Simplest explanation of the steps and the order of them is ... it works best for production speed work. Neutralizing and matching steps are there to get a unified timeline. That's the first and by far most important job of a colorist. Get that unified timeline, everything else is added value.
Don't get the unified timeline, so that the change from one shot to the next is 'obvious', the colorist has failed. No matter how tight their skin tones in some clips or their 'show' look. Total fail.
But trying to shot-match from the original state of most clips is slow slogging. And it's easy to get different images in different parts of the grade from the trouble of visual fatigue.
So ... neutralize first. This is a massive help to getting a consistent 'view' through the entire grade. You can touch a lot of clips in a hurry, doing only what is spefically needed. And you can bulk neutralize a lot of clips from each camera once you see how to do that.
Especially as in one scene, you may have three cameras involved, but only one or two takes each. So you can neutralize all the clips from each take at the least in one batch operation. There are some things you can apply to all shots from X camera that may help bring the various cams closer together also. Bulk operations speed the job and help with consistency.
Shot-matching of neutralized clips is vastly faster, easier, and better. It takes a ton of skill and experience both with scopes and eyeballs to go from original import view to shot-matching in one step.
I know that very experienced colorists may look at a job, and go direct from their bulk work to matching. But they know their bulk operations did a LOT of the neutralization process and further they've got the skills and chops and nearly always the advanced control surface to do the rest of the neutralization/matching in one pass.
And to restate the necessary: the unified timeline is THE main goal when you start any project. Get that before going on to anything else.
So ... unified timeline from neutralization/matching achieved, now is the time to check how much time is left before deadline or budget max is hit, and choose which clips to do shot-fixing.
I asked a group of colorists at NAB how often they fixed every problem shot in a show. I got a mix of blank stares and hilarious laughter. The blank stares were of course because it seemed such a dumbe question. Who ever gets every possible fix fixed?
One guy said ... well, he'd actually fixed everything a couple times (in his 15+ years in the trade). Which got a snarky reply of "aren't you special" and snickers.
Typically there are more problem shots than time to fix them, and that is the most negotiable part of The Job.
The show look is applied last, most often. Even if, as happens today, it's designed before the first scene is shot, and everything is tested "under" the show look. I've heard several of the major colorists who have designed stunning looks for a show that were used as LUTs in-cam. But the media did NOT have those LUTs applied in the camera, they were just in-cam to use while shooting.
And their grade had the ability to turn the nodes that held "the Look" on/off instantly.
They still essentially neutralized, matched, fixed, and applied the look. Now, "neutral" was defined in a specific way to 1) be quickly doable 2) be reliable and 3) fit under the show look. You always define "neutral" for the job at hand.
Learning to use the scopes is crucial. The Mark I Eyeball is a great relative instrument, but is horrible at absolutes. So Chris had some good starting values for using the scopes. I always have Waveform (YC no chroma) in upper left, Vectorscope YUV upper right, and Parade RGB across the bottom of the scopes panel.
For scopes work, the left side 0-100 scale is more meaningful to work with than the right-side levels scale of 0-255/0-1064 for 8 or ten-bit work. The left side gives you a constant relative location in the image. That's what you need, really. There are times the histogram is useful but I rarely have it 'up'. Some always have it.
I do have it when I use an outboard scopes program, but then, that's got a ton of things.
It takes a lot of experience to get good and fast at color. To really get going with it pretty much requires having a control surface so that your hands get muscle memory and your eyes and concentration stay on the screens ... constantly going from scopes to the transmit image without ever needing to look at the UI to choose the next tool.
Most colorists have not only that control surface, but button boxes ... either X-keys or more probably Streamdecks. And yes, I mean PLURAL. A lot of the setups I've seen have a control surface with two Streamdecks on each side. This way they have nearly everything they might touch in the UI set to a button on the Streamdecks. And they often have multiple levels to each Streamdeck!
Yea, that's a lot of muscle memory to build up. But ... if you want to learn how to roll with the pros, that's how those pros roll. And they will get more done in any amount of time than you'd believe possible. Because they will do insanely tiny targeted work that thee & me simply wouldn't have the time to get to if we want to get the job done in the next 12 month period.
And we likely couldn't even see or know how to do that tickly little bit either!
Neil
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