The Journey to Starting a Boutique Color Facility with Rob Bessette

On the ninth episode of Color & Coffee, we chat with Rob Bessette, Senior Colorist from Color Refinery.  He shares his humble beginnings in post-production, his foray into color grading, and how dabbling with dailies color changed the way he looked at the craft. Next, Rob shares with us what led him to leave his comfortable position as a staff colorist to start his own facility, Color Refinery, along with some of the challenges he encountered along the way.  Grab you favorite cup of joe (or tea) and get ready for an fascinating episode of color discussion! 

Links:
Color Refinery
Advanced Panel New Key Caps (for the curious)

Guest Links:
IG - https://www.instagram.com/robsbessette/
Color Refinery IG - https://www.instagram.com/color_refinery/

PixelTools
Modern Color Grading Tools and Presets for DaVinci Resolve 

Transcript

0:00:00 
For me. That was an interesting experience for me to see. We'll never get there unless you go there, and then you can always dial it back. That's one thing that I see now with people who ask me what do I do, how do I get into this industry and what do I? It's like break it, break it, break it, break it, and then you can always fix it. But if you don't break it, you won't know how far you can push it. 

0:00:57 
Hi and welcome to Color and Color. I'm Jason Bowdach and I'm your host for this week. We'll sit down with some of the most talented and creative colorists in the industry and have a chat from one colorist to another. We'll share their stories, their insights and, of course, their beverage of choice. Whether you're a seasoned colorist or just getting started out in the industry, join us for some great colorist chat. So strap in, grab your mug. You're listening to Color and Coffee. Today, I'm excited to have a great chat with senior colorist Rob Bessette from the Color Refinery. Welcome to the show, rob. Hey, thanks for having me. First and foremost, I have to ask you what are you drinking today? 

0:01:43 
I'm keeping it pretty simple Just a bottle of water. That's kind of how I roll, Not really a coffee guy, and I understand that's kind of counterintuitive to what's going on with the title of your show, but yeah just straight water. 

0:01:56 
We were having a little bit of a chat before the show, but actually I have a nice tasty glass of water right here. So I can completely appreciate that we may be theoretically caffeine addicts in this industry, but it's great to hear that not everybody is chowing down on the coffee like myself here. So, rob, tell me a little bit about some of the dailies work that I've seen you do. It's really awesome, and I know you've worked on some pretty awesome pictures. How did you get into that? 

0:02:21 
Dailies for me was kind of an interesting thing. I had already kind of been established as a colorist. I work in Massachusetts, which is a rather small industry in the grand scheme of things between New York and Los Angeles. Massachusetts has a very strong tax incentive for filming but I think it's top two or top three right up there with, like Georgia. So Massachusetts has a very aggressive tax credit which attracted a lot of films to the area and they were in need of someone who had an eye for color correction and someone who could kind of see what it was that they needed to see, so work in tandem with the DP, understand their language, work in communication with the director. So it kind of just fell into my lap and while I might already had maybe 10 plus years under my belt and it was something that I was kind of eager to try, just for the fact that I would get to work with the highest tier cinematographers. I've worked with guys who have won Oscars, I've worked with ASC cinematographers and that's like footage on a different level. 

My normal type of work is commercial work, so this gave me a chance to see some theatrical work and kind of see more narrative. That was just kind of. I was interested in trying it and I probably did 12, 13 daily's jobs and it was incredibly challenging because I had my regular clientele and my day to day job and I was essentially working two different jobs. Since I switched over from my old place of employment to color refinery, I've since hired daily's colorists to do that and work in a supervising manner which is a lot easier on my sleep patterns. It was just a lot. But you know, when you get into a project and you get excited, you can kind of hit this gear that you didn't even know you had. And my biggest thing was making sure my regular work didn't fall off while still getting to experience different type of workflow with the theatrical stuff. 

0:04:14 
Tell me a little bit about your background. How did you get into being a colorist? How did you get into starting your own studio? I'd love to hear a little bit more about that. 

0:04:21 
I took a couple of classes in college and photography. I was an art major in college so I took drawing, painting, sculpture, all the stuff that your parents are probably like, oh my God, what is this kid going to do with this degree? And I think it was around probably my sophomore junior year. I took a class in photography and I had done some photography before, but I really got into it. The dark room, all that kind of stuff, developing the negative and you know, just working in that manner. I really really liked it and that was in the early 2000s. 

So I latched onto a professor and she kind of introduced me to video film. She had an intro to video class that was shot on a you take a little mini DV camera and you cut it in iMovie and very, very beginning stages of that stuff, which I give my school credit for they were pretty. It was pretty cool of them to have a program like that. I was at a small liberal arts school, hamilton College, so I really latched onto that and thought that was the first thing I ever like was like, oh, I like this, like I was taking classes like Greek mythology and like all these things that like I had no real interest in. I just took it to. It was a liberal arts school, so I was trying everything. 

0:05:25 
Yeah, you didn't click it with anything to level yet. 

0:05:28 
Yeah, pretty much and my grades weren't that good. And then this was like the first thing that I kind of latched onto that I really liked, and then I was like, okay, well, maybe I can make a career out of this. So I kind of searched around, ended up in Boston, got in a post facility where I was getting into editing and working in an assistant role where they were working in like a smoke and flame and I was working in archiving, just learning the ins and outs and patch bays and things like that that don't really exist anymore, but kind of set the tone for what the industry is now. And they had to tell us any room. I had no idea what that was. I just assumed the way something was filmed was the way it went on TV. 

I kind of like was poking my head around what's going on here and a position opened up to where I could assist the senior colorists. It was a guy who I probably 15, 20 years experience at the time which at that time, you know, would have been pretty much in it from the get go. So I was shuttling film for him 35 mil, 16 mil. I had never even handled it before, sat next to him for three or four years asking why he did what he did, why he's doing what he's doing. See what interaction with clients is like. If something goes wrong, what do you do? How do you tap dance around. That it was a lot of kind of like apprenticeship, so to speak. 

And then, once I got enough confidence, I started. They started booking me with students. Emerson College is right around here, boston University, boston College Northeastern so there was a very cheap I was a very cheap option for them. It was like two rolls of 16 millimeter, which was like 44 minutes for $250. So it was run it through shuttle, it lay it back to tape. 

I worked with the Safty brothers doing great stuff. I worked with all the guys who did the everything everywhere all at once as students. So this was like kind of cool to like see these films that they did when they were like 20 years old and now they're, you know, kind of doing big things. That was kind of fun and that's really where I kind of learned how to handle film, how to see an image, and then eventually I kind of worked up to a junior role and then a senior role. 

So I really started almost as like bottom of the barrel and then just kind of kept working my way up, and that was at a place that I was at for 15, 16 years. This is before finish. Yeah, before finish, exactly, sorry, I didn't even say the name finish. And then I kind of felt like I just had a little more room to grow and decided to go out on my own and my goal is with color refiner. We've been in business for about a year and a half now to try to create a boutique like feel that focuses on color grading and visual effects. 

0:07:56 
That's fantastic. It sounds like a really, really amazing journey. It sounds like you got in right before the DI revolution right around the 2000s or right after it sounds like and you just were right on that wave the whole time and you took your interest and you just followed it all along the way. And when you saw an opportunity to take the opportunity and start your own facility with color refinery, when you saw a small wave and you said it's time to go out on my own, you did that own thing. So that's really not only impressive but it's scary. I want to talk about that a little bit. What were some of the? The impetus is that that caused you to? You're probably pretty comfortable over at finish to start your own facility. A lot of colorists, they're comfortable just working and going into the jobs that somebody or a client brings to them. What encouraged you to start your own facility? 

0:08:44 
Honestly, it was kind of just control of my own destiny. I had been there for, like I said, 15, 16 years, and for me, I'm 40 years old and I'm trying to think you know, what is it that I'm going to be doing in five years? Will I still be in this exact same spot? And I very well could be, but for me it was to be able to. If I wanted to do something, I could do it. I didn't have to go through a chain of command to get something done. And I should say that they were fantastic and it was a great place of employment and I'm eternally grateful for everything that they supported me with along the way and opportunities I was given. 

But ultimately it was a scary decision. It was something that I had to have confidence in myself, confidence in my client base, confidence that I could continue in a manner that I'm accustomed to working, and it was a financial investment on my end as well. I had a very supportive family, a very supportive wife who was all on board to go with it, and if it was something where we had to dial it back at home for a while, like she was prepared for that, we dipped into our personal savings. And then you know I'm trying to surround myself with talented engineers who can help me where I need to be. I'm not the strongest in the technical side. I consider myself more of a creative than technical, so there's a lot of times where I have to yell for people to help. 

If someone asked me to calibrate a monitor, I would be like I don't know. Talk to that guy. I know what a good calibrated monitor looks like, but how to get there I don't necessarily know. Ultimately took the jump. It was scary as hell. Finding a place in the city to have. We were tearing up carpets, knocking down walls, building it to where we wanted it to be. That was fun and exciting at the same time, but also scary because I'm literally working around the clock to get this done, all while trying to maintain my client base and just the business. Keep it going, because if I can't color that, there is no business. 

0:10:35 
They're gonna go elsewhere too. They have jobs to get done. So there's only I can imagine it being difficult to move over, but also why you're building up the facility. You need to maintain that the clients, because they also have jobs going on too. So while you're Building the infrastructure, building the staff, bringing people on, establishing the, your SOPs, your workflows, you need to keep those jobs going out, in and out the door. So that can imagine that being quite challenging. 

0:11:00 
It's funny at the time I was actually doing dailies. It was the last dailies project I took on was the Whitney Houston movie actually colored by a friend of ours, walter Vulpato, over company three. So I was doing that and what I would do is my color refiner is not that far away from my old finish and what I would do is I would color the dailies, hit render and then let my assistant take over and do all the Editorial prep and then I would walk over to my place, rip up carpet, you know, knock down walls, paint, go all that kind of stuff. That's just grunt work and then at like 3 am I would go back for the next round of dailies. So it was like literally like non-stop and that was for like a month and I lost like 10 pound, just like from this year, a man of like work that I was doing it was crazy. 

0:11:46 
People asked why so many colors are so thin. It's because we're constantly running back and forth between our different studios to check on renders. 

0:11:52 
It's one extreme or the other. You're doing that or you're sitting and not moving, and then you gain 10 pounds. 

0:11:58 
It's somebody who I mean. I'm currently ripping up stuff in my home, so I can only imagine how scary it is doing it at at work as well, because at least when I go to work I know that's everything is set there I could just do my job and then when I go home. 

It's a wreck, so I can imagine it being Quite stressful. I think the the biggest question I want to ask you, because there's a lot of people that are either potentially thinking about it or, at least in the future, lining that up as a potential career path what is one tip that you can give people that want to eventually, in their future, run their own facility? 

0:12:31 
I think it kind of depends on the person. I always viewed myself as a person who was I'll take the steady paycheck by weekly paycheck. I don't have to worry about anything, benefits are taken care of, retirement, all that kind of stuff was a really nice safety net for me. That was kind of the scary part for me Was taking that jumping off point. I would say the biggest thing is just don't do it on a whim. Do your homework. I mean I had gone through all my things that I needed to do in terms of I mean, I got in the room and I'm like reaching for something that I'm used to having. It wasn't there. I would literally take measurements how far away is my face to the screen? How far away is my Chest to the screen? What height do I have things out? All these things that I'm used to, because you know as well as anyone, we're all creatures of habit, so like if something, even the slightest thing, feels off, it's uncomfortable for you and some of that's just reestablishing new muscle memory, but other parts are like it takes that much longer for you to figure things out again. And then time is money and you waste time. 

My planning was neurotic. The amount of planning that I did and measurements that I took. One thing it was funny is when I was a finish I had the advanced panels and then when I came to color refinery I said you know what I'm gonna take the dive. I need the advanced panels, like it's just what I'm used to. It's where everything goes. And what I didn't realize was that the advanced panels I had at color refinery were the original advanced panels from 2000, I think. Oh, the new key, and Exactly so. And then the new one. I bought the advanced panel. Great, it'll be the same, I know everywhere thing is. And then it was the new caps. 

Things were laid out differently. I was so pissed off because there was no reason for me to be, but it was just like I had everything play. And then you know what it's like to try to relearn that stuff. It's like it's it's taxing mentally where you're. It's frustrating. So I'm reaching for things that aren't there and why they change. That that's stupid, that this should be this way. And you know I did that for like a week or two weeks and then I eventually got back into it. But it's one of those things are. It's just like I was outside of my comfort zone. I didn't like it, especially when you're used to working in a certain manner, at a pace, at a speed, and if a client's watching you, you look like an idiot because you're looking for something and it should be an extension of you. Your third arm is missing. 

0:14:42 
You're totally all of a sudden flapping in front of you and I and there's nothing worse than a client sitting behind you and you're Fumbling. 

0:14:52 
They might not see it, but you think they see it. It just gets very uncomfortable. But that was, you know, a week or two and then we were good to go. But I guess, grand scheme of thing. Just to circle back to your question that you asked, I'd say the biggest thing is just do your best to be prepared. I mean, I even took it as far as like paying a lawyer to review my contract to make sure that there wasn't anything that I had to Be aware of or you know, and it was money that I had to spend. That wasn't fun money to spend, but I went in with a piece of mind and doing my homework and preparation was really really, really important with everything, because last thing you want to is make the jump and then be like, oh crap, why did? 

0:15:28 
I do that. Yeah, you don't want to rip it up again. Also, I mean, I completely understand. Most people assume that you get the key caps in as a celebration, but I can completely understand when you have all this other stuff happening. The last thing you need to do is focus on relearning something that is already internalizers already so much chaos in your life? 

0:15:46 
Well, that was it, I was like I don't have time yeah, I don't have time for this. Like I need to know how to do this. And, like you said, my goal when opening Coloury Finery was for Every person that I work with to feel like nothing's changed, to just be like, okay, he's in a different place, but his work's the same. There's no internet issues, there's no uploading issues, the streaming stuff is fine. That was my goal and I couldn't do that without like. I had like a probably a two month overlap when I would. Before color refiner was ready two months before it opened, but that was me testing Certain things and making sure they work the way they're supposed to and, if something didn't work, buying the new piece of gear To fix it. It was just a matter of like that two month overlap was a lot, accomplished a lot. So when I opened, it was business as usual, okay. 

0:16:34 
So I think if I, if I were to take anything away from that, like a test project or a test client, if you were to take a I don't call them free jobs anymore but if you were to take a lower paying job, that's a great time to take that. 

0:16:46 
Oh, hundred percent. I did that exactly. I had a job that was no pressure. Every time the client gets something, it was remote, not even streaming, just upload and they say thank you every time. Easy, easy job, done it. 

For years I was doing noise reduction on some footage and I have my Gear hooked up to a UPS to make sure that if it goes down that they can be power back up, can be shut down successfully Without anything you're going wrong. So when I hit render with the noise reduction, that machine started Just like this like drone of, like beeping at me and I was like, oh my god, what I do, what I do, like I broke something. This isn't right. And it turns out that the power that it was taking was exceeding, or about to exceed the amount that that could handle. So I had to go and buy it a new piece of gear and a better, higher-end UPS Plug in my gear to that. 

Then that and it hasn't happened since but that was like dummy project test. It was a real project, I got paid for it, but it was low pressure. No one saw it happen except me. I freaked out when it happened, not knowing what it was, because I'd never experienced that before, but that's was part of that two-month buffer, part of that test period, and now it's not an issue. 

0:17:55 
Anybody that's had a UPS buzz with them and has never had that happen before knows it's a very alarming experience and you're like what is happening? Why is it happening and, most importantly, how do I make it stop? 

0:18:05 
Yeah, and I thought my machine was going to like blow up or something. I just invested all this money and it's gonna go to. I didn't know what it was and then and then I followed the beep and found it and so, okay, that's what it is, and it was because the processing that was required for the amount of noise reduction that I had on it exceeded what it wanted to handle well, I'm thrilled to hear that everything is going successfully and that you are all the work that I'm seeing at a color refinery. 

0:18:28 
It's absolutely gorgeous. Not that anything out of finish wasn't, but I'm always proud to see a friend running their own facility now and I wanted to talk a little bit about it. We've traded products a little bit and there's something sort of unique about your work. It's really hard to put a finger on. I took about a half an hour the other day and I was sort of going over your work trying to describe it and it's very painterly and punchy, but not overly saturated, and it's gorgeous. Man, I love it because a lot of people try and make punchy colors but they just hit you in the face but like we were talking about a prudential commercial of yours and it's just gorgeous. It has these blue, not quite cyan tones, but it's just and it's not muted either. So I wanted to talk to you about not everybody has a style, but what do you Approach when you go into a piece? How do you think about saturation and tones and contrast? Do you consider yourself having a style? You? 

0:19:22 
know it's. It's funny. That's actually a question that I don't know how. I'm kind of sensitive about it, not in a way that's offensive or anything. It's like I guess I do have a style but I don't really want to have one. Is that a weird response? 

0:19:36 
No, it's not. It took me a half an hour to figure it out. 

0:19:39 
I'd like to think that I can adapt to what a client needs. I can adapt to the cinematography and just kind of work and mold in a way that they want. But, that being said, I kind of end up leaning back towards what appeals to me aesthetically. While I might be going down one path, I Sometimes veer back in the direction that I like, and I don't know if that's necessarily a good thing, because I do feel like I need to be flexible. 

It's funny I did have a job once, a music video that I'm friends with the DP on, and he threw my hat into the ring to the director and I ultimately didn't win the job and I was. I love the work the DP does. Anything he works on, his name's Taylor Clemens. Anything he works on I love to get my hands on because he just does such a great job. In this instance I wasn't awarded the job. 

The director said that his look is too clean, I need dirtier, and for me I was kind of like oh man, like I can do dirty I don't do it a lot, but give me a chance. But that was an interesting feedback for me that I think was kind of good for me to hear in the fact that I should Try to like go outside of my comfort zone. Every now and again I lend myself to kind of have. I generally lend to not go like to go too saturated. That just for me. It's just not as aesthetically pleasing. That's not to say that things shouldn't pop, and there are times where I'm working on Food commercial or something where you need to get that like very high contrast and you're showing a salad and the greens got a blow-up off the page and the reds and the tomatoes that stuff happens, yeah, car commercials and stuff like that exactly. 

But I'd say the progressive commercials that you mentioned are a pretty good indication of my aesthetic. With like a little bit of D-set, I always gravitate towards cyan over blue. If I'm in the vector scope and I'm looking at blue and I almost always swing it back down that way low. I don't know what it is. I tend to like a little bit of like I guess it's kind of a teal and orange thing, or I tend to like have a little like Yellowy in my highlights. So and then lately I found myself wanting to push clients in like green, cyan world as to a more like color balance, like back more towards blue, not perfectly white balance, but with a little bit of personality. 

Yeah, yeah and what I've kind of said to myself, and I didn't even really realize that I ended up doing this until someone pointed out to me. They said you know what I really like about your work? Like you never have white whites. And I'm like, oh okay, Is that a good thing? I don't know. I guess I generally have something in the whites. But he was like, yes, white whites are just so boring and I'm like okay, I mean, I didn't really know I did that, but I just okay, I guess. 

0:22:14 
The term soft blanket just came to mind. It's the best comment I can give to your work as somebody who works in commercials. And if you were to give me 10 of your commercials, I probably couldn't pick out all them, and it's because they all have their different personalities, but they all have this level of professionalism that just sort of jumps off the page and it's unfortunate that we aren't given the opportunity to, like you said, just give me. If I knew I had to go dirty and I can do that. But that's not usually what I do day in and day out. 

But I want to dig into a little bit more of your sensibility. So you said you're leaning a little bit more towards yellow, green highlights. What are some of the other things that you're you're feeling more recently, I think, especially in color grading. I love some people call them trends, but I think also there are two sensibilities. People are more like you know what I've been feeling this recently, and one person will do it and then somebody else will go. I really like that. I'm gonna start doing it and make part of it mine. 

0:23:05 
What else have you been seeing yourself doing recently, or I mean even the past couple years, that you really like you know, what's interesting is that, like how we kind of hit on earlier like doing dailies and I think for me the biggest benefit of doing dailies was seeing high, high end cinematography and one of the projects that I worked on was with Dan Laustin, who is a cinematographer who's done shape of water, all the Guillermo del Toro stuff, john Wick, and the project he was working on was they had to use a camera that he wasn't used to using and it was like a consumer camera and he was a little you know not not thrilled about it, but he made do with what he had and I was shocked by how good of an image he could get out of what was essentially a consumer camera. For me it was really interesting to see how these highest of the high creatives can take something that is, in the grand scheme of things, considered bad and turn it into a beautiful image with lighting and shaping of the light, and it just goes to show that it's just as much the artist as it is the gear. And when working with Dan, I kind of was able to see what theatrical grading is, what cinematic grading is and the ability to go dark Two guys who I would say have really influenced me in my career as cinematographers were Dan Laustin and Shelley Johnson, and both of them incredibly talented cinematographers, top of their industry, and I remember I was probably it was maybe like 2010 or 2011, I was working with Shelley on a dailies project for a series and I was pushing the image and he's like go, keep going. I'm like really, keep like darker, this is pretty dark. And he'd be like no, no, no darker. So I was like taking the gamma down and taking it down. And he was like yep, yep, yep, yep. I'm like. And while I'm doing it, I'm like what the hell is he saying? Like this is crazy. 

And it got to the point where, like, he's like that's it, and that pushed, that pushed the highs up a little bit, up, up, up there it is, see it. And I was like, oh my God, that's beautiful. Like, and then I had saved what I had done previously because I thought he was crazy and I toggled them back and forth and mine was absolute garbage For me. That was an interesting experience for me to see. We'll never get there unless you go there, and then you can always dial it back. That's one thing that I see now with people who ask me what do I do, how do I get into this industry and what do I? It's like break it, break it, break it, break it and then you can always fix it. But if you don't break it you won't know how far you can push it. 

For me, that really kind of shaped my aesthetic, I think, in terms of like I personally, like you're talking about what it is trend that I'm seeing, like I like dark, I like an image to be dark, I like it to be deep, I like it to be lit well, with a manner of like you know, there's like a backlight or there's something shine on the face. 

That kind of is your pop of highlight. 

Almost trying to think like a cinematographer and experiencing that stuff with Shelly and with Dan was like monumental and shaping that for me and realizing that, oh, you can go this far and it's okay, because I had, solely up to that point, been commercial work and commercial was at the time I was doing Carnival, cruise Lines and everything was blue skies, blue ocean, bright, happy, saturated we need to see the logo and that's fine, that's what that stuff is. 

But this opened a whole other world for me, that I was trying to grade these super talented cinematographer stuff. I was trying to grade it like a Carnival Cruise Lines commercial and that kind of helped shape my aesthetic. That was like this moment that just blew my mind as like it's so simple, why didn't I do that before? I think it kind of shaped my aesthetic to really enhance and brace that darkness. And it's funny that sometimes maybe even a little too much, because I do send stuff out to clients and they say it's dark, it's dark, it's dark, brighten it up. And then I try to anticipate that they're going to say that so I go brighter, but I don't want to go too bright because I still know they're going to say it. 

0:26:57 
So you have to brighten it up too much and you lose that dark. 

0:27:00 
Let me brighten it up to the point where they can say it, but I can still be happy with what I see. 

0:27:05 
I was going to follow that up with. We are an interesting with that. You are embracing darkness and dark images and both not seeing and seeing something highly specific in the image. The fact that we are seeing darkness and only able to see something in the highlights very specific. We are in a interesting period right now where audiences are sort of rejecting dark scenes. A lot of it's due to miseducation, I think. But how do you, as a colorist, deal with this? I'm going to call this one a trend, because we have so many people simply saying I need to see, or I'm going to tweak my TV settings till I can see and I'm going to literally go in the inverse contrast setting until my image is upside down. What do you do, or what are you thinking in the color grading suite to essentially preserve what you're trying to set, so that we don't end up in the home theater with people tweaking contrast setting? 

0:27:55 
No, it's a very interesting question and you know what? Maybe the darkness stuff is a trend too. That's not to say that I'm I'm right in there wrong. That could be something that changes and everyone goes back. Remember, when Alexa first came out, everyone liked the flat because they were used to seeing a log image in their edit. That's a very fitting question, because I'm literally in the middle of a feature right now, a 90 minute feature. It's called the wound wood, and I'm working with a very talented director and Andrew Mudge, and a very talented DP, Dan Kennedy, and they're both working on this project and one conversation. It's a horror, supernatural thriller kind of thing. And one question that we're constantly having is is it too dark? I'm going I like it dark. The director is saying, well, it should be brighter, we need to see the face here. And I'm like well, yeah, you're right. Okay, so let's do that. And we're having this back and forth and we've it's all in a great collaborative manner and it's making a good film. Because of it, I'm on real four of five right now, so we're making some really good progress, but it is. We literally said Game of Thrones episode. Is it getting to that point? I'm saying, well, no, I don't. I think you're okay, let's brighten it up, see what it looks like, and then let's bring it back down and how you're viewing it calibrated environment, etc. Etc. You know all the stuff that we've heard before. Ultimately, I think we're just kind of going with what works best for the story thing that. 

I had a really interesting experience, just excited by here for a minute. I have two kids, nine and 11 years old, two boys, and I remember being a new father for my first kid, so 11 years ago, and I remember being up at three o'clock in the morning with him giving him a bottle, sitting in the rocker, just exhausted, you know, rocking back and forth, feeding him, and I looked around and I was like it was pitch black in the room. There's like a little nightlight or something, and I'm looking around and I'm like it's nighttime. There's no color because there's no light. The only thing I see are like shapes of thing. And it was this really interesting moment for me, kind of like I was talking earlier with like this, like kind of moment in my mind of like this is what nighttime really look, real life nighttime. 

I can't tell that that's red. I can't tell that that's blue. I don't know the color of the wall. I know it because I've seen it during the daylight, but I don't know what it is now. That is not what nighttime or dark stuff looks like in movies. There isn't that crazy contrast of someone getting blasted with light so you can see the rim light on their face and see who the actor is. So it's this like kind of what we're used to seeing in movies versus what we're used to seeing in real life. There's all these like Are you thinking about blue moonlight? 

0:30:17 
That's the thing that comes to my mind every time the classic blue moonlight. Yeah, there was like memory colors or something like that, that he called like yeah, memory use Like green water is blue, like there's blood, a blood's the one for me, like blood looks, the way blood looks, you just know, and then you get sick, I get sick. 

0:30:34 
Yeah, and then, if you like, you go and like oh, water is blue, but go go to a lake, and the lake's not blue, it's, it's green or it's, it's green or black? How deep is it? 

0:30:46 
Yeah, how are you scuba diving? It's going to be teal because there's. It's so different than we think it is in the movies. It's so funny. Now I want to shift gears a little bit and ask you a little bit of a more fun question. So I know you are completely established over at Colorfinery, but if I were to disconnect you from your fabulous facility and ship you off to an island and you were allowed to take one tool from our fabulous DaVinci Resolve, what would that be? 

0:31:13 
I would probably say, I'd probably keep it pretty simple, I'd probably just the hue versus hue, hue versus sat. Am I, is that cheating? Hue versus hue versus sat? No, no, no, you're allowed to. 

0:31:26 
Seriously, I let people cheat in this one. 

0:31:27 
I've had people do two tools. 

0:31:29 
I've just. I always love to hear what people Like. If you are limited to a tool and this is the only thing you have to do. Like everybody does different things, which I love. 

0:31:38 
That's a really fun question I like Because, like, the obvious answer is lift gamma gain, because you can't do anything without that and that's where 90% of your image is made. So I'm kind of like putting that one aside right, because I used to do some classes at local colleges where I would go in and speak for a couple hours and kind of do like one-on-one you know, lessons with people. People are so quick to get into like, oh, I can window this, I can track this, I can light it this way, and then I go like, okay, well, yeah, that works. Now look at the next shot. Can you do that to the next shot? So the scenes match, and the answer 90% of the time was no. Or they'd wrote a hand that's shaped like this and then he'd move and the tracking can't follow it. 

That might be a little bit more refined now, with like magic mask and stuff like that, but still like people like so eager to jump into these super advanced specific tools, when the reality of it is that, like the best guys in the world only use the three wheels in tandem with you know the great color science that they have and all that kind of stuff and working with LUTs and all that the reality of it is is that those tools are the groundwork and the base of everything. I'd be like, look, you just did all that, I can. We want to make an image that looks pleasing, let's just dial it in. Don't overthink it, just do that. That's kind of like step number one. Don't overthink it. Lift game again. That's the basis of everything. 

But for me assuming that's a side I love the curves. You know I have a reference file and I see like, oh, here's the brand color, right, it's this specific type of red. Oh, it's not there on my image. Let me pull those two up together. Look at the vector scopes Okay, hue versus hue. Let's tweak the red a little bit more towards magenta and look there, it is Perfect match. Like I said earlier, like I have that I don't like that blue blue magenta kind of, I like that blue blue cyan and so like I live on that and like, just tweak that just a little bit and I feel like that's kind of like little refinement tool that I just really like to have and dial it in and it just really makes it right for me. 

I feel like it doesn't work on skin ever like I'd want it to Like. If someone's too red and I push it away from red, then they're like greenie and I don't really like that. So I kind of like work with skin and like qualifiers if I need to. But again, I always try to get there with lift, gamma gain and kind of base my world around that, and then when I hit that wall and can't get there, that's when I go to the further steps. But I really like the curves that's. It's a tool that's been there for forever. It's a little more painterly, a little more broad brush strokes than doing qualifiers, because in qualifiers you're refining your mat, you're making sure the feathering's good, you're kind of making sure there's no chatter or noise in your key, where this is kind of like just a nice soft blanket, as you said. 

Lean a tiny bit more towards this way, yeah it's so funny you mentioned blue. 

0:34:25 
That is one of my. I'll call it my cork, because there's sometimes when I'm like it doesn't need it, but it should have it and it's just lean those blues tiny bit towards cyan. Magenta shouldn't be there. I call it like the David Fincher curse almost, because as soon as his colorist mentioned he's allergic to magenta tones, All of a sudden I realized that's what I have to realize yeah. 

I just I don't know what's wrong with me in the sense of like, I just really find it the absolute opposite of visually pleasing. Yeah, and it's like, why is this color in the spectrum? I almost sometimes desat magenta it's really funny of the whole spectrum will just desat that range, unless it's a brand color, obviously. So it's really. It makes me feel a little bit better that you also lean it down to to cyan, because I just really don't like magenta. 

0:35:14 
It makes me feel icky inside. 

0:35:16 
That is a really interesting tool to choose, rob. I love the hue curves. It is definitely more interesting than printer points and left gamma gain and I think it really adds that extra edge to images. Like you said, visually pleasing it just makes, it gives it that extra edge and, like you said, people immediately go to the, the fancy tools, the resolve effects, the. Obviously I love chromatic adaptation because it's great for for temperature adjustments, but really just the tiniest shifts in hue, whether it's either skin tone or a certain thing, especially if you have brand colors, can really just make everything sing. So I am happy that that was your choice to go on the desert island, and that about wraps up the time that we have today. I really wanted to thank you for joining us on the show today. It's been an absolute pleasure and that basically wraps up our episode of color and coffee. Rob, if people want to find out more about you and color finery, where can we find out more about you? 

0:36:16 
My company's website is color refinery dot com. There's all of our information on work that we've done and all of our contact information. My Instagram handle is the modern day business card. It's Rob s the set. Someone took Rob the set 10 15 years ago. I made it Rob s the set. Also, we have the work color refinery handle, which is color underscore refinery for the Instagram handle. So those places you can pretty much see any of my work or you'd hold me Awesome. 

0:36:43 
I encourage everybody to check that out. It will also be in the show notes and for this episode of color and coffee, I'm Jason Baudak and we'll see you in the next episode. Everybody have a great weekend and until the next one, see ya and that's our show. Be sure to follow us on Instagram, youtube or your podcast app of choice. If you're using Apple podcasts or Spotify, please leave us a review. It helps us quite a bit. If you are looking for adventure resolve tools, please be sure to visit our sponsor, pixel tools. We'll see you guys in two weeks with another great interview. Happy grading.