SCN Productions BLOG

For years I believed colour grading to be all about ‘Contrast’, ‘Saturation’ and LUT’s. Then I realised I have been asking those controls to perform jobs that belong elsewhere in the imaging chain. The breakthrough arrived when I migrated my thinking from using ‘tools’ to the actual journey an image takes in the physical process of Negative, to Stock, to Print. A plethora of digital tools have, over these past few decades, been created and designed to emulate the original film production workflow with the digital revolution exploding within the film industry leaving no stone unturned, no production artefact spared from beginning to end. For one such as myself, a humble independent film maker and colourist, I have wholeheartedly embraced this digital extravagance in pursuit of that ‘holy grail’ - a true film-emulation. The editing and colour grading tools and functionalities within such digital platforms are vast, but, what of the original, physical process of capturing images onto a ‘film stock’, performing a photochemical balancing process and then a final print? My thinking has migrated back to considering the journey an image takes from negative, stock to print, and how my approach to the colour grading tools should follow and emulate this film process. Why do filmic Images emerge from relationship, not control?.. Let me give you an example from my own first-hand experience; a piano is not tuned successfully by making every interval mathematically perfect. Small compromises are essential so that the instrument resonates as a coherent whole. Likewise, a filmic image is not created by maximising contrast and saturation, or using and applying tools and their parameters in of themselves, it emerges when exposure, colour relationships, stock responses and print finishing, all work together creating a coherent whole that produces a natural resonance. The ‘magic’ lives in the interaction and the resonance is created through relationships. In the pursuit of true Film Emulation, I now want to understand how my colour grading tools should be sequenced and used, what should be their roles and responsibilities in the context of the film production process, making their interactions emulate that journey of the physical image.

I have been referred to along lifes journey as a ‘perfectionist’ and with some internal satisfaction I previously received this label with glee, but now I’m not so sure..