From Burritos to Hollywood Blockbusters: A Chat with Senior Colorist John Daro

Join us on an engaging journey into the colorful world of filmmaking with John Daro, the lead DI colorist at Warner Post Production Creative Services. John shares his fascinating insights into the art of color grading, drawing parallels between the meticulous craft of filmmaking and the simple pleasure of brewing coffee and tea. 

Together, we unravel the unconventional path of an editor whose passion was sparked by early tech experiences and unique ventures like selling breakfast burritos and DJing. From pivotal moments in Camarillo to the life-changing Avid certification, we celebrate the magic that happens when technology, creativity, and a human ingenuity combine in a relentless pursuit to make cool stories. Our conversation also sheds light on the groundbreaking use of HDR in animated films, where subtle enhancements in character emotions and minute details transform storytelling, drawing unexpected yet powerful parallels with classical art techniques.

Reflecting on the evolving landscape of filmmaking in the remote (COVID) era, we emphasize the irreplaceable value of collaborating with talent in person and how the essence of in-person creativity remains unmatched in the sport of filmmaking. 

Grab your favorite beverage and get ready for an excellent episode of Color & Coffee!

Guest Links:
IG - https://www.instagram.com/johndaro/
Website + Blog - https://www.johndaro.com/
Studio Website - https://www.watertowercolor.com/
IMDB - https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2237933/
NeatVideo - https://www.neatvideo.com/

PixelTools
Modern Color Grading Tools and Presets for DaVinci Resolve 

PixelTools
Modern Color Grading Tools and Presets for DaVinci Resolve

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

I feel like if you are in the room and often I like to have my filmmakers sit right next to me, right? Only because, let's say, they're in front of the console or whatever One thing good about that is you don't have monitors blasting in your face, so your color perception is a little bit better. But I think that often people get you'll give a note and then there'll be some time where the note's being executed. That's like watching paint dry, start to get you know like do-do-do, and then there'll be another note that's on the same shot while you're finishing the first one. And if they're next to you, if they're in the room and they see what you're doing on the GUI and they see you know Fury of Bleach, there's something about that where that's engaging for them. And now it's a different sort of process than I ask for something and I'm waiting 30 seconds for it. And that collaboration there's no substitute for that. You have to be together. It's a communal thing, right? The whole reason that we make theatrical content is because it's a communal thing. You need to be in the same space, you know. You want to laugh together, you want to cry together. You know it's not something that should be in isolation. So I think that if we're making it for that, we should while we're making it be together as well.

Speaker 2: 1:11

Welcome to Color and Coffee, a podcast that's focused on the craft of color and the artists behind it. I'm your host, jason Bowdach, and each episode we'll sit down with some of the most talented artists in the industry and have a casual chat from one artist to another. We'll share their stories, their insights, their tips and, of course, their beverage of choice. Whether you're a season pro or just getting started, join us for some great color discussion. Sit back, grab your mug. You're listening to Color Coffee. Welcome to another episode of Color and Coffee. I am so excited for our guest today. He is somebody that I have been trying to get on the show for literally years now. I'm not joking about that. We have been going back and forth for, I want to say, two years now. I am excited to introduce you to John Daro. He is the lead DI colorist at Warner Post Production Creative Services. His work includes the soon-to-be-released In your Dreams, dear Mama, the Sea Beast and some of my favorites Contagion and Side Effects. Welcome to the show, john.

Speaker 1: 2:21

Thanks, jason, appreciate it, man, happy to be here. I'm glad we can make this work finally.

Speaker 2: 2:24

Seriously, it's been too long. We're both members of CSI and we've been talking about this forever, but obviously giving busy schedules is hard to make time to get on a podcast. So I appreciate you coming on the show, no doubt, man.

Speaker 1: 2:37

Yeah, no colorist, we build by the hour.

Speaker 2: 2:39

Seriously, you got to fill that schedule or otherwise that room's going to be expensive. So the most important question of the hour that I'm going to be asking you what are you drinking today?

Speaker 1: 2:49

Well, usually bourbon, but because it's work hours, I almost got a spill cake from you. No, no, just normal coffee. We have Starbucks here on the lot, but it's like halfway across the way. I rarely venture out that way, so it's just like the little Keurig machine. I know, I know I just made a bunch of like coffee. Like aficionados just cringe, but to me it's a caffeine delivery mechanism, it's okay.

Speaker 2: 3:11

I totally, totally get you. What are you drinking? I'm drinking. Well, to be full disclosure, john surprised me and this is put together on, like I want to say, 45 minutes notice. So this is Cameron's coffee, which is my normal cup of joe. I didn't have anything fancy to put together in my Super Mario mug, I think a little bit of vanilla extract in there, so pretty standard. But one of the things that I've put together by talking to so many colorists is there is so much variety and really the only thing that is important is getting some type of beverage in your system, and if it is caffeinated beverage, make sure to get water in there as well.

Speaker 1: 3:47

Yeah, no doubt I usually don't drink coffee all that much, but you made it a request so I was like, well then, yes, let's have a cup. I do like I don't know if you've ever had that I'm going to butcher the name, but it's like I O T E N, I, I T, n, I T? N. It's green tea that my wife gets. I don't know where she gets it from, but it's fantastic. It comes in a bottle. You don't have to brew anything, and I'll usually crush those quite a bit, but yeah, not not something that I. I'm kind of twitchy by nature, so, like coffee, it puts me over the edge.

Speaker 2: 4:12

I mean, I'm literally twiddling my feet over here. So I I completely understand. You know what. I sort of had a secret fascination with discovering different types of coffee, so that was also a side discovery of wanting to start this show is discovering what other people were drinking, and obviously not wanting to crash in their kitchen or not having the ability to work in every post house around the world. I get to ask so many lovely people about what their favorite cup of joe is while powering their suite.

Speaker 1: 4:38

In many ways, though, isn't it just artistry in all levels? Right, there's places around my house where they just take it to such a high level of like the brewing, the coffee, with these crazy drip contraptions, with like this really nice blown glass that spins the thing, cools it as it drops down, and I'm kind of impressed with that, that like people can take it to that level. I'm probably that way with a little bit of, like you know, cooking and like grilling and certain types of charcoal at home, I get that level. Coffee probably not so much.

Speaker 2: 5:09

It's so funny you bring that up because that it's essentially. You have to pick and choose how fine you're going to be about certain arts. I like to be that way about coffee, but see, about grilling meats. I was talking to this about Joey Deanna. I like my meats. Well done, and I know I just made a bunch of people fall over right now, exactly, exactly, and that's just my preference. And my wife looks at me and she's like there's something wrong with you, you're wired incorrectly. But that's 100%, and so I understand there's probably like 85% of the audience I know it's a majority or like you're wrong but my answer to that is well, they wouldn't ask you if it wasn't a preference. They would just be like but in the same way, I really like to get all fancy with my coffee and stuff. So totally, not only is it a preference, but how much do you want to dive into getting into it? In the same way, about color grading, you can get really technical. And same way about the creative you can dive into it. And it's picking and choosing.

Speaker 1: 6:02

I have a follow-up question to that, and I don't think I've ever asked you this when are you from originally?

Speaker 2: 6:07

This is going to make a little bit more sense With that weird preference. I'm that weird guy that was born and raised in LA.

Speaker 1: 6:13

Oh, no way. Me too. La kids, we're like unicorns. The reason I ask that is because my mother was from Texas and she would burn her meat. It had to be well done, so you won't even go like a medium. A medium is too far.

Speaker 2: 6:30

It's just too far.

Speaker 1: 6:30

It needs to be all the way cooked through. Where in Texas is this I'm going to have to visit? You would like it? No, no, no. You'd never find this place Sublime, Texas, population 60-fo. It had a general store, a dairy queen and a post office. That was it. That was the entire town.

Speaker 2: 6:43

If only they had a barbecue place.

Speaker 1: 6:45

Right right?

Speaker 2: 6:49

No, you had to go into Shiner for that. Where's Shiner box from as we wander away from what we're talking about? But that's one of the joys of this podcast is the fact that we are essentially all artists but we have different preferences, and the most important thing is that a lot of us get, especially as colorists, get really caught up in knowing every single thing. But that's something that you touched on is you can pick and choose. You're choosing not to be what a lot of people call a coffee snob, and that's perfectly fine.

Speaker 1: 7:14

Oh, but I would be interested in it If somebody wants to take me down that rabbit hole. I think curiosity is the key that I think we probably all share, right, Like, hey, how did you do that? Hey, that's really good, I can appreciate that, right, and I think it is just. That's what it comes down to a matter of taste, right? Just because I don't probably pursue that. I can definitely appreciate a good cup of coffee. I think its color is probably similar to that, right, there's no right or wrong answer. I mean, there's technically correct and we're not going to get into that stuff. But when you get away from that, it's does it work? Does it work for the story? Is this the vision that the filmmakers were going for?

Speaker 2: 7:46

Well, let me ask you a question what is, what is your background and how did you get into this, so I can understand a little bit more about how you think?

Speaker 1: 7:53

Yeah, I always wanted I mean, when I was younger, at least, I feel like next to directing and maybe on the same level as writing, I feel like the next job and position that has the most control over how a story is told is the editor, right? And so, for me, I always wanted to be an editorial. That was my goal. I mean, I guess in a way, we're the local 700 editors guild, so I've made it, but you could think of me as a failed editor. Let's put it that way.

Speaker 2: 8:24

Jordan. Welcome to the club.

Speaker 1: 8:26

That was always my goal and still my first passion, and I love how you can take the same footage right and you give it to four different editors. You're going to have four different styles, four different voices, four different ways and potentially four different stories right Come out of that same exact media. I just love that craft. I just think it's so cool. It's a really high form of art because it does involve every discipline. You know, for me, starting out early on, I wanted to be an editor, so I, you know, show up to photos In school or when you got into the industry. School, what's that? No, I honestly I never even graduated high school, man. I don't recommend that. I was kind of a bad kid, I'm going to put it that way. But I did tool around with cameras and my computer. That was like my thing, right. I was ripping apart computers when I was like 13 years old. I remember working for my father for one summer. He paid me in a GPU and a tablet, right, and I was like, looking back on that, I'm like wait a minute, you deal. But that was always my passion. I mean, I remember Lightworks way, way, way back in the day and me tooling around with like 3D animation and that kind of thing. The original Photoshop, before it had layers I remember having that. I got it on a zip disc. All of that stuff was really, you know, formative. To me it was all just tinkering, it was a hobby until it wasn't right. I did go to Video Symphony and got my ACSR and I think that was the first step of me becoming not a kid anymore and kind of growing up and going oh wait, to survive in this world you need to have a job and make money and self-support. Right Way back in the day I did work for a motherboard manufacturing place and, like building chips, that was a factory of a job, but it did get me Motherboard manufacturer as a fellow nerd. It was called GACA Technologies. As a matter of fact, they made the Alcatel chip which goes into a ton of cell phones. This is super nerdy. But I grew up in Camarillo and there's nothing out there. There was an insane asylum back when they had those, before Reagan got rid of them all. That is now Cal State Channel Islands, which I think is kind of funny because it's a different sort of an insane asylum here. Think, like everybody else, in a weird way, there was nothing to do out there, but that was maybe a good thing. I mean, it's just strawberry fields and track homes, but they had this industrial park that had a ton of industry. I mean Technicolor, way back in the day, had a huge facility there that was all duplication. So I'd be seeing that every day driving to school From that right. There was a place that is probably going too far off topic but I used to sell like breakfast burritos, like to all of these places that me and my buds would make, and then we would instead of we'd say like hey, that roach coach, you don't want to eat there here, have this out of the back of my Honda Prelude. This is much better. We made this at home. Give me three bucks, I'll give you a breakfast burrito. Well, one of the guys at the place liked the ingenuity of that and said, hey, you want a job? And I was like, yeah, sure, started working there at this JCA technology place and what was cool about it was at the time they had a giant machine that would basically use early machine vision. It took a black and white picture of the chip and you fed in the CAD drawing and it could recognize where the corners were, auto align itself and do the soldering with gold thread. Basically that's cool, super cool. And so that was always. I was always kind of nerdy like that, always into some tech stuff. Long story short, I was kind of a partier, I would suppose, and pursued the dream of being a DJ Right, that was a horrible mistake, went out to Vegas. But if you think about it, djing is not dissimilar to making swift cuts, right, or mixing things in layering certain elements, right. So it's kind of like the first, I guess you could say like multi-track sort of experiences, and it's all about timing Right. Multi-track sort of experiences and it's all about timing right. I quickly learned that you cannot survive off of free beer and chicken wings, and like the piddly sums they were paying. So that was when I was like I better get some skills, as my wife says. You were bona fide and I got my ACSR certificate From there. I thought, well, if I fix the avids, if I'm in there, I'm surrounded by a bunch of the high end editors that are in Los Angeles, around here. I'm going to fix their avids. This should give me an in to potentially assist or, you know, even log and digitize and that kind of thing.

Speaker 2: 12:32

Because now you had the dream of essentially you wanted to be an editor, because you saw what these guys were doing and creating stories and you wanted to essentially be in that seat.

Speaker 1: 12:42

Absolutely Like. That's the spot man. And so you know, in going through that, one of the paths that I went, I remember editor over at PhotoChem, right. So I call him up, he gets me a gig over with this guy, tom Wong, who is head of HR. He sits me down, he says all right, john, what would you like to do here? And I said, oh, edit, I'm an editor, right, here's my certifications, I'm an editor. And he goes yeah, yeah, you and everyone else that works here. So where would you like to start? And I was like, well, boy, ego beat down wherever, Right. So I started off in negative assembly and cleaning and, like, doing this for eight hours a day with a velvet cloth, you know, leadering up things, getting it prepped for telecine, from there moved into a telecine assist spot and watching scopes. You know some of the greats, like you know you're watching Tom Satori, costas, the Garrow brothers like very, very priceless education on the job. Right, just watching these masters just move this stuff around. And the hard way, right, setting up the ranks and getting everything tuned up and making sure that it was all perfect, laying it down. You had one shot Better, sure, it was programmed right from there.

Speaker 2: 14:00

Then we got this is pretty DaVinci right.

Speaker 1: 14:03

It was a DaVinci 2K Like. So I came in like there were still some of those old Pogles with the joysticks, but that was old technology. So, yeah, davinci 2K was the hot thing and the spirits were just starting to roll out. There was a Millennium that could do IMAX scanning. That was really cool too. So from there then I saw how they were doing the Avids. There was one show and this happens in every career, every position right, where something is broken, people are freaking out, right. It was at that moment. I got pulled out of the room and they said, hey, it's really tense in here. We don't need to tell us any prep around here. Can you just walk out? All the engineers were in there, it was all hands on deck and I said, yeah, yeah, but I know what's wrong. This guy walks back in, he, he thinks he can fix it and he goes all right. You got five minutes and I went click, click, click and that was it. It was on the Avid. They had AES coming in instead of embedded audio. That was it. And they said, wow, you really do know these things. I said yes, yes, yes. This is all I've been doing for the last couple of years. So, the Avid, I did that for a little bit. And then it was scanning and recording. Scanning and recording led to, hey, let's buy a color corrector and do this for real. Right, we got a Quantel. None of us knew how to run it. We imported Walter like a fine wine. So then we have Walter Valpato coming in and you know, then all of a sudden I was like, oh, that's how you do it, okay. Okay, I got this. This is how you really do this stuff. Worked underneath him for a long time, kind of got my bearings, finally got to be in the chair. At that point I knew how to press the buttons really well, computers were my thing, but the color didn't know the color at all. So then Dan Muscarella sat with me for, you know, taught me the beauty of a point of yellow. That's really all it was right. It was just like he's a master man.

Speaker 2: 15:48

And then that was it.

Speaker 1: 15:49

That was it Ended up here.

Speaker 2: 15:51

Well, that was a really good background about how you got there, so I have a quick question for you then. So what was one of the first films that you were in the hot seat for? For color.

Speaker 1: 16:46

The very first one was a Lindsay Lohan movie called I Know who Killed Me, shot by John Leonetti. That was that. Couldn't pick a nicer DP to be like yeah, strap in, buddy. Sorry, this is, this is my first rodeo, not yours. Shot on Genesis and the process of that, right Again. So much of it is working with amazing DPs and pulling a little something out of each experience, right. And then all of a sudden it's like a soup and your taste has been made.

Speaker 2: 17:14

And, if I'm not mistaken, you've continued to work with him again on, I believe, annabelle, or was it?

Speaker 1: 17:19

Annabelle that was shot by him. Yeah, that was the first Annabelle. And then on top of that there was this was working with Walter. Before that was Dead Silence, death Sentence. I know those sound similar but they're two different movies. And then just being a collaborator just throughout the years, you know calling him when I had questions on the camera side and vice versa, and John's a killer, killer, dude. Actually, that whole family is incredible.

Speaker 2: 17:44

Oh yes, I forgot that. It's a whole family. The whole family is DPs, or they're all just in the industries?

Speaker 1: 17:53

I think his father was actually camera rental. I could be wrong on that one. But Matt Leonetti, his brother, also amazing, amazing cinematographer, just killer, shooter, man.

Speaker 2: 17:59

What a great way to jump into the industry. I want to switch gears a tiny bit. We've talked mainly about live action, but I want to talk about your work on some animated films, like the Seabees and In your Dreams. So it's fascinating to me. I watched the Sea Beast probably a couple of years ago, but we had some interesting conversations about the filmmakers resistance to HDR and I wanted to chat about some of that here and about how you approach animated films and how they work in the HDR pipeline and in the HDR container, because, from what we've talked about, you're a fan of HDR as a creative tool, right?

Speaker 1: 18:38

Yeah, but I think that that's like saying you're a fan of, like, oil-based paint, right. It really is just another medium that you can spread your pixels across. That Like, if you think of it like it's, you have a piece of bread, right, you can butter one side or you can butter the whole bread. It's really up to you. What are you going for, right? Just because you have the container doesn't mean you have to fill it up. You can use what you want.

Speaker 2: 19:00

Why don't you explain it better than I can? What was some of the reaction that creatives that are used to an SDR not only grade but create a process that when they come into your suite and they see this in HDR for the first time, what are the reactions that they're getting, or what was the reaction that they were getting for the first time?

Speaker 1: 19:16

I think you said resistance. It wasn't necessarily resistance. It was a strange time for all of us, right, it was a lot of people working from home. Typically on a show, I will build the color pipeline and be very managed, and we will have displays that are calibrated, that are sent off to the chief creative people that are in charge of really dialing in the look, from lighting and production design, that kind of thing. We didn't get to do that on this one, right, it was a lot of like hey, here's an iPad, set it this way, and it's going to be pretty close From that point of view. A lot of the work was done at these artists' houses, so by the time they got into the bay and they were actually seeing it for real, they're looking at that going that's not my movie, that's not what we did. And I was like, well, this is your data, but it might not be your movie, and that's okay, right, they're two different things. So the first thing that I did was take what they've been looking at which was mainly sRGB 2.2, and place that inside of a PQ curve, right? So now you're sitting there looking and this is exactly what you had, but we have a little bit more right Before you were hitting the ceiling. You don't have a ceiling anymore. Grow bigger, right. And so what we did was we kind of stretched it to a point where it was what we would consider the maximum right, like that's all right, that's where we're getting, where after this, it starts to look a little garish, maybe looks a little HDR, right, and so we pegged it right there. Then what we did was we throttled that and we throttled it based on the filmmakers' choices for the scenes, and the funny thing was I didn't notice it at the time as I was going through it, but when you look back on it now and see what my values were set to, you'd think that it would have to do with, like, the action right, when really it actually was tied more to the emotional arc of the characters. And it was certain scenes that you would think would be less HDR, because it's a softer sort of like quieter time, were actually the most impactful in HDR, because you'd get sparkles in the characters, like eye glints, right, and that really drew you into the performance. So it was kind of interesting to see that. It was a little bit counterintuitive, at least for me, to see where that was used, and I kind of feel like it was a little bit like salt and pepper, right, a little bit of salt makes it better, but too much ruins the dish, and so it was one of those things where it was really cool to see how those filmmakers kind of used the medium and they explored it right, as it was kind of the first time seeing what was actually rendered by Sony Picture Imageworks Animation, where you have like, look at all of this that you never saw, it's all here Now. Just because it's there doesn't mean it's artistically intended. So there is a roll off and you can roll it off and then stretch it, and so then you still have the original kind of like, let's say, ratio, but it's getting a little bit more punch. That was not available to them before. If you think about it like, think of like old school Renaissance painting, right, like you got a Titian or Rubenesque type thing or like a Rembrandt even. It's not that those pictures are jumping off the canvas, right, they're not super bright, but the use of the ratio of contrast and light is what gives them their luminescence. Right, they're not super bright, but the use of the ratio of contrast and light is what gives them their luminescence right. And so, in the same way, we kind of tried to stay in that same zone where it's like, hey, this is where the clouds need to start kind of folding off and being just background and not being an element that we're looking at, right. So let's cap this, roll it off, and now let's expand our compressed range and taking the compressed range and mapping that to what's compelling HDR.

Speaker 2: 22:37

So that leads me to a really sort of interesting question. This is not in the trim process. This is during the actual grade. Then, because you're describing it sort of like the way that I hear somebody describe a trim and the way that they're touching the curve, but it's actually in the way that they're touching the curve, but it's actually in the grade.

Speaker 1: 22:54

Think of it this way. It's similar to like that wasn't Aces show, but imagine it being like an LMT that we're putting on. That's defining a look right. If you're working in Aces, oftentimes you'll throw like a film emulation type print simulation LMT on that thing and often what it's doing is it's kind of giving you that soft little shoulder and then giving that toe a little bit of flare. It's theoretically doing the same thing. I'm compressing the top end and the low end right To give them the same representation that they were used to seeing. But now let's place this creatively so that you're basically you painted a frame. Let's keep that painting the same, so it stays true to that. But now let's place it in this new medium.

Speaker 2: 23:35

You're essentially just moving it into the correct container and adjusting it so it's not distracting.

Speaker 1: 23:40

Porting the look over.

Speaker 2: 23:42

Got it. So it's not totally different than, essentially, once you grade an SDR version, moving it into the HDR container and making sure. I mean it's that concept of maintaining the contrast ratio you and the DP, the DP set on set and that you guys established originally in your grade and then just moving it into HDR. Sort of the same concept, right.

Speaker 1: 24:03

Totally, and I think that's why I wasn't rattled when they were like that's not my movie, I was like, okay, no problem, We'll make it your film. Because, especially in the early days of HDR, I feel like directors and DPs have kind of warmed up to the idea now, but in the beginning days it was no. I wanted to look like what was on the project, I wanted to look like my theatrical version, and so what ends up happening in the beginning days of HDR? This is just my opinion, but you saw a lot of very tame HDR grades right Grades that were basically you know, your. Your highlights weren't going past 100 nits and you had your SDR just in an HDR container, but it matched all versions. So everybody was happy with that and everybody was content. And slowly but surely I think that that's unwinding itself and you're starting to see a little bit more use of what you can do, Not necessarily pushing the boundaries, but pushing it more to where you're not as tame as you used to be.

Speaker 2: 25:27

How are you seeing that in some of the films that you've been working on what are some of the I'll say, the more brave situations without giving anything narratively away that you've seen creatives attempt to use HDR in creative ways.

Speaker 1: 25:40

Just a few that come to my head. Right, there's a few sequences where the light is supposed to be intense, right, like you're coming out of a cave or something and you kind of want to be like, oh, I'm a little bit blinded by it, right. It's kind of cool to have the technology now where you can physiologically kind of iris your eye down right, like on purpose we're controlling your physiological response and without putting any keyframes, it's sort of a natural dynamic. You will adjust to this, but we just hit you with it, really, you know, quickly, right, and that's kind of a cool thing. I think another use case would be anything like sci-fi lasers, all that stuff Excellent in HDR, and again, sunsets, like really anything that really should be HDR. What I don't like seeing and I do see this quite a bit now and I think it's a problem with I don't want to say you know names or anything but like certain certain grades that I see sometimes where, just because you have a thousand nits or 4,000 nits, you don't put your the hottest thing in your frame at a thousand nits, like if I'm looking at you and we take that light behind you and we put that a thousand, it's going to totally. The ratio is broken and it's going to look all crazy. I think that the beauty of it. If you think of PQ, right, it's perceptual, it should land where it would actually land and if something warrants that like you know, sun bouncing off of snow or dead, dead shot sunset right into the sun then let it go, let it be what it is, and I think that that's. We're starting to start to see a lot more of that now, which excites me actually.

Speaker 2: 27:03

I've been noticing that as well. I've been seeing more characters fall into deep shadow and seeing less compression, which I think is pretty exciting in terms of being able to mimic what we're actually seeing in the real world.

Speaker 1: 27:17

Yeah, no doubt, see. I think that's also kind of funny, though, because a lot of people go oh, you get extra blacks and more highlights, and I don't really ever feel that you get extra blacks right. Now you do have a little bit more as far as the steps in between, right, where it'll just plummet, right. So I do think that you get that. I think you also got to be careful, though, when you're grading in a perfectly controlled environment, you know, such as like a DI bay, and then it goes through hits streaming, gets onto service and then you're looking at it very compressed at home not in 12-bit anymore it diminishes, right. So I still treat the low end exactly the same as I always have, right. If you think about it, zero is always zero, right, so we're staying there. What I do feel like you gain is that you don't have that ceiling. Ideally, you should never be clipping right. Nothing ever hits that top In turn of that, right, if you lift middle gray up and you have something very bright and it's causing your eye to iris down, right. So now you've lifted the entire range up. Now the impression that you get, the perception that you get, makes those blacks blacker, right, and so if you do lift everything up, you do have that more range because that lifted black that you had before now, because your eye is compensating for a brighter, brightest thing in the frame, that will push that black down naturally. So I think in that sense you do get more in the shadows.

Speaker 2: 28:40

That is a very interesting way of approaching it huh I'm gonna have to think about that for a couple minutes.

Speaker 1: 28:46

So You're wrong too. So please reach out if I was like you're completely batshit crazy, john, You're wrong. Always open to heated debate about color nerdness.

Speaker 2: 28:55

I'm definitely going to try that out later. So, on that subject of how you approach different content, you've worked on some archival projects like Dear Mama. You've also had to master that in HDR. How do you approach projects like that, where you're dealing with a huge variety of content from everything from 8mm film to VHS to I don't even know what else you were doing that you?

Speaker 1: 29:16

had video, yeah, from like old flip phones, from like the early 2000s. The idea is actually very similar to the Seabees conversation, if you think of that as well. The medium was always just this this was the range. So the first thing to do is to compress it to that you don't want to map the brightest thing in an SDR picture and have that map across to, like you know, 300 nits or something. It starts to break apart. It looks really weird and awkward. By flattening that and compressing it first, that gives a vintage feel to it, right or not vintage, even just acronystically correct for that time period of whatever that was, you know, late 90s, early 2000s and land that in where it needs to land. The other thing that that does, at least in that project, was it really made the interview stuff that was, like you know, shot contemporary really pop right, because now it's like well, this was, this is the time capsule, and then this is going to wow, look at this, look how good this looks right with 8k and anamorphic glass and like just sharp as hell, and it really does really kick in. And cinematography looks killer in those in those interview scenes. So it's kind of cool to have that juxtaposition of telling the story almost feels a little bit kind of dreamlike, in a weird way, like a remembrance of it. That's kind of cool to separate those two worlds like that.

Speaker 2: 30:32

That was something that I was noticing too. It does almost technically have this separation effect that helps with the narrative. I was noticing that it wasn't distracting in terms of noise and artifacts which, with that type of material I was thinking you might have a lot of trouble with.

Speaker 1: 30:50

No, no, neat video is a hell of a tool. I know we all use it. I've been looking my entire life to find something that is better, stronger, faster than that thing and honestly, it's like that's the best one. Vlad, and whatever. He's done with those fast Fourier transforms and knocking out high frequencies Holy moly man. He's done with those fast Fourier transforms and knocking out high frequencies holy moly man. He's got it figured out. Even the things that I've tried to write myself don't even come close to as good as that is. I've even worked that into some, which is unfortunate because then I have to leave my Python pipe and go into some little chingadera to process that and then bring it back into some of my Python code. I still use that religiously. It's like the best thing for managing.

Speaker 2: 31:27

Well, that's a great tip because I know a lot of us use that, even though it's quite processor intensive, but it's great to know that it's used on even larger budget projects.

Speaker 1: 31:37

Yeah, I tell you, man, I don't want to burn us out on this one, but yeah, I mean, what you get for the price for that plugin is out of control. He could raise that price, I'd still pay it.

Speaker 2: 31:45

He could put it to a subscription and I would still pay it. But yeah, please don't do that.

Speaker 1: 31:48

We would all be really sad. My boss rejected. We're air-gapped man, we're very secure. I can't get out.

Speaker 2: 31:53

So tell me a little bit about ways that you approach collaborations with filmmakers like David Sandberg. So David, I know, came from independent filmmaking and immediately sort of struck big with his feature Lights Out and then jumped into films like Animal Creation. Struck big with his feature Lights Out and then jumped into films like Annabelle Creation. I'm curious how you approach working with filmmakers like him in terms of do you work any differently than a filmmaker like Steven Soderbergh?

Speaker 1: 32:23

who's done I?

Speaker 2: 32:23

mean probably hundreds of films.

Speaker 1: 32:25

Yeah, no doubt. I mean. I think that I think that people are people, right. Everybody's slightly different, especially in their creative process, but also just in their personalities and way of working and what they're going for. Also in skill sets. And I remember in Annabelle Creation we had this particular vendor we won't name names that was struggling a little bit with the last sequence of the film, trying to get this visual effects right. Right, david just said no more notes, rolls up his sleeves and just goes home and does it. Right, and seeing a, seeing a guy that's that that hands on is absolutely incredible. As a matter of fact, the only guy that I've ever really seen like that was was Soderbergh, so it must be something with a Berg in the name. Right, because ultimately, the filmmakers that I gravitate towards the most are the kind of the jack of all trades Right, that can shoot, edit, direct. Because I think that, at a certain point, the biggest asset a director can have is communication skills. Right, and being an artist of all disciplines really just gives you that many more tools in the tool chest to be like no, I want it like this. And then they start doing it like that and you're like oh yeah, okay, I got you and I've worked with a few people like that. Devin Crane's, another one that can just not only articulate it but be able to draw it out. If the words fail, then here, like this, and that's a super cool power, superpower that a director can have. The other thing about David was that there was the first encounter which was really just hey, this is a new line show, I do a lot of new line work, nice to meet you, right. But then over, you know the next few films, right, you start to build a shorthand and then all of a sudden, it's like coming home. A lot of the getting the band back together creates efficiencies in the pipeline and when you do that you can really just get to the storytelling and get to the film creation. Because there is none of that. Oh, you don't know what I'm talking about. It could just be a grunt, it could be a sigh, it could be like an arms cross, like this, and they're like, okay, hold on, I'll try something else, and you start to get that shorthand together and there's no substitute for that and there's no replicating that, unless you just have the time, the time put in in the dark.

Speaker 2: 34:25

There's something funny up a film with somebody and I after two sessions I was able to develop that shorthand about the sigh and I could pick up that sigh and I knew immediately it was too much magenta. So it's funny how time in a room can help you develop that with somebody. But we're in a world a lot of the times where you don't get to be in the room with every decision maker. So my question for you is I'm sure you work on a lot of films where you don't get to be in the room with everybody but you need that shorthand. How can you develop that shorthand when you in today's world where you're working on films with people remotely or you might not be ever in the same room with somebody a stakeholder?

Speaker 1: 35:38

Totally, and I actually I hate that. I'm going to be the first one to say that. You know, working remote is kind of a necessity. I mean, if you flashback mid-pandemic time, we had to do that. That was the only way that we were getting things done. Even if you were on the lot, we still we'd put you in a different theater and I was in the theater next door and that was weird, right, it was weird. I think that now the tools have gotten a lot better, right, you look at Evercast, you look at, you know, clear kind of get remote to a better place, obviously, stream box and the color function solution, being able to really get high quality picture to theater, to theater. So that box has been checked. So I'm not so worried about that. That, like, what are you looking at, right? So, like, I'm glad that that's removed from the equation. There still is no substitute for just being in the room, because even this is great, right, this works. I see, I see box, I can see facial expressions. That goes a long way, but it's the little things. It's the little things of just maybe shifting in a seat right, where you can start to pick up on little nuances, leaning over in a whisper to somebody, right? Those things I do feel like are lost when it's not in person. The other thing, too, is that I feel like if you are in the room, room, and often I like to have my filmmakers sit right next to me, right Only because, let's say, they're in front of the console or whatever. One thing good about that is you don't have monitors blasting in your face, so your color perception is a little bit better. But I think that often people get you'll give a note and then there'll be some time where the notes being executed that's like watching paint dry Start to get you know like, and then there'll be another note that's on the same shot while you're finishing the first one. And if they're next to you, if they're in the room and they see what you're doing on the GUI and they see you, you know furiously. There's something about that where that's engaging for them. And now it's a different sort of process than I asked for something and I'm waiting 30 seconds for it. And that collaboration there's no substitute for that. You have to be together. It's a communal thing, right? The whole reason that we make theatrical content is because it's a communal thing. You need to be in the same space. You know you want to laugh together, you want to cry together. You know it's not something that should be in isolation. So I think that if we're making it for that, we should, while we're making it, be together as well.

Speaker 2: 37:50

I couldn't agree with that more. It's really difficult to work in different rooms and it's is really about the little you mentioned about the way somebody moves in their seat, that's. It is about the tiny, uncomfortable movements that people make.

Speaker 1: 38:04

But all that said available in London and New York.

Speaker 2: 38:08

If filmmakers are not able to collaborate with the director in person, like some people are like people might work with a colorist remotely what is one tip that you might give them to try and sort of set the stage with their client?

Speaker 1: 38:23

So the first thing I think is the most important right is you have to put in the time to test and make sure that what you are sending is what you are seeing. If you do not have 100% confidence in that, you should not start a session, and that requires whatever measurement device on the other side or potentially calibrating something and shipping it out right. Whatever that situation is, that needs to be 100% dialed in, because what you don't want to do is be questioning the setup and that will spiral a session out of control faster than you'll ever know, right? So number one is make sure you know what you are targeting, make sure you are sending the right signal, make sure it is getting to the other side correctly. So once that's set up, right, that removes a lot of the guesswork and a lot of that you can. You can speak with confidence. Then right, and that's so important, I think. Then the next step is no different than if they were in the room, right. It's just you don't get some of those little subtler cues, but you're still interacting, and so much of it these days, and I think that maybe it's just a familiarization with the process and with what the tools can do. So much of it is. Here's some notes. I'm going to go off to sound mix now I'll be back and then it's. You know, keep, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, get the director back in and present. So I think that in that case, whether they're here or remotely, the steps in the job stay the same, right, I think? As far as color, like look development goes, I think there is a lot of things that you can do upfront, right? One of the things that I do I have a web portal that you can log onto and it basically shows the steps of the evolution of the look, because often what will happen is you start, and here's your V1, right, and this is, you know, a mix of this look that we used on the last movie, but we're doing something with oranges and yellows in this one, so these are enhanced and some of the blues are put there to support it. So, all right. So this is where we're starting from. Okay, but now the skin tones look wacky. So now here's a key on the skin tones and a swing back the other way. That's V2. And then V3 might be oh, and now we've taken cyan and desaturated that quite a bit, or whatever right, and you start working it down. Now here's the texture addition, all right. Now here's some halation on top of that. So this is the LUT that you'll use in camera, and then this will be the final look. And if you see all of that down, more often than not you can see the evolution. You know 100%. Yes, where we are is better than where we've been. At a certain point you say, okay, this is the language of this film, we're going to stop here, right, but sometimes somebody will say, hey, but for this scene I actually liked our V4. I'm like, no problem, we have that in the chamber and we'll go ahead and throw that on. So that's a really good way to build all that stuff up front. So you're not doing it in the room while people are, you're burning two theaters worth of cost and you're spending the remote time doing that. So all of that stuff can be kind of done up front, and I think that's a good thing. When you're working interactively, you should be working interactively. It should be let's you have a note, let's hit it on the fly, let's do it right now, let's address it. If it's over arching notes, well then you say, okay, I got it. I got it for the scene. I'm going to move on. You'll let the paint dry. You'll see it tomorrow.

Speaker 2: 41:27

And, as we start to get towards the end of our time, what is your favorite part of the job?

Speaker 1: 41:31

Favorite part of the job Everything I honestly, I couldn't imagine me doing anything else. I love what we do, right, this is like pixels are my life, no matter what. The thing is right. Like I really like emerging type of media, right, you know super early, early money on the 3D stuff. I really like. Spherical projection right now, I think, is like going to start to become a new thing. Vr without the VR headset that's awesome, right. So whether it's, you know, emissive displays or, like Evans and Sutherland, you know D3D kind of three projectors sort of set up. It's funny because each job when I start to work on it, I'll get a little like bipolar and weird manic about it and be like I need to learn everything about this. I remember when I was working on my first stop motion jobs, I got, you know, a dragon and like started like tinkering with a slide mount and like building my own little stop motion stuff. When I started to do a lot of ride films, I built a gimbal in my house that kind of attaches to some VR headset do like a little like well, this is like a crazy roller coaster thing that's all matched up. So I always tinker with this. This is what I do for fun. It's a blessing to be paid for what you would do if they didn't pay you, and that's how I feel like my whole life's been.

Speaker 2: 42:37

It really is a blessing man. You're one of the few like me. You wake up every morning, it sounds like, and you're just happy to do exactly what you do.

Speaker 1: 42:45

Super grateful.

Speaker 2: 42:46

If we wanted to find out more about your work, more about your website, more about your fantastic blog, where could we find you online?

Speaker 1: 42:54

So go to johnderocom, right, and if you'd like to come do some work, go to watertowercolorcom. We just launched and we're open for business, so come by and check us out, even if it's just for a tour to kick the tires and see what we got going on over here.

Speaker 2: 43:08

We'll have all of those links in the description for the episode. Thank you so much for your time, John. I really appreciate you coming on for the episode.

Speaker 1: 43:16

Thank you, Jason. I appreciate it. Man, I'll see you soon.

Speaker 2: 43:18

See you soon. Thank you all for joining us for this episode of Color and Coffee. We'll see you guys for the next one, and happy grading. Be sure to follow us on Instagram, YouTube and your podcast app of choice. Search for at Color and Coffee or at Color and Coffee Podcast and join the conversation. If you're using Spotify or Apple Podcast, please leave a review. Huge thanks to FSI and Pixel Tools for sponsoring the show Until the next episode.