How to hire a professional film colorist: a quick start guide
Discover how to attract the best film colorist for your next project – and what to expect when you do – in my cheat sheet below.
By Dado Valentic
Take a look at the images above
Want to know what the difference is between the before and after stills? The answer is simple: a film colorist.
Hiring a colorist will have a huge impact on your production – from enhancing the emotional impact of key scenes to creating a signature look your audiences will recognize for years to come.
Choosing the right film colorist, however, can be a huge challenge. Get it wrong, and the final aesthetic of your film is at stake.
Get it right, and you’ll not only get a great final result. You’ll also have a partnership that will last for the rest of your career. In this industry, those kinds of relationships mean everything.
So how can you hire the best film colorist for your next project, guaranteed? Simply follow the quickstart guide below, which I’ve divided into the following sections:
- The 4 Types of Film Colorist
- Finding the Best Film Colorist for Your Project
- What to Look Out for Before Hiring a Colorist
- How to Make the Most of Professional Grading Services
- What to Expect from the Color Grading Process
Let’s dive into each:
The 4 Types of Film Colorist
Hiring a film colorist is a complex decision. In my experience, there are five main types you can hire. The first step is to identify which you need:
- The Oscar-Winner Colorist
These colorists have a special status in the industry. There are only a small handful of them, and they work on the most significant Hollywood projects. They also regularly demand seven-figure salaries.
Examples of these colorists include:
- Stefan Sonnenfeld, the co-founder of Company3.
- Stephen Nakamura, who graded movies like Se7en, The Martian, and X-Men: Days of Future Past
- Jill Bogdanowicz, who graded Joker and The Grand Budapest Hotel
- Steven Scott, who graded Avengers Endgame, The Revenant, and Roma
- Peter Doyle, who graded The Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, and the Harry Potter films
Key Identifier: Their work is a true piece of art. They work incredibly well under a lot of pressure.
- The Feature Film and Television Colorist
There are about 500 of these colorists worldwide. As a group, they are responsible for about 80% of everything you see on TV and in cinemas.
These colorists will have decades of industry experience. While they’ll demand a significant budget, using them will also mean your vision will always be executed correctly and on time with no other drama than one on the screen.
Key identifier: an impressive IMDb page with the talent to match.
- The Breakthrough Colorist
For me, this is one of the most interesting colorist categories, as it’s full of talent on its way up.
These colorists will have either had exposure to the professional world, or certain form professional training. Maybe they worked for a big company and are now at a smaller boutique. Or they’ll have just graduated from a professional institution like Colour.Training. Either way, they are working incredibly hard to make their mark in the industry. If you have the budget and are working on an arthouse movie or quirky TV show, these are the best people for you.
Key identifier: will always go the extra mile to make grades as creative – and groundbreaking – as possible.
- The All-In-One Colorist
These are the colorists who’ve completed a short grading course, or who are also editors or cinematographers.
They love color grading, and they’re pretty great at it. They just haven’t fully committed to grading for their career, so they may take a bit longer or be a little less creative than someone in the suite full-time.
Key identifier: will deliver you great results on a lower budget
Finding the Best Film Colorist for Your Project
Once you know which type of colorist category you need to hire from, it’s much easier to establish the best recruitment strategy.
- The Oscar-Winner Colorist
If you want to hire an Oscar-Winner Colorist, you don’t have to do anything at all: they’ll find you. These colorists will typically employ full-time producers whose only job is to talk to you.
If you’re not getting a phone call from any of their producers, your project probably isn’t at that “Star Wars” level yet.
- The Feature Film and Television Colorist
There are only about 500 of these colorists globally. It’s a small group, so the best way to find someone is simply to get a peer to introduce you.
Like the Oscar-Winner Colorist, the Feature Film and Television Colorist will employ a full-time producer that will gladly take your phone calls and discuss your job with you.
One very important thing about this category is to never ask for a showreel. The Feature Film and Television Colorist is very busy, and most of their jobs come from recommendations. They don’t need to build one. If you want to know what their work looks like, just look it up on their IMDb and find it on Netflix.
- The Breakthrough Colorist
These up-and-coming colorists will be promoting their work all over social media. They’ll be trying to find you as much as you’re trying to find them.
To start, just search for colorists on Instagram or LinkedIn – their email addresses will typically be published, so you’ll be able to contact them directly without the barrier of a producer. Alternatively, get in touch with your nearest professional training facility like Colour.Training and ask for recommendations.
- The All-In-One Colorist
The easiest way to hire these colorists is simply to place an ad on an industry discussion board and then let them come to you.
This is because the All-In-One Colorist may not have the high number of industry grading contacts that the other categories of colorist have, so will be on the lookout for work opportunities from external platforms.
What to Look Out for Before Hiring a Colorist
Before awarding your grading job to someone, it’s best to ask every candidate for a visual idea of the look they’d deliver. This process will significantly speed up the rest of your grade, as you’ll have a plan for your aesthetic from day one.
Once you’ve got the results back, you’ll recognize if you are working with the right category of colorist. If you’ve got a couple of images in your inbox, you’re probably talking to someone inexperienced who will work at a lower budget.
If you’ve got a beautiful presentation with a color palette, reference images, options, and a description, you’re probably with a well-trained, experienced colorist who will work at a higher budget.
How to Make the Most out of Professional Color Grading Services
Here are several easy tips to make the most of the service your colorist is providing:
- Brief Colorists Correctly
This is one of the most common mistakes I see. When briefing a colorist on your project, don’t ask for ‘a blue color’ or ‘more saturation’ – those decisions are the colorist’s job.
Instead, you should focus on what your audience should feel. Do you want your audience to feel afraid? If so, communicate that to your colorist, rather than telling them to create a ‘dark’ look.
This way, you’re letting your colorist create something beyond your imagination.
- Remember a Picture is Worth 1000 Words
If you do want to communicate specifics with your colorist, send them a folder full of reference images. That will help a colorist understand your vision much better than a description over a phone call or email ever could.
- Enjoy the Look Development Process
When designing your look before stepping into the grading suite, don’t be disappointed if you don’t immediately see what you expected from your colorist. This is very common. It can take several iterations to craft looks.
What’s important is to enjoy the creative process. It’s the most enjoyable part because once you start grading, you’re going to be working under pressure and deadlines!
- Don’t Micromanage
We’ve all seen the DVD behind-the-scenes extras where a director will be sitting in the grading suite, orchestrating the colorist. The truth is colorists work better when they are not attended.
Don’t try to sit through every single grading session, because you’re not going to improve results. Instead, simply do regular reviews with the colorist. An experienced colorist should need no more than three reviews per project.
- Don’t Be Afraid to Give Feedback
Colorists are used to receiving feedback. They do it every day. So don’t try to sugarcoat your feedback too much, because it doesn’t help anybody. Don’t be rude, just be direct about what you like and don’t like. A professional colorist won’t be offended and will develop the results you want, faster.
What to Expect from the Color Grading Process
Initial Look Development
You ask the potential colorist to develop an initial look. If you’re happy with the results, the colorist is then signed on to the job.
First Review
After one or two more days, your colorist should send through their work for your first review.
Your whole project will have been graded with a broad brush, with the right look applied to it, and everything nicely balanced. AI grading will significantly speed up this process by letting colorists automatically match shots.
This is the moment to give detailed feedback, scene-by-scene. Do you think it’s too dark in this scene? What about the color of the sky or trees in the background? Is that car too dominant?
Second Review
The second pass should have all your first review comments integrated and should be very close to the finished result.
At this point, you should no longer give detailed feedback. Instead, you should step back and watch your project from the audience’s perspective, on the same screen and viewing environment they would use.
Ask yourself: have you achieved exactly what you intended? Do you feel the way the audience should?
Last Review
Once you’ve given the second pass feedback you should have the last pass. What you see on the third review should be the final master that you’d sign off on. You shouldn’t have anything big to change at this stage.
I hope this guide will help you in your quest to create the most beautiful images and working with a talented colorist is always going to be the way to get there.
