey
Right. So you can have two images, perfectly white balance matched, where all the whites are kind of the same point. Contrast is the same, but they look drastically different. And that's when you need to start looking at okay, are the blues more magenta? How much magenta is there? Does the magenta push towards a pink or a blue? Does the yellow push towards a red or a more pure yellow?

00:40:13:06 - 00:40:38:09
Joey
Where's the green sitting right. If I'm looking at grass, is it more kind of reddish yellow. And I think you'll fine. I think you'll agree with me here. Most digital imaging of all of our life. Greens have much more yellow in them than you might initially think right when you first visually see it. So all of these things again, this is where I'm drawing my spiderweb of lines from the reference to the image.

00:40:38:09 - 00:41:01:16
Joey
Okay, here is two comparable blues. Guess what? They're totally different. I can use my volumetric controls like the color warper or the color slicer, or just basic hue versus curves to shape the three dimensionality of the color of the image into the world of the reference. So that is completely separate from your basic lift, gamma gain, color balance and your exposure adjustments.

00:41:01:18 - 00:41:22:10
Robbie
Listen, I mean, I think that one of the, one of the things I tend to do, and I would suggest to our audience too, is to be, you know, again, not urging to copy this, but from like a sort of knowledge forensic kind of point of view, right, is that if you get those references, run those references through image analysis, just like you would do any other shot that you're working on from scratch.

00:41:22:10 - 00:41:45:15
Robbie
Right? So load the reference up. Look at the waveform okay. Here's the black point. Here's the white point. Here's the contrast. Here's the color balance. And make some some notes about trends that you see in those and those references. Right. And that will and I agree with you about extending that volumetric and some of it, to be honest with you, you're never going to get perfect, right?

00:41:45:15 - 00:41:58:07
Robbie
Right. Like, you know, you don't know whatever. You don't know how it was set up to begin with. But I think that making some notes about some of those trends can be, can be can be helpful as well. And again, I want to get back to.

00:41:58:07 - 00:42:02:14
Joey
This because perfect is never the goal, right? A perfect copy is the exact opposite of what we want.

00:42:02:19 - 00:42:46:04
Robbie
I get really frustrated is not the right word. I just really kind of get every time I see videos, or articles about like, techniques to matching, you know, well-known bold looks and established things. All I can, all I can really think about is just sort of like, that's really, really kind of dangerous. Right. And and the reason, I mean, it's dangerous is not because like, whenever somebody's going to come after you and, you know, sue you for copyright or whatever, it's more of just like there is so much more that goes into kind of the look and feel and the mood and the design of a show.

00:42:46:06 - 00:43:10:16
Robbie
Then this one feeling about it, or this one shot about it. And you had mentioned this earlier, and I think this is a really, really important point about following references to far right, is that you might find the perfect shot in the film that just happens to to jive with that reference. Really, really, really similarly really really, really well.

00:43:10:16 - 00:43:43:00
Robbie
Right. And so you spend so much time dialing that in getting. Oh yeah. Look, this is exactly like this movie. You know, it's exactly like this. Exactly like that. Great. You get to the next scene and it all falls apart. Right. So my point about it, but my point about interpreting references is that one of the major things that I always try to do, and we talked about this in our look setting the session when we said, hey, it's a good idea to, you know, get, you know, 2 or 3 seconds from various scenes spread throughout the movie or whatever.

00:43:43:05 - 00:44:04:20
Robbie
And it's for this very reason, right? If I'm trying to emulate something that exactly, if I do it on that one shot that happens to take that look pretty close, and I think I'm all high on myself, like, this is great. You're setting yourself up for a really for a dangerous potential ality of that, just not working on the rest of the shots.

00:44:04:20 - 00:44:28:04
Robbie
And the film. Right. And so when I'm testing out and evaluating references, I'm also comparing that to various parts of the film. That might seem desperate, right? Like a indoor shot versus an outdoor shot, a sunset shot versus a night shot. Right. Because there is no film in the world that has a one size, all fit, all fit approach to the entire movie.

00:44:28:04 - 00:44:42:17
Robbie
It just it doesn't it doesn't happen. Right. There are there are changes to to make a scene work. And again, you might be in the family of that look in that feel, but copying it per se, you know, is a dangerous thing as far as I'm concerned.

00:44:42:19 - 00:45:15:01
Joey
And that's why, you know, just like we talked about trying out your look, setting on a variety of parts of a scene or a variety of parts of a film, this is one of those times where it's good to have a variety of references. Right? And just like we want to make sure our grade that we're doing is gonna work across the film, we want to make sure we're kind of incorporating the feel of everything the creative team has brought to us, not just focusing on, well, here's a frame from this movie.

00:45:15:06 - 00:45:44:03
Joey
I'm going to copy it to this frame, you know, and kind of the end of it for me is and I've been kind of talking about this silly line connecting diagram in my head thing. The way I kind of look at it is it is a almost a mathematical curve fitting exercise, at a great scale. Right. One set of inputs is all of the footage of the actual film.

00:45:44:08 - 00:46:12:08
Joey
Right. The other set of inputs is these references from the client. Then the third set of inputs is the conversations with the client. Right. You find the commonalities between those three things and you kind of mold this the shape in your mind of what that means for the look. And then what's important is, as you're applying that to the grade, to know how strongly you want to apply kind of the game of that curve fitting.

00:46:12:08 - 00:46:46:19
Joey
Right. So if you're making AA3 dimensional spiderweb of reference points of knowledge, right. How tightly do you adhere to it? You can tighten it too much and pull too hard on that. And then you start breaking shots and doing nasty things to the image. Yeah. So yeah, not to like overly nerd algorithm it out. Those are the things I'm seeing when I'm both looking at references and talking to clients and looking at my actual image, I want to see how those three things come together, the commonalities between all of them, and then how strongly to use that to mold my look.

00:46:46:21 - 00:47:16:11
Robbie
I mean, I think there's a lot of a lot of good stuff. I mean, this is like everything else that we do. This is one part scientist, one part, you know, magician and one part, you know, creative interpretation. Right? It's it's it is. You're never going to get it right. And I also one last point I want to say about this, that I think is important is that I have found over the years, the more that I insist on this process of references, the next time that I work with that client, it's better.

00:47:16:11 - 00:47:39:17
Robbie
And then the third time I work with that client, it's better, right? So clients like they need, just like other aspects of the finishing process, need to be educated. This is one where I just don't think it's necessarily sort of innate to a lot of people about what this means, what this process is. Right. And so the more that you can educate your clients, I think you'll find them getting better at this.

00:47:39:19 - 00:47:55:23
Robbie
The more that you work through the process with them and say, no, see, this is why I wanted this shot, because now I understand that you like, you know, you don't like any grain, and sky's got it cool. Like I'll never make that mistake again, like that kind of thing. Right. And they'll. And they'll get better at it.

00:47:55:23 - 00:48:15:03
Robbie
And, I find now, you know, with clients that I've worked with a lot, you know, some of that stuff just becomes second hand, right? Like, I know you love flat contrast. Because of the past six projects we've done, Black Point has been at 30% or something. You know, like, I get it now, right? I don't need a reference to that.

00:48:15:05 - 00:48:36:19
Robbie
But, you know, you'll find that the more you work with clients, the references start getting more nuanced and more specific to that project. At a certain point in time, you can forgo all the general contrast black point, white point, you know, kind of stuff. And really get into the very, you know, the minutia of what it is I like about this, right.

00:48:36:19 - 00:48:42:23
Robbie
That kind of thing, and then in its own way, is a challenge, but also also more fun sometimes too.

00:48:43:01 - 00:49:03:18
Joey
Yeah. I mean, it's again, it's one of those things where it's just like the more familiar you get with your client, the better it is for everyone. And you know, this is a great way. References in general are a great way, a great, low risk way of really feeling out your client's creative inclinations as well. That's always a good thing.

00:49:03:20 - 00:49:18:18
Robbie
Awesome. Well, this was a fun one. I always like talking about references. If you guys have any opinions on the matter, please, drop a comment. If you're watching this on YouTube, you can also, depending on the podcast platform, comment there. And of course, you can always head over to the offsetpodcast.com. Check out our whole library.

00:49:18:18 - 00:49:34:06
Robbie
We're nearing 50 episodes at this point. Our whole library of other episodes, including, some of the ones that we mentioned here, like the look setting episode. And if you do have some ideas for an episode, feel free to drop us a line over the offset podcast. We have a little submission button at the top. You can follow us on Facebook and Instagram.

00:49:34:07 - 00:49:51:05
Robbie
Of course, we're on YouTube and all those other major, platforms. So, real fun one here, I think, I think hopefully people get a little bit out of kind of the best way to evaluate these things and how to, how to move forward with references. And so, we'll be back in another two weeks for another phone episode.

00:49:51:05 - 00:49:53:11
Robbie
Until then, I'm Robbie Carman

00:49:53:13 - 00:50:01:13
Joey
And I'm Joey D’Anna, and yeah, thanks for listening.