EP026: Managing Client Review Sessions

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:12:02
Robbie
In today's episode of The Offset Podcast, we're talking about managing review sessions. Stay tuned.

00:00:12:04 - 00:00:30:16
Joey
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00:00:30:17 - 00:00:40:09
Robbie
Okay, welcome back to another installment of The Offset Podcast. I am one of your hosts, Robbie Carman, and that is Joey D’Anna. Hey, Joey. How are you, man?

00:00:40:11 - 00:00:41:02
Joey
Good. How are you?

00:00:41:07 - 00:01:12:00
Robbie
I'm good. Well, welcome to 2025. Our first recording session of 2025. This probably won't be the first episode released in the new year, but it feels good to be back. Back on the horse, doing some new episodes, for sure. Yep. So today we want to talk a little bit about something that we've been, if we're being completely honest, have have been percolating for a couple weeks or even probably a couple months on how to best present, because we were sort of thinking like, oh, we'll do something on remote reviews, we'll do something on in-person reviews.

00:01:12:00 - 00:01:28:22
Robbie
Then we were like, why not just combine these topics? So today we're going to be looking at sort of our top five ish. And I say ish because we always have a tendency to. Oh, yeah. One more thing. To add into the end of these, but sort of our top tips about sort of managing review sessions.

00:01:28:22 - 00:01:52:06
Robbie
And to be clear, those review sessions can be in person or sort of a traditional review session with clients attended in the room, or in the, you know, where we find ourselves today after the past, you know, five, six, seven years, where remote sessions have become more common for a lot of people. And by remote sessions, I mean, mainly I mean streaming sessions with somebody on the other end, streaming content to them.

00:01:52:08 - 00:02:21:14
Robbie
We'll, mix in some tips that are, germane to those kind of, review sessions as well. But of course, if you have any, things that we missed on our our list today, feel free to get in touch with us. You can always go over to the Office of podcasts.com, follow us on social media, or, if you follow us on YouTube, where we post the video versions of these shows, you can leave us a comment there as well with some additional things that might come to mind about management review sessions.

00:02:21:16 - 00:02:34:13
Robbie
All right. So, Joey, let's dive in and we'll start with, kind of your number one thing about reviewing, with clients, whether that's in-person or remote. And one more thing before we begin.

00:02:34:13 - 00:02:37:02
Joey
Actually, I, I was going to start on number five and go down.

00:02:37:04 - 00:02:52:13
Robbie
Hey, let's do it that way. I like that even better. We'll get we'll get we'll get to the best as as we as we as we wrap it up, I will also add one more thing that, you know, in the, in the top in the course of doing this, there's a lot of tangents that we can go down that touch other areas.

00:02:52:15 - 00:03:13:02
Robbie
Client communication, you know, rooms set up, there's a lot of other stuff. So if, something sounds a little more complex than we let on in this episode, chances are we might actually already have an episode on that. I'm thinking of an episode we have on Client communication. We have episodes on a room management. So go back to our library and check out some of those episodes, too.

00:03:13:02 - 00:03:21:09
Robbie
If you want a little deeper, dive on, on some of the things that we discussed today. So, with that said, Joey, kick us off for number five.

00:03:21:11 - 00:03:41:03
Joey
Yeah. So, you know, just to kind of talk generally when when we're doing review sessions, it's kind of the make or break moment for a project oftentimes. Right. So you really need to be on your game and you need to keep the client happy. You need to keep the session flowing. Right. You don't want them to be sitting there waiting.

00:03:41:05 - 00:03:59:21
Joey
You know, you don't want them to lose confidence in you. It's kind of a the real time aspect of it is a big challenge and offers a lot of pitfalls and places where you can go wrong. So that's kind of what we want to focus on today. And my I'm going to call it my number five. But these all, you know, have various levels of

00:04:00:02 - 00:04:03:11
Robbie
Hardest part of the session. Yeah. Hard trigger.

00:04:03:13 - 00:04:24:18
Joey
Is to be what I like consider 100% ready with the content of the show. Know the show or the project as well as you possibly can. And what I mean by that is your client's going to come in, having been with this project drastically longer than you. They know every character's name. They know every interview subject's name.

00:04:24:18 - 00:04:43:13
Joey
They know what order the scenes are in off the top of their heads. Right? So even if it means making some notes to yourself, writing down people's names, sitting there in advance before the session was watching the whole show down to refresh your memory. You want to be able to respond in real time to what the client says.

00:04:43:13 - 00:04:59:18
Joey
If the client says, hey, I feel like Jim Bob's interview from back there, you know, five 10s ago was looking a little red. You don't want to be like, who's that again? What's, you know, and then kind of scrubbing through the show, trying to find it. Now, granted, there's always going to be some kind of back and forth.

00:04:59:18 - 00:05:28:05
Joey
You're never going to know the content as deeply as a producer, director of the the film or, or project will, but the more effort you put in to be able to speak the client's language with referring to the content of their show, the more your session is going to move quickly, the more there's going to be less back and forth, and the more your client's going to have confidence in your abilities because you're really showing that you've taken some ownership of the project.

00:05:28:11 - 00:05:42:13
Robbie
Yeah, no, those are all great points and a couple. And I know you'll get to this a little bit about, some of your other things. But like one of the things that I like to do is, you know, when we we do we use a lot of groups because we work on a lot of docs and a lot of things with interviews and stuff.

00:05:42:15 - 00:06:04:04
Robbie
And we've joked about this in the past where, you know, I'm like, I name things like, you know, Red tie Guy or like Brown Hat Guy or whatever, you know, or, you know, blue Dress woman. And, you know, I think that goes to that same vein of what you're talking about, at least being able to quickly identify people like, one of the problems that I have, you pointed out was with, like, people's people and character names.

00:06:04:06 - 00:06:18:05
Robbie
I'm really bad at that. Like, and it's like a New Year's resolution this time around. I'd like to, to kind of go, okay, I got to really learn characters names because that happens to me all the time where clients like, oh, well, Jill said, I'm like, which one is Jill? You know, and.

00:06:18:06 - 00:06:36:07
Joey
And one quick tip for that, by the way, especially for docs, keep your clients graphics reference. Usually they'll send you a reference, whether it's to check your form or just to see the show with graphics on it, scroll through that. It'll probably have lower thirds telling you who people are, and you can use that to leave notes for yourself.

00:06:36:07 - 00:06:52:01
Robbie
Yeah. And and we'll get to this a little later. Some other uses of markers and stuff. But I do think the, the one you mentioned about like scenes and like knowing when acts start and end and quickly being able to navigate to those points. Great use of markers, or even playhead to just drop those, you know, drop those there.

00:06:52:01 - 00:07:11:19
Robbie
So when they say, hey, let's go back to the top of scene three or go to the, you know, the end of it's right at the end of act four or whatever, you can quickly navigate because as you said, you know, one of the things about a review session is it's kind of like the make or break thing, and you want to show competency that you know how to get around, how to navigate, how to find things, really quickly.

00:07:11:19 - 00:07:36:07
Robbie
So those those are really good. My, sort of bottom of the list thing, but again, not really in any particular order. Is this idea of modulating the small talk, and kind of like, being adjustable on your focus? And what I mean by this is that every set of clients that have ever had come in a room or jump on, you know, on a remote session has been a little different, right?

00:07:36:09 - 00:07:55:18
Robbie
Some people want to kind of, like, talk about the weather and sports and, you know, reading the world news or whatever for a few minutes to kind of break the ice. Others are way more serious and just want to, like, focus just on getting, whatever they need to get done, you know, and and being very serious about the show.

00:07:55:20 - 00:08:14:14
Robbie
And I think that takes a little while to learn, but you have to do it pretty quickly. And I think that one of the mistakes that I think a lot of people make is a lot more chitchat than might, might be necessary in the session. Right. And like, slowing it down. So what could take an hour to review ends up taking two hours.

00:08:14:16 - 00:08:34:07
Robbie
And I say this just because you know your clients and you have other things to do. So reading that room about what sort of the the, the the talking, the expectations or kind of what the vibe is like with kind of making it because it's a balance act. Right? You want to be familiar, you want to be comfortable, you want to make it relaxed.

00:08:34:09 - 00:08:57:01
Robbie
But at the same time, if you're like, oh, so tell me more about where your kid goes to college. Like, probably not all that germane to what you have to do that day in the room, right? So like trying to judge that and, and make it, you know, congenial and friendly, but at the same time, move things along and don't get caught up in a lot of, extraneous, chitchat would be one of my, one of my tips.

00:08:57:01 - 00:09:06:20
Robbie
And I and I only say this because, how should I say this? I'm a very chatty kind of guy. That it's gotten me in in trouble before, and it's one of those things that I know that I can improve on.

00:09:06:22 - 00:09:29:09
Joey
Yeah. And sometimes it goes the other way. Sometimes the clients are too chit chatty, and you need to kind of bring them back to focus. And part of that can also be kind of timing it. Right. Spread the chitchat around. So when you've got a render cash going you kind of bring up, oh, you know you mentioned such and such earlier and you're kind of you're you're formatting the time of the session to what suits the client best.

00:09:29:09 - 00:10:00:18
Joey
And that actually kind of takes me into my next thing, which is, you know, use markers and other notes to keep the session flowing. And what I mean by that is you don't want to get as bogged down in the details as you might if you were working on the show unsupervised. So a lot of times the client might have feedback of, hey, you know, this interview, the right side of her face needs to be windowed and tracked and adjusted, you know, and it might take some time to do that.

00:10:00:18 - 00:10:27:21
Joey
You know, drawing windows, tracking windows, doing key frame stuff like that. The client's really not going to be super interested in. So what I'll usually do is I try to be very honest with the client about this to them, like, hey, cool, let's do one shot of that. I'm going to leave myself markers and kind of when we're done with the first overall pass, let's go back and revisit those sections, and we'll leave markers for each one, and we can check them after we make it through our first watch down.

00:10:27:21 - 00:10:53:01
Joey
And the other thing in that same vein is when I'm watching the thing down, if I see something and it's not major, I'll just leave myself a marker. And when we get through, maybe an act, I'll be like, so what did you think of that to the client? Let them have an opportunity to mention anything that they didn't stop the play down for and then mention, hey, I noticed 1 or 2 spots where it was a little too bright.

00:10:53:01 - 00:11:16:14
Joey
I left myself markers. Let's go back and look at those real quick so you can kind of leave yourself markers in the timeline as you're going, and use that to, you know, spread out the duration of your work to keep the the live session flowing where you might not normally do that if you're working unsupervised, right. If you want to bog down, you know, you want to buckle down and focus on one problem.

00:11:16:15 - 00:11:41:04
Joey
You know, that's fine. If there's not a client sitting there waiting for the next bit of playback. Whereas if you leave yourself some markers and come back at the end of the session, it can really keep things moving and in that vein, I usually kind of make a version of my timeline for the review and clear it of any extraneous markers from previously in the process.

00:11:41:06 - 00:12:07:05
Joey
And then I kind of know I have a clean slate of markers related just to that review. You could also do that with color coding. If you didn't want to blow away all your markers, you could have like a color code of markers. Just further review, however you kind of feel best about organizing it, but really what you're doing is using markers, using notes to spread out the session so no one task is dominating the client's focus in time.

00:12:07:07 - 00:12:25:04
Robbie
Yeah. So a few things to unpack there. All good again, all great stuff. I 100% agree agree on the markers for things that you notice but don't want to bog things down or call attention to. You know, it might be, oh, you noticed, lower third was two frames over a cut point or something like that as you're watching down.

00:12:25:04 - 00:12:53:11
Robbie
Right. So just leave. Just leave a marker and be done with it. If you look at that, a lot of my markers are review sessions. They're exactly what you described earlier, where it's like, I'll do a marker and the marker will be called something like ripple to the rest or something like that, right where it's like, I'll, I'll try to execute the change in the fix, you know, visually as much as I can for the client, but then say, hey, every time you see this guy from here on out, it's not going to have the change yet because it's going to take me some time to ripple that down.

00:12:53:16 - 00:13:07:20
Robbie
And just that brief explanation goes, oh yeah, okay. So you're aware of it. You're going to make that fix. And inevitably there be like you get to a shot that, you know, like that's not fixed. Right. You know. Yep. Nope I'll ripple that from before and get that down. I just don't want to waste your time. We'll move that right along.

00:13:07:22 - 00:13:31:08
Robbie
And the marker color thing, too, I also do, I, I forget, I think it's white or cream or something. Whatever. The furthest right marker color is in the resolve Marker dialog box. That's the one that I always use for, for client notes. Because that way I can just really quickly filter my, my marker list and just show me all of the things that came up that day.

00:13:31:10 - 00:13:52:04
Robbie
I do like the idea of, you know, duplicating your sequence. I've, I've tend to not do that because it worries me about things like groups and render caches and and stuff like that. But if you're confident and you can test that out, that 100%, that's a, that's a those are all really good ones. My number four thing is a little nuance.

00:13:52:04 - 00:14:11:16
Robbie
And forgive me if it takes me a second to kind of like explain it fully. But I'm calling this anticipate tangents, pushback and problems. And I mean a few things by this. Right. So as you're going through a show, and everybody's probably had this experience that's watching your listening, you'll discover things that are problems, right?

00:14:11:16 - 00:14:28:04
Robbie
And those might be things that you knew the client knew about and told you about, or they might be things that you just discovered, like, oh, man, I'm seeing some banding on this wall. And it's just like, it's a problem, right? So I'm of two minds of this kind of thing. One, I call these kind of things out.

00:14:28:06 - 00:14:55:08
Robbie
As we're reviewing, if the fix is just magical and I need to buy some, good feelings in the room, right. So if I. If I have something that I'm like, God, man, I really knock this out of the park, I will show them that. Call it out before and after. But you have to be very careful about how you do this, because if you're like, I just saved your crappy project, that's not the vibe you want to go for in the room, right?

00:14:55:09 - 00:15:15:14
Robbie
But if you're like, hey, you know what? I noticed this problem. I don't know if you guys saw it. And I came up with a pretty good fix. What do you think? And kind of spin it positively. That can ingratiate yourself to a lot of people in the room. But the flip side of that is calling out things that might be already pain points and are like, yeah, Rob, we get it.

00:15:15:16 - 00:15:53:14
Robbie
We know that's a problem. We can't fix that. And all you're doing at that point is like twisting the knife in a little harder, right? So you have to be a little careful with that balancing point, that balancing act between, hey, I'm a hero and oh, hey, this is your crappy thing that we still can't fix, right? Related to that is I generally, you know, prior, when I'm doing my last washdown prior to you know, reviewing with the show, one of the marker types that I leave for myself is anticipation of hopefully they don't call this out, but I want to be aware of the problem.

00:15:53:14 - 00:16:13:09
Robbie
So I'll make a marker fully knowing that they're hopefully they won't call it out. But I leave those markers for myself and often with notes to be able to give a detailed explanation of what's going on at that point in time. If it's not there. Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa, what's going on there? I can be like, oh, yeah, thanks for noticing that.

00:16:13:11 - 00:16:33:10
Robbie
I actually had a note to myself again doing what you said earlier. Kind of making it. You're aware of the show, you're familiar with the show, and then go on to explain the problem. And I found that that that again, ingratiated yourself to, oh, you are looking out for us because you notice this problem, but, you know, don't call it out unless you really need to.

00:16:33:12 - 00:16:57:03
Robbie
And I think that's, that's one, kind of related thing that I think a lot of colors can do better for us. Included is, you know, don't go out of your way to call out problems, right? Like if if it's something that's noticeable, they'll say something. If it's not something you notice, totally fine. Just you knowing about it, fixing it, you know, independently and moving on kind of thing.

00:16:57:05 - 00:17:18:21
Joey
Yeah. Agreed. And, you know, a lot of times sometimes you kind of feel, oh, I want some some extra glory here. And to be the hero, but you don't want to do that at the expense of being condescending or insulting, even though I, I know you most people that that fall into this trap, myself included, never plan for it to come off that way.

00:17:18:22 - 00:17:19:07
Robbie
Right?

00:17:19:10 - 00:17:22:10
Joey
But sometimes it does. So just kind of.

00:17:22:12 - 00:17:43:12
Robbie
Well, yeah. Like if you I mean, I see, I see, you know, if you look at, you know, sometimes I read like forum stuff. Right. And everybody's, you know, moaning about, you know, eight bit cameras and, you know, crappy codecs or whatever, like when you're in the color suite doing a review of your final color, like you're not going to be able to solve all the production problems that were brought along the way.

00:17:43:16 - 00:17:59:12
Robbie
And chances are the client already knows about it. So like if you can improve those things, great. But you don't have to stand up and go, look at me, I'm awesome. I fix your problem. And because the opposite, you know, the opposite effect is you just make them feel worse about the problem that they probably already know about, and.

00:17:59:18 - 00:18:01:01
Joey
Then they're going to hyper focus on it.

00:18:01:02 - 00:18:04:05
Robbie
Totally 100%, 100%. All right.

00:18:04:07 - 00:18:31:09
Joey
Next in my list is set up your project, your node tree, your timeline. However, you feel like working to make comparisons easy for the client. And what I mean by that is you always want to be in a position to say, this is where we started, this is where we are with your change. And I don't mean this is the original footage, this is the grade now.

00:18:31:09 - 00:18:57:00
Joey
I mean, we watched it down. You said make it a little bit warmer. Here it is on and off. Just that change. Just that one change. Because that can allow the client to focus on exactly what their feedback is at that moment. And you can dial in that change. And then in most cases, the way I do this is I have blank nodes in my node tree for this reason.

00:18:57:05 - 00:19:26:17
Joey
So I'll use one of my blank nodes. And I make sure not to touch during my normal first past grade on supervised. And I'll do all the changes for one node, basically one piece of feedback on a single node. So I can toggle that node on and off. The great thing about that technique is that you can then take that change and copy and paste it to other shots, and it will for the most part, unless that shot is drastically different work.

00:19:26:19 - 00:19:44:22
Joey
So it's kind of two birds with one stone. It makes managing your changes easier, but it also makes it really easy to communicate the before or after of a subtle change with your client. Because we've heard the stories a million times, where you're tweaking your adjusting and then you kind of go back to your original, the client's like, oh yeah, that's better.

00:19:44:22 - 00:20:06:10
Joey
I like it because all of this is so subjective. And switching between the grade being on the grade, being off the previous shot, the next shot and jumping back and forth can really kind of throw both your eyes and the client's eyes kind of out of focus a little bit. And it's very easy to trick yourself into thinking that this change is working when it's not.

00:20:06:12 - 00:20:22:13
Joey
And it's very easy to overdo a change because you want to see that big shift, right? So being able to isolate each change, whether that's with nodes, whether that's with versions, you know, there's a bunch of different technical and logistical ways to do it in whatever software you're using.

00:20:22:17 - 00:20:26:23
Robbie
But if we talking about a lot of that stuff in our in our grade management episode, I was going to talk about is that for.

00:20:26:23 - 00:20:27:13
Joey
Sure.

00:20:27:15 - 00:20:56:16
Robbie
Those kind of techniques? Yeah. I think what I really hear you saying is like, you know, build it out whether it's versions, nodes or whatever. So you're not painting yourself into a corner because the worst feeling that you have is that besides being able to demonstratively show something is you don't also want to go, oh, well, I did 27 steps and now we just want to go backwards and kind of work is like that can be again, confidence a a confidence destroyer if you have like well I just overrode everything we did crap.

00:20:56:16 - 00:20:59:14
Robbie
Now like I can't get back to the original.

00:20:59:16 - 00:21:17:03
Joey
Yeah. And that's why I also I tend to discourage the use of the previous meme button, which will toggle between your current pile of changes to the whole node tree and what the shot was when you entered it. Yeah, because if you do that a couple times and you make a couple more changes, then you do that a couple times, you make a couple more changes.

00:21:17:08 - 00:21:35:05
Joey
It can kind of get to the point where you lose your original. Yeah. And you might not want that and then you might end up reinventing the wheel. So I like to split it out two nodes. Like like we said, you could use versions. There's a number of other techniques. The main focus here is make comparisons easy for both.

00:21:35:06 - 00:21:46:03
Joey
You and the client. Because again, you want to be able to keep that session moving. You don't want to spend time tracking okay. This ten step minute detail of the changes I made to this individual shot.

00:21:46:05 - 00:22:05:05
Robbie
Yeah, I can't I can't agree more. It's actually kind of funny because my my third thing on my list, is also about making things visual. And I'm going to explain it slightly different. I, I look at this as making explanations and choices visual. Right. Because I think about a review. What's the benefit of having a review session?

00:22:05:05 - 00:22:25:08
Robbie
Right. Is that you have that communication in, in that dialog, with your clients about what they like and what they don't like. And if you're trying to do that in a purely conversational way, or do it, you know, worst case, you know, text or, you know, email or something like that, it can get really convoluted. It can get really hard to explain.

00:22:25:08 - 00:22:45:06
Robbie
And you might mean something super simple, but it gets really misunderstood, right? So what I try to do every time I have clients in the room and it's kind of riff on what you were saying, is to make things as visual as possible. Right. And so let's just say that I'm making a change to somebody's skin tone.

00:22:45:06 - 00:23:05:21
Robbie
Right? And maybe I'll, you know, I tend to do this. You could do this with nodes, but I tend to do this with versions because of about to explain. So let's say, you know, they go I don't know. This person looks terrible. So you do you push them more warmth or red or whatever into their face. Right. Then you do another version where you maybe, you know, a little more, a little less magenta or whatever it is you got, you end up with 2 or 3 versions, right?

00:23:05:23 - 00:23:24:07
Robbie
What I like to do in those situations is I love to use split screens with versions, so I can just simply because I output sassy, I, I can simply bring up real quick, here's one, two and three. Which one do you like the best and have them literally point at the monitor? This is the one that I like the best, right?

00:23:24:09 - 00:23:41:03
Robbie
By the way, this is also a great technique. If you're doing something like short form, like a spot or something that might have, a really heavy handed kind of grade or look to it, you can do those various heavy handedness and inversions and just bring that up and look at it also that this is a great example.

00:23:41:03 - 00:24:09:04
Robbie
I'm sure you you've been in this situation, I know you have and others have been to where you watch another show and be like, you know, just the flow of the show, kind of like what's around something. And somebody might go, you know, this interview, he looks a whole lot warmer in this interview. Well, instead of having to go like, no, it's really the same, I promise when I go off and do is just like, I'll use split screens again in the group mode and bring up the whole group and be like, see, he's the exact and he or she is the exact same throughout the show.

00:24:09:06 - 00:24:32:08
Robbie
What's bothering you is the stuff around it and the flow in and out of it. Like we can adjust that. But every chance that I get to demonstratively show somebody. And by the way, that's another great reason. In review, this is kind of tangential, but in a review session, a lot of the stuff they turn off in the UI while I'm working by myself, I actually turn back on for review sessions.

00:24:32:08 - 00:24:55:19
Robbie
Right. So things like on screen windows and stuff like that. Because you know what? It's so awesome to watch a window tracking around somebody's face for a client to see, oh my God, you can track that that fast. And then does it morphs and all sorts stuff. Or like when you're pulling a key right to like have that key output going on to the monitor so they can see or like see I'm just selecting this, you know, his shirt right here or whatever.

00:24:55:19 - 00:25:18:12
Robbie
Right. All of that kind of interactivity and visual ness in a session serves a couple purposes. It keeps the room going and flowing because everything's changing and nothing's getting static. You always have something cool to look at, be it kind of instills confidence that you more or less know what you're doing with the software to get the results that are being requested of you.

00:25:18:13 - 00:25:35:14
Robbie
And then third, where I started this off, it just makes it much easier for the client to go. Yes. That one. No, that one, this is bad, that is bad, and so on and so forth. And you can do this in a number of ways. I mentioned versions, split screens are a great way of doing this. And, you know, wiping split screens on and off.

00:25:35:16 - 00:25:53:01
Robbie
I've even done it before with like, you know, some of these bothered by like the flow. They're like, oh, this one seems brighter or not, I'll just on a new node, desaturate the whole, you know, all those shots, right? And just watch it back in black and white and they go, oh that's so much easier now for me to see what you're talking about with, you know, those kind of things.

00:25:53:01 - 00:26:05:21
Robbie
So my my point here, make it visual. Make those choices visual. And not only can you have a conversation about that, you can more likely extract what you need from the client and their opinion much faster.

00:26:05:23 - 00:26:25:14
Joey
Yeah. And for me, we've joked about this before. I personally don't like the split screens. I don't know why. They just kind of. Yeah, I just, I don't know, I visually don't I don't really respond to them well, but what I use a lot is play heads to jump between similar shots or something that a lot of people don't realize you can do.

00:26:25:20 - 00:26:45:21
Joey
Right click on any clip in the thumbnail graph and wipe to timeline. Clip. You don't need to grab it. Still, you can always wipe to a clip in your timeline. So if they're like, how does this compare to that set up from earlier in the scene, you can just grab it, wipe to that timeline clip without having to bother losing your spot in the timeline.

00:26:46:02 - 00:27:04:17
Robbie
And to add on to that, and I know what I'm about to say is going to get a lot of eye roll eye rolls from a lot of colors, right? But it's something good to have in your back pocket. And what I mean by that is so a lot of a lot of people, yourself included, when you bring in a reference, you tend not to bring it in as a reference file.

00:27:04:17 - 00:27:22:05
Robbie
You bring it in as a regular file so you can drop it on a timeline, you know, and do like, you know, different modes and stuff like that. One great reason to bring your reference clip in as a reference clip is that on your panel, you can actually choose that as part of the white mode when it's a reference clip.

00:27:22:07 - 00:27:48:09
Robbie
So I've had this situation where like, you know, well, it was so much better in the reference file or whatever, and I'm like, oh really? Watch my finger reference mode. And I go, oh yeah, that's not you're right. Yours is better, you know, whatever. But like that's also a good thing to like, you know, when you're dealing with like final, final reviews and dealing with nuances like spelling lower third identificato like to really quickly be like, oh, I'm sorry, that matches the reference.

00:27:48:09 - 00:27:54:06
Robbie
And then like, really? Bam, bring up the reference with the text on it and they go, yeah, yeah, you're right, that's a mistake.

00:27:54:08 - 00:28:16:13
Joey
And in the same vein, if you're doing anything advertising product, this kind of goes back with where I started with being 100% ready. Yeah. If you have references for brand colors, if you have examples of products, if you have client photography of products, you know, have those in stills ready to go and have things like your scopes with targets set up to the brand colors.

00:28:16:13 - 00:28:38:21
Joey
So you could be like, yeah, okay, here's the brand color overlaid. You know, we were trying to keep people's wardrobe kind of close to that. You can see where it compares to your actual brand color on the screen. And just having that at a moment's notice is part of the preparation that I think is really important. And the next thing on my list track your changes.

00:28:38:21 - 00:28:44:09
Joey
I know everything I seem to say in this is all about leaving markers and taking notes.

00:28:44:11 - 00:28:45:19
Robbie
Organized, you know, saying we're going to you.

00:28:45:19 - 00:29:17:09
Joey
Know, earlier I talked about using markers to make sure you come back to things. Tracking your changes is similar to that, except you need to know where you skipped ahead. And you said, okay, I'm going to come back to this later. You need to be extra sure that when you go back and you go through those changes, and this might even happen after the client leaves, just double check that you have been consistent and you've gotten every instance where that change needs to be made.

00:29:17:11 - 00:29:38:12
Joey
If that change needed this to be adjusted, shot to shot, you've done that. Everything flows nicely. You need to be able to make sure. And if this is using markers, taking notes for yourself, whatever. Basically any time that you've kind of kicked the ball down the road in the session saying you're going to come back to it later, which as we said, is a great way to keep the session moving.

00:29:38:14 - 00:30:02:01
Joey
It's also a dangerous way to let something fall through the cracks. So just like we want to keep the session moving by not focusing on those things after everything is said and done. When you've gotten creative, sign off on everything. Whether or not the client is still there for this process or not, you want to go through and make sure all those changes you made still flow, still work.

00:30:02:07 - 00:30:26:03
Joey
Don't need any additional shot to shot adjustments and didn't miss any spots or I forgot to track it on this one shot. Or I left a window open on this one shot. You know, just go in and take the extra time at the end to make sure all of the little changes you made in the heat of the real time session are as good and accurate and finished as they can be.

00:30:26:05 - 00:30:48:07
Robbie
Yeah. And I'll tack on to that there. Oftentimes that level of tracking changes, leaving notes to yourself might not even be about stuff that you actually have to do in the grade. Right. So it might be stuff like, you know, waiting for a new lower third render from the Mo graph person to insert or whatever. Or, actually, you know, stock clip not approved.

00:30:48:12 - 00:31:11:02
Robbie
Waiting for a swap out, with a better higher res version or something like that, like all of those kind of things. And I agree with you. It's about making sure that things don't fall through the cracks. But it's not always necessarily about your grade. Like a lot. Well, I think a lot of colorists will find themselves at the end of the pipeline, them having to they're the ones who are doing packaging and delivery and so on and so forth.

00:31:11:07 - 00:31:35:00
Robbie
So you just want to make sure that all the other ancillary stuff doesn't fall through the cracks. Like, you know, tracking final credits is the is the classic example of this, right? You know, knowing that like, okay, we're on version 37 of the credits or this is, you know, we do a lot of deliverables for networks where there's a linear broadcast version and there's like a digital version and elements sometimes differ between those two.

00:31:35:00 - 00:31:46:21
Robbie
Right. And like making notes of that kind of stuff. So you can ensure that things are, you know, correct. Or you know, slates have been updated, whatever it may be. All those kind of things are really important.

00:31:46:21 - 00:32:10:22
Joey
I can't and one cool thing that I haven't dug into much yet, because I think it's new for just 19.1 of resolve, is there is some new options in there for coloring nodes automatically based on the user who made the change, and if the node has changed. So that could be a kind of cool way to verify. Okay, I'm done with my review with the client.

00:32:10:23 - 00:32:27:15
Joey
I'm going to go through the shots and look at any nodes that are colored a particular way, based on the settings I set with these new features, and use that to double check and make sure nothing fell through the cracks. Yeah, I haven't yet myself, but it's something to look for in the release notes of the latest software because it's a cool new feature, I think.

00:32:27:15 - 00:32:50:18
Robbie
Yeah. Agreed. Agree. All right. My, my next thing is, ensure the technology works and is tested. Okay. And this is operates on a few different levels. Right. So let's the first case scenario is you have sessions, you know, clients in doing a session in the room and they're sitting there with you right. So you want to make sure obviously things like audio is in sync.

00:32:50:20 - 00:33:10:21
Robbie
Your monitors calibrated showing the right color space and, you know, gamma and all that kind of stuff. Right. But it's also a more mundane things like, hey, make sure that, you know, the Wi-Fi password is accessible, to the client so they can easily get on online to do whatever they need to do. That they know that, you know, where the key or the code is for the bathroom.

00:33:10:21 - 00:33:29:08
Robbie
You know, all of those kind of little, like, quality of life things to make sure that that stuff works. Right. One thing I often stress to people in review sessions, you know, we're we're different beast. We're so comfortable working in dark, dimly lit rooms that we can, like, see anything in the dark. Right? Clients aren't like that.

00:33:29:08 - 00:33:50:23
Robbie
Right? So one of the things I always make sure is set up and working properly is spotlighting for a client so they can turn on a light somehow look at it, you know, a sheet of paper or their laptop or whatever, and do so confidently. So making sure that works in, you know, regards to a remote streaming session, this is even more vital than, than, than I can I can stress, right.

00:33:50:23 - 00:34:13:11
Robbie
Making sure okay, here's the correct password, here's the service. Here's the link. The room is open. The stream is open. They don't need to log in or whatever. All those steps that are involved in there. One extra thing. Two or I guess 2 or 3 extra things that I do for remote streaming sessions. One, I try to replicate the remote streaming session setup.

00:34:13:15 - 00:34:35:16
Robbie
So that often means putting an iPad or a laptop or something on the desk with me. Having that set up to see what the stream looks like. This is important for a couple reasons. One, it lets you spot any quality problems or dropouts or anything that that might be happening on the stream. Two there's, you know, no streaming service is 100% real time, right?

00:34:35:21 - 00:34:56:21
Robbie
You're going to get frames, maybe even a second or two delay. And knowing, whether, you know, kind of judging where abouts that level of delay is from what a client might be seeing is super useful, especially when you're if you're doing something a little more fast, like a music video or promo or something where the timing might be off, it's good to see what the client is kind of seen, too.

00:34:56:23 - 00:35:17:10
Robbie
And then I would also just say the same thing is germane to like, the, the communication part of the client, like making sure that, okay, they're on the zoom, we're not getting feedback from the speakers into the zoom or to whatever other platform you're using. Just make sure all of the technology works. And that's even true about your workstation, right?

00:35:17:12 - 00:35:35:07
Robbie
I can't tell you how many times I've done something like, oh, I thought I rendered cash this whole thing last night before I came in and sat down to watch the show. And, you know, like, that can be kind of embarrassing. Be like, before we watch the show. Sorry I messed up. We have to wait an hour because I have to recast the show.

00:35:35:07 - 00:35:54:03
Robbie
Right? Like all of those things, what I tend to do is, you know, the day or two before, you know, the day before review session, make sure you know everything's up and running in the room, streams working, whatever. But like I'll remove. I'll remote in even if it's at the office, for example, I'll remote in. Okay, double check that the render cache is done.

00:35:54:03 - 00:35:57:23
Robbie
Let me make a file back up. You know, the night before, like all those kind of. Hold on.

00:35:57:23 - 00:36:02:14
Joey
Hold on, hold on. That's my number one. My number one coming up is make a file render.

00:36:02:18 - 00:36:13:03
Robbie
I love it okay. So riff on that for a segue. But do you see where I'm saying like make sure that all technology mic technology works and let's go into your, your top thing. You're your, have a backup.

00:36:13:03 - 00:36:36:18
Joey
I will add one more thing to your technology point, because it is so important when you're dealing with remote sessions, remote streaming. I think a lot of people don't think about this, but there's so much crap running on computers, especially production computers these days Dropbox, Google Drive, Backblaze, sync, all these things. If you know something might be a background bandwidth hog.

00:36:36:19 - 00:36:59:18
Joey
Pause that. Yep. You know, be aware of everything that's going on bandwidth wise with your connection because, you know, if Dropbox halfway through your session, somebody posted something and now starts syncing, guess what? Your client could be getting dropouts because your computer is now focused on that, or some other computer on your network is focused on that. So that's just one technology thing to check.

00:36:59:18 - 00:37:29:07
Robbie
So actually I actually want one more thing there. And I know I know this is going to give you a major eye roll. Avoid the temptation to roll your eyes at me about this right. But call it OCD or whatever. I tend to restart my computer the day, the day before, or a couple hours before the review session because I have seen strange things go on with machines that, like just a simple restart, will fix.

00:37:29:09 - 00:37:43:20
Robbie
I know you have definitive feelings about computers, don't need to be restarted, but that's the side point. I tend to also just kind of restart a computer before a reset, review session, just to make sure that any gremlins in the box that might be there have been flushed out.

00:37:43:22 - 00:37:50:03
Joey
If your box is known to have gremlins that are solved by restarting, that's a great idea. None of mine have, though.

00:37:50:03 - 00:37:52:02
Robbie
Of course not. Of course.

00:37:52:04 - 00:38:20:00
Joey
But yeah, like I said, my final number one tip and the reason I wanted to record this episode, actually, because this happened to me last week, literally last week, I was doing a review in person with a client, hourlong documentary, pretty heavy grades, a lot of render caching. And the first thing I did when the client came in, I made one accidental change on the timeline level hit undo.

00:38:20:01 - 00:38:46:14
Joey
No harm, no foul. Right. My secrets was fine. All my render cache is just gone. Gone. So no matter what, if it's a 32nd spot, if it's an hour long film, if you're about to walk into a critical supervised review session, render out a master of your current grade as it sits. And what I'll usually do is I will put that as the top layer in my timeline.

00:38:46:16 - 00:39:10:22
Joey
So when I'm playing down, I'm watching a render done file. I have no risk of dropped frames, of issues, of technical stuff getting in the way. I'm just looking at the render and then if I need to make a change, I'll real quick on the slide, go in and drop the clip above it, in the timeline. Or if you don't want to actually drop in your timeline, you want to keep your whole timeline live.

00:39:11:00 - 00:39:31:17
Joey
This is one of those cases where either I can do what you mentioned earlier, grab that rendered clip as a reference, and then just play down the reference and then switch. Yeah, real quick if I need to make a change or sometimes I'll just keep it in the source view in the timeline and gang my source and record viewers however you want to manage it.

00:39:31:19 - 00:39:52:21
Joey
Having a backup plan for when something goes wrong and your timeline won't play. What if today you know, or yesterday your timeline was playing in real time? No problem. And you didn't see the need to render, cache it and today you lost a drive in your raid and things are a little bit slower. And now it's not playing real time, right?

00:39:52:23 - 00:39:58:18
Joey
Having that baked file will completely save the entire session.

00:39:59:00 - 00:40:22:21
Robbie
I'll add on to that the backup DRC, or DRP is another one that can really save you. I had a I had a situation a couple weeks ago. I could not for the life of me figure out why the timeline that I was working on was all of a sudden fubar. I mean, like, I mean, it looked like somebody had, you know, color boosted, you know, times ten on 20 different nodes, everything.

00:40:22:23 - 00:40:43:19
Robbie
Like I was clearly something was screwed up and I realized what had happened. I later but in the heat of the moment, I could not troubleshoot it fast enough because I was, you know, scattered right eyes looking on me. When are you going to get this fixed? And I had essentially, you know, in that little checkbox for a sequence to use project settings or use the individual timeline settings.

00:40:43:19 - 00:41:06:14
Robbie
Right. I had unchecked project settings somehow, and now I was using like Rec 2020, gamma 2.6 or something like that on the timeline. I'm like, what the hell is going on? How to back up from the night before the review session where I didn't had hadn't check that box, didn't have to, you know, sweating bullets, trying to figure out what was going on, just restored the project.

00:41:06:14 - 00:41:29:07
Robbie
Everything was back to normal. And, you know, everything was good. But, you know, I would have been I would have been scrambling and, like, really, really, really trying to figure out what was going on with eyeballs watching me if I hadn't had that drop back up. So, you know, this is just common sense, you know, just have backups of stuff before something big, you know, next big event in a project happens.

00:41:29:09 - 00:41:38:03
Robbie
But yeah, it can, you know, we say it like it's this conceptual thing, but it can actually come, you know, to pay, you know, dividends. Sometimes, you know.

00:41:38:04 - 00:41:49:04
Joey
Like I said, I mean, I saved myself in our almost two, maybe two hours or render caching with a client sitting there twiddling their thumbs because I hit the wrong button on the first shot, right?

00:41:49:06 - 00:41:49:15
Robbie
Totally.

00:41:49:20 - 00:42:03:07
Joey
And, you know, it's just one of those things where it's like, you don't want to have to use it because there's a little bit more of a hassle to maybe play down a bake versus playing down your active timeline. But having as many backup solutions to it, it's.

00:42:03:07 - 00:42:06:22
Robbie
Like it's like it's like the Boy Scouts, you just, you know, come prepared. That's like really.

00:42:06:22 - 00:42:07:08
Joey
What it.

00:42:07:10 - 00:42:30:06
Robbie
Really what it's about. All right. So my, my last thing kind of riffs on I have a bonus thing, but so I'll throw these together in kind of the same, the same light. But my number one thing is have clearly defined goals for the session. Right. And you know what I mean by this. Is that like, okay, is this, in-process review or is this a final review?

00:42:30:12 - 00:42:49:05
Robbie
Are we going to be making further changes down the line? My posting another screener for you after this to look at and make more comments like just to understand, like what we have to do, like do we have to, you know, get sign off on everything today and it's perfect. Or are we iterating from here on out. And this was just like, you're checking it out, giving me notes.

00:42:49:07 - 00:43:15:08
Robbie
We're going to come back together or I'm going to post something on frame or something like that. But it's even more specific than that, right? So like I'll sensibly you're there to review color, right? And make sure you're happy with the color. But sometimes, especially on long form projects, narratives, you know, feature length docs, it can be, tremendous amount to chew off in a single day to review a two hour film in the way that a two hour film should be reviewed.

00:43:15:08 - 00:43:36:15
Robbie
Right? So sometimes it's like, hey, you know what? Let's just go through here and make sure all the interviews look the way that you want, right. And get that done. Or it might be let's of that, let's do a pass where we're just evaluating the grain on everything. Or like maybe, you know, you're doing something where you're treating a lot of sky, sky replacements, grabs in the skies, etc..

00:43:36:17 - 00:43:56:09
Robbie
Let's do I'll do a group with all sky shots. Let's go through all those sky shots and make sure that they're correct. Right. Same thing with stock shots. Do we have these all approved like well I don't care what it is, but having clearly defined goals and steps and then as we talked about throughout this episode, have the organizational ability to quickly show those things.

00:43:56:11 - 00:44:19:07
Robbie
Can, you know, you just keep checking things off the list, check like because I think if you sit down in front of a session, you're like, oh, we have a two hour film that we have to review the entirety of in all aspects. It can be really intimidating, but if you go into it going, okay, yeah, this check that, check that check and break it down into smaller chunks that you get the client to understand and buy off, it can be like, no, dude, we're done with that.

00:44:19:07 - 00:44:38:22
Robbie
Like, we don't have to go back and revisit that. We already looked at that. We're good. Let's keep moving on. That can be that can be great. And then likewise, I think it's important to have a post review plan right? Like, okay, we just executed a whole lot of changes here. I would feel better if I gave you a new file to look at.

00:44:39:04 - 00:45:00:02
Robbie
You know, you don't have to watch the whole thing down per se, but just scan through, make sure everything we talked about was covered and like, do those things that are going to kind of cover your butt from the client business point of view. Post review that the client's like, hey, I just need to look at those five shots one more time, or whatever it may be, have a post review plan as well.

00:45:00:04 - 00:45:16:23
Robbie
And that can kind of pay you dividends that like, so you know, the situation nobody wants to be in as you do a review session, you think it's great. And then five days later they go, I don't know. Right. So trying to head that kind of thing off at the pass, where you have, you know, hey, we went into this with clearly defined goals.

00:45:17:03 - 00:45:24:16
Robbie
We left this thing with clearly defined goals. You signed off on those goals. We've done what we're supposed to do. Everybody's happy kind of thing.

00:45:24:18 - 00:45:52:18
Joey
Yeah. And that, you know, a lot of the stuff we talked about in this episode has been about those communication methods. Yeah, not just the technical stuff of how to manage all of these different changes. Everything else. The communication with the client matters so much when you're doing a review session and you kind of like we started out with, it is the make or break for a project, and you could have done the absolute most amazing grade.

00:45:52:21 - 00:46:21:02
Joey
You could have done just intricate, perfect work that in general, the client might have been absolutely in love with and been super happy with, with maybe a couple changes here or there and you can grenade that goodwill in a supervised review session very, very quickly. So hopefully some of these tips and techniques can kind of keep your review sessions moving and keep that interaction with your client in a positive way.

00:46:21:02 - 00:46:37:06
Joey
So, you know, not only are you doing a great grade for them, they're leaving the end of the process happy and confident because the worst thing you ever want is an unhappy client or a client that's not confident with the creative finish of their project.

00:46:37:08 - 00:47:02:14
Robbie
This you, but you hit it on the head, man. This time that you spend with your clients, whether it's in person or not, is a showcase of your work and efforts on a project. But it's also that place where you earn, trust. You earn, respect you earn, you know, all of those intangibles that will pay off not only in the project you're in, but hopefully, in future projects for people to coming back.

00:47:02:14 - 00:47:26:16
Robbie
I mean, like, I've had clients over the years say to me, like, you know, especially in clients, you know, sessions with like, you know, you know, agency types or a lot of people in the room, you know, people like your management of the session. Dealing with all the personalities is why I come back to you. Like, you might not be the best colorist in the world, but like, you're able to handle this flow and these these, you know, these people in the room like that is part of it.

00:47:26:16 - 00:47:51:09
Robbie
And it's just like you can be the most technically proficient colorist, but managing review sessions, making it visual, making it interactive, managing the communications. Yeah, is obviously a very key part of the game. So Joey, I really like this episode. I think a lot of good. A lot of the good tips to share, as we said at the top, if anybody if you're watching this on YouTube or listening to this on major, streaming platforms, you can, you know, give us some feedback.

00:47:51:11 - 00:48:09:00
Robbie
Either in comments on YouTube or you can head over to offsetpodcast.com, and add some comments there, where we also have the ability to submit ideas for new episodes. We're trying to do, more user submitted shows, in 2025. So if you have some, things that you want us to cover, please go there and check it out.

00:48:09:01 - 00:48:22:17
Robbie
And of course, you can follow us on social media, on Facebook and Instagram. Just search for the Show The Officer podcast. So good stuff. Joey, I really like this one that hopefully, everybody out there does too. So for, the offset podcast, I'm Robbie Carman.

00:48:22:19 - 00:48:30:15
Joey
And I'm Joey D’Anna. Thanks for listening.