Perfect!..or that'll do (a classic oxymoron)

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..

Whilst it's not limited to any one particular trade, skill, lifestyle or technology, I can use the audio/visual arts as a prime example where this is played out frequently. In earlier decades (yes I have not so recently entered my seventh!) I may have found myself cooking up a load of interesting sounds, hands feverishly moving across a Roland Jupiter 8 synthesiser, in the pursuit of that most perfect sound for the part - one that would set the world alight and contribute to the recordings ultimate success, no..even a sound that would be responsible for that records’s success; wow what arrogance indeed…

Swing the clock forward three decades sees amazingly advanced technology from those early days, but the potential creative entrapment is still as vibrant as before. Take film-making as an example where to furnish your technical portfolio with the highest end equipment afforded by your budget at the time, can catapult you into a frenzied pursuit of ultimate perfection across your specialised area. For those creative directors operating autonomously, this is very keenly felt, to ensure the limitation of excellence can only be laid at the door of one person….yourself!

So with all the very best at your fingertips we have the choice during many stages of the creative process, to internalise the above, subconsciously murmuring - ‘I have arrived, perfect!’..or..’..mm..’if only I just tweak this particular colour grade, or audio track then it will actually be better and then I will actually be happy with the result..’(thats a long internalisation but you get the point!)

Well then this begs the question, what is the professional, operational and creative line that one must draw in this vast sand of deliberation? At what point do we make that agreement with ourselves to halt and be content with what we have produced, what we are seeing and hearing…and of course the most salient consideration in this matter is, will they notice, will it make a difference to our clients and consumers?

I return briefly to those days of slaving over a hot keyboard and can most certainly witness to the fact that after hours and hours of said pursuit of excellence, invariably I arrived back at the same place as when I started!..or even the end result moved away from that original spark and therein entered some level of deterioration resulting in associates comments like "it was working better before..." - most unfortunate and deeply unrewarding! Those around you can be of great assistance sometimes, however beware the ‘perfection chasers’ who have some influence over your creativity - after all this is a very subjective business; what are we saying to ourselves here, its perfect but in whose eyes, in whose opinion…

Excellence in itself I believe, is a worthy ambition, but, with a myriad of mitigating factors and circumstances we have to sometimes pragmatically use whatever we have been fortunate enough to be created with, and subsequently worked on and finely honed, thus reaching that that timely creative milestone that says - ‘that’ll do’..which can also sometimes, occasionally or often be…”perfect.”

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THE DAY I EVICTED CONTRAST and SATURATION TO THE WAITING ROOM!

by Stuart Neale • 6 June 2026

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.

Where Art meets Politics - a bridge too far?

by Stuart Neale • 28 October 2023

Both the music and film industries have primarily been established over many decades, being driven through the hunger of the consumer to be entertained. Of course nothing wrong in that (I hear you say), but when in the case of purely commercially released music and film production being used very effectively as ‘containers’ to deliver a variety of messages, which are not derived from genuinely altruistic but self serving motives, I begin to wonder is this really 'Art'?

'Catching the Eye' - technology makes possibilities

by Stuart Neale • 26 July 2023

After having walked some distance on the journey of film and digital capture and dare I say photography, my eyes have indeed been ‘opened’ to some interesting concepts and realisations.