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Jesús Solera: Is the colour grader just a technician or is he more important than that?

Pepe Cruz: Its one of the most important roles in the lab but also in the production. Until very recently colour graders didn’t have supervision because their professional status warrants their autonomy. They make their own assessment about the work they need to do and they can go to any section of the lab – developing, telecine, etc. - and give instructions to have something specific done. He also represents the lab since he has the closest relationship with the clients and the cinematographer must have absolute trust in the colour grader because he is shooting ‘blind’, specially nowadays when only telecine is done. The problem with that is that the cinematographer doesn’t know which values he is working with since these don’t appear on the telecine, and an image that can look good on the monitor, can later be too dense or not dense enough. That’s why nowadays there is a tight relationship between the colour grader and the person who does the telecine. The colour grader role is to finalise the work of the cinematographer, to achieve the exact image he’s after. You can’t expect the cinematographer to know small details within a sequence – plus one, minus one, 2 and a half red, two and a half green – which we are much more used to noticing because we have colour graded in a lot of films. Usually we watch the film together, the cinematographer makes comments and the colour grading operator takes notes and then watches the film on his own.
The good colour grading operator has to make contributions beyond the instructions of the cinematographer. I say the good colour grading operator because some professionals are happy to adhere to the DoP’s comments, so if anything goes wrong they can say “I just did what you told me to do”

JS: So just like the cinematographer interprets what the director says, the colour grading operator must interpret what the cinematographer says.

PC: Of course because usually the cinematographer is not present during the whole of the colour grading process and the operator has to base his work on the information he has received from him, that’s why their communication has to be effective.

JS: So, as we said at the beginning, the colour grading operator is not just a technician. Colour grading is not math.

PC: Its not mat, it helps to know the taste of the cinematographer. In the colour graded image we usually leave a neutral black, but if a filter was used during the shoot the negative tends to have a colour dominance and this needs to be interpreted when watching the colour master negative. If the colour dominance of the filter is apparent in the colour master, the operator has to maintain it. In an interior night for example, depending on the lights, a chocolate filter will appear as a warm yellow, so you shouldn’t take the yellow out. It has to apear on a neutral negative because it has been lit with warm light.

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JS: So the colour grading operator also has to act as a psychologist at times.

PC: That’s right, because there are good operators that don’t have a good vibe with the cinematographer. If I know that Alfonso Parra is not going to have a good vibe with someone I’m not going to make them work together. That’s why sometimes the same operator is working on several films at the same time and ends up not having enough time for any of them; he pays the price to be the boss.


Colour tones selected for the film Plauto with reference to the 30s and 40s Technicolor process


JS: So we can talk about cinematographer-colour grading operator duets. Obviously it’s the cinematographer who photographs the material but a good photography can be ruined by a bad operator and a mediocre photography can be saved by a good operator, nevertheless you remain in the shadows.

PC: Lately there is a bit more credit given to us but there are awards at festivals for cinematographers but there is nothing for the labs, and without their work that award might not have been given. Its hard to assess each one’s merit, but ultimately it depends on what the negative contains, its density.

JS: That’s right, the image is there but it needs to be mined out.

Alfonso Parra: Obviously the photography of a film depends on a lot of people but there is only one ultimate responsible and that is the cinematographer. Other professionals can suggest interesting ideas but the conceptual guidelines are laid by the cinematographer, so obviously he will surround himself by people who have the artistic and technical ability to develop his ideas, and amongst these professionals the colour grader is of vital importance. You said that colour graders are more acknowledged nowadays but I wanted to ask you if that’s because of the work on digital, because of colourists…

PC: Yes, I think it is.

JS: Define exactly what a colourist does.

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AP: The same as the colour grading operator only in digital.

JS: It sounds a bit pejorative…

AP: It’s the literal translation from the English.

PC: The difference is that a colourist that has never worked with film before might miss a lot of details, like the difference between reels, mainly because most of the time they don’t watch the footage on a big screen. Colour grading operators must watch the footage on a big screen because that’s how it will be eventually released. Its very different to colour grade on a monitor and then see it on a big screen, the divergences that occur have to be corrected in the lab. Colourists eye are not so accurate.

JS: There is a new generation coming up who will only work on digital without the film background. Can you learn photography or colour grading starting from digital?

PC: About two years ago nobody working in film would have gone to work in digital, nowadays professionals do work film and digital colour grading operators at the same time. Before there were colour graders, colourists, telecine operators…

JS: That’s your case...

PC: Its my case and the case of others here, like David Roche, who colour grades on film and digital. We have a colour grader who is also a colourist but he does not know about photochemical emulsions, only about digital. The idea is that colour graders in the future will also work on digital.

JS: Will the photochemical colour grader eventually disappear?

PC: I think it will take a while.

JS: Has your generation missed out on the digital revolution?

PC: I think the union between film and digital will grow stronger. Those of us who colour grade, and it’s a very small industry, tend to know about both things.




Comparison between analogue system (photographic emulsion) and the digital image capturing system


AP: The problem with digital is that its capacity for image transformation is so immediate and simple that its very easy to forget important details, such as the fact that on the big screen you see many colour deviations, a lot of dominances, things that on a 20’ monitor you don’t see. It could also happen that those who work on digital stop using the harder chemical process, and this is left for the same people who have always controlled it. I’m not sure if people who normally work in digital appreciate both in the same way. I have the feeling that digital is becoming more popular just because of how much easier the machines make it, and we are forgetting the more important chemical format because that’s how the film will eventually be projected. That’s the essence of an interesting question: how we are transforming colours in the digital environment because colour is created by sensors in the monitor whereas colour on film is physical. The difference between these kinds of emulsions is substantial. I find some times colourists who cannot conceive the idea of, say, two points more of red or green, something essential in the film positive. That’s because they are not thinking about the final result, they just respond to what they are seeing, because digital is immediate like that, you see it, but later its not there. That immediacy makes them forget the conversion process necessary to wok on analogue, thus the importance of colour grading operators who work in both formats and who can transcribe from both.

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JS: That’s why I insist on the danger of future generations losing this background.

AP: I think it will be lost for the simple reason that in future projections will be in digital and not on chemical format. I suppose it will take a while because the negative will still hold for a few years, there is nothing right now that beats film, the quality of the transparency.

JS: Define more clearly the difference between the colour of chemical and of digital. What’s the difference between a film that starts out as digital and ends up as film and one that starts out as film? In Plauto for example

AP: In Plauto obtaining the colour we wanted starting from film would have been impossible, such a colour transformation could only be possible on digital.

PC: It would be hard. Films on HD, betacam digital or miniDV are supposed to be made in these formats because they demand certain characteristics that wouldn’t be possible photo-chemically…

JS: Sure, but realistically, most of the time they are made in this format because of budget issues

PC: Its true many times its done because its cheaper.

JS: So when the intention is not to achieve a special colour but to save money, is the result for the audience the same?

PC: If they cant compare it simultaneously they cant tell the difference. You would have to watch the colour graded digital footage and the neutral photochemical, what came from the shoot. The negative will always have a better quality, because the digital support has a very low sensitivity, 7 ASA, and it doesn’t have grain; it looks good but it wouldn’t beat a film negative. Digital colours wouldn’t resist the comparison with the 35mm.

AP: Our ability to represent the world as close to nature as possible, as close to what our eyes see has been the standard for image quality in film and television. As things stand today, digital cannot fulfil this abstraction, borne out of a rationalization of vision from the XVIII century. With digital, the abstraction of the world becomes real, because we have created visual environments that are almost entirely human; we can invent almost anything without interacting with the natural world. Photochemical formats do belong in the world of confusion: the emulsion is grainy, colours are not pure – they are pure in digital -. If we compare digital and chemical colour from the premise that it has to represent the natural, the real, then digital is inferior, but if we consider its ability to create a world of colour, film is dead.

JS: According to this, we are in front of a new step in the evolution of colour in cinema: first it was very garish, then there was Technicolor, then colour became more realistic. Its never been perfect, this is just another phase.

AP: Its different, before the appearance of digital everything was analogue. Moreover, the light from the monitor screen is emitted whereas everything we have seen in colour until now, with the exception of light bulbs, has been reflected light or the one that has gone through the positive

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JS: Audiences don’t know that. They go to watch a film and they see a colour they had never seen before.

AP: Yes, of course, but in what way is that colour poorer than the one on film? I wonder what kind of thing is digital colour better for…

PC: In my experience, digital has a lower correction range once the intermediate has been taken out; you don’t have the same possibility for variation than the original printed negative because the tones have been given digitally. From a correctly exposed film negative, with good density, good tones, etc. you make a direct positive that is yellow, red, blue…but the image is always going to be good and it will stand a few changes. A digital negative doesn’t resist so much because the scope for correction on an intermediate support is quite limited, but to be honest that happens with any intermediate even if it comes from film. The difference with film is that you have a cut on an original negative from which you can always make copies whereas with digital you cant, so if you want to take the red out of a sequence, its no longer possible…

AP: Once you leave the digital medium, the capacity for correction is reduced.

PC: If the image is flat and it needs a little correction, it can’t bear it, it gets tinted very quickly.

JS: That is the situation after going onto digital, but before you can correct a lot and all these possibilities in terms of correction can give rise to the impoverishment of your craft Alfonso, because anyone can do any kind of photography because Pepe Cruz can later fix it in the lab…

PC: This is indeed taking place. Alfonso knows more about this than I do but there is a mistake with regards to digital and that’s to assume that anything goes – some people are talking about digital quality even when discussing miniDV-, amongst other things porque no tiene generaciones and it doesn’t matter how the footage gets to the lab. However, any film, regardless of which format it’s being made in, must be properly exposed and show exactly what has to appear on the screen; one can’t trust the lab to fix everything because that costs time and money. Some professionals don’t use filters during the shoot because they want to apply them on digital…

AP: The problem is that most cinematographers, directors and producers associate digital with immediacy and ease, and colour grading with fixing, but lighting digital formats is not easy. If you approach digital professionally you realise how hard it is to achieve a latitude comparable with 35mm to have enough detail in the highlights and the shadows, and enough quality in the colours.

JS: Its also associated with speed during the shoot.

AP: Yes but its not true that you can work quicker with it, it just seems to be easier in some aspects of the shoot. The belief of it being quicker comes from TV, where immediacy of results was more important than the quality, but achieving good colours in digital is very hard. I suppose there will be an evolution to correct errors, but it will never be enough for amateurs to approach digital systems.

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PC: Another extended misconception is the one that demands good picture quality on a big screen, whether on Betacam, miniDV or HD, when these formats cant successfully handle such an extension. Cinematographers have to know this, because nothing responds like 35mm, and sometimes colour grading operators have a hard time explaining that the digital format can’t go any further…

JS: So a change in professional’s mentality with regards to digital is necessary. The audience adapts easily.

PC: The audience is used to it now, they don’t realise.

AP: Audiences have access to video cameras and they can make their own videos on their computers, and they see this picture as excellent, so the quality demands of the audience have descended, that’s why I understand how some professionals wonder why they bother shooting on HD if they can get away with miniDV on projects that will end up being viewed by undemanding audiences. On a TV screen details get lost, so why bother with details in make-up, costume, production design etc. when every viewer can change the brightness, contrast and colour, so the artistic demands of professionals start to lose power. As we have said, digital distinguishes limited colour ranges where shades are lost, so the images are poorer. All these factors make the demands on digital picture quality very low.


Modified Macbeth card for the filming of Plauto according to Technicolor references


PC: Its a dangerous moment, specially with regards to budgets because the director and producer make the film for the audience.

JS:Its an awkward time, the craft is being lost amongst professionals, so there is too much work left for the lab and it gets fixed anyhow.

PC: I agree with that. Before, more work was done on the negative, nowadays more things are overlooked. Primarily, cinematographers dont follow the film's progress in the lab as they used to. Also now, due to changes in emulsions, the black you used to have before in films is not present in negatives, and in digital its not good to have deep blacks because later you cant use all the information.

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AP: Im going to say what Pepe is hinting at and that is that with the irruption of digital the level of photographic demand has plummeted in terms of conceptualization and shot-by-shot sequence configuration, etc. Before the colour grading operator adjusted, now they correct. Emulsions are now made to keep the margin of error as wide as possible; they can easily handle 12 F-stops. If as we have said the project is going to end up on a DVD, which compresses blacks until you cant see anything, I start wondering why the hell I bother, but as a cinematographer I must do it. These are very confusing times, I think that producers and directors need to establish some standards of quality to approximate the quality we had with 35mm. I remember when I was an assistant, and sat beside the cinematographer and the producer, that was a very serious ritual...



Comparison between a CCD (EOS-1D) and a CMOS sensor (EOS-1Ds)


PC: On film you let slip a lot of things, but on digital, where you can stop the image on the monitor, you correct things that no-one will ever notice, and it ends up being a waste of time.

JS: It becomes arbitrary…

PC: Another problem with digital is that once you have colour graded and are ready to project you cant turn back, any change will take no less than fifteen days and will cost a lot of money. Colour grading on film you can correct a positive in a couple of hours, you can have dramatic changes, from warm to cold for example. The best thing is to go to neutral, and then you can give everything 4 more points, and if you have to take it back, you can go 4 points down. Digital is different because once the negative is ready there is no going back…That is digital’s limitation: the end result is not a positive but a negative so you have to do it as well as possible because that’s where the copies will be made from. That’s why it’s a good idea to make tests of positives with some shots with different atmospheres – usually one with highlights, a night shot, etc. the more delicate ones – and if the response is good for those, it will be good for the rest of the footage, so you do tests for all of these kinds of shots and then you correct it during projections. In all the digital films Ive worked in ive never done tests with more than 8 or 9 thousand frames, that’s all I need. A common error in both digital and photochemical is to take the tests to the limit, but its absurd because most of the time light is homogenous and it hardly changes. The difficult shots will be treated separately, but you shouldn’t base the colour grading process on them, because they are not representative of the whole material.

JS: You talked before about black, what are the trends in terms of colour if there are any?

PC: Before the 90’s there were very well exposed and photographed films. Later it became fashionable to shoot without white-balancing and with very solid blacks, bringing up the highlights, strong contrasts and hard colours, and bringing up the grain to give the film a special look. There were a lot of funny colours, electric blues…This has died out and now we are going towards a flat kind of photography, all in one colour, cold tones…filmmakers are very confused, sometimes they shoot without knowing what they are after; or they change in the lab, which ends up costing, not only economically but also on the results because you take away the value from what you already had. Sometimes I colour grade a negative thinking that’s the way, and then the cinematographer says that its not right, that it has nothing to do with it…

JS: The fact that there is no general inclination is not a problem but not knowing what they want is rather more serious.

AP: The way the audience watches images is extending to the way professionals work. Instead of setting off with a preconceived idea they play with the image in front of the monitor.

JS: That way you could go on forever.

AP: That’s right and it means that in the end the image has no author, its appropriated by whoever manipulates it and the ‘primal’ image starts losing meaning. Its what is happening lately, in fact many cinematographers compose the image

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at the end of the photographic process, that is during the colour grading process and not while they are photographing. The machine offers thousands of possibilities in terms of manipulation and they don’t think beforehand what it is they want. Instead they work on it directly, but this kind of business involves a lot of money and it would make sense if producers demanded a clear, quick and cost-effective process. Nowadays everyone wants to try their shot and they have the chance; there is a 90-minute search and when the audience leaves the theatre they haven’t understood a thing because there hasn’t been a clear direction, only more or less ingenious images…That means that in the end form is taking precedence over the content, that the way the image is modified is as important or even more than what is being told, and if what is being told doesn’t suit the style that has been chosen then they simply find other contents. The result is a real dissociation between the image, that is now no more than a spectacle, and the narrative, so the latter disappears from the screen in favour of images that disappear from the audience’s mind as quickly as they’ve arrived.

JS: They justify what they want to tell from the images.

AP: Right on, its an attempt to find content in form, which has always been disastrous for art, because in a work of art form and content are indissoluble.



Attempts to rationalize colour (George Field 1835)


JS: Similar things happen in other arts. Pathetic attempts to justify something pretty…

AP: Going back to trends in colour, I’ve always liked the stock variations made by manufacturers, by Kodak, for example. The first ones had dense blacks and intense colours; later there was the Vision emulsion still with intense colours but with softer blacks and now we have the Vision 2 with more natural colours, more pastels. What I’m trying to get at is that in the end colour trends are set by manufacturers who respond to the current fashion. With digital this doesn’t happen anymore because anyone can saturate or desaturate…I’ve never been very fond of funny colours, so this is a good thing since I’ve always had to struggle to avoid them; in the 80s it was hard to get natural colours instead of those advertising colours. The way we think about colour has to take into account the trends set by manufacturers, but also the limitations of the manufacturing process, because its very hard to get colour shades on emulsions and even harder in digital, where the representative transitions of analogue, with light coming from different sources mixing up, don’t exist.

JS: Can’t that loss that takes place in the digital range be recovered while working to positive?

PC: No, because any change you introduce affects the whole density.

AP: Moreover, the space for colour representation is smaller in digital than on film. To improve this they are trying to work with logarithms instead of lineal systems and colour depths of at least 16 bits. In this transformation of colour we are also losing each colour’s symbolism , the meaning attached to colours in each culture’s history. We have reached a capacity to reproduce colour that we have saturated our ability to watch them; colours are no longer associated with anything and only the most basic ones – red with blood – remain, but the shades in that symbolism is also disappearing. Nobody wonders why they want a film with a certain tone anymore. There must be a consideration, it can’t be arbitrary. La flaqueza del bolchevique for example was colour graded with yellow tones, that had to do with the frustration and envy of the main character, with his hunger for power and wealth. However, it’s not the same to work in a colour tone that you know still works in people’s subconscious to create a certain feeling, than to sit in front of a computer, as Pepe says, and to say “it actually looks good in blue…” That way, the form ends up constructing the image.

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JS: And it drains it of content. Light and shadow create depth in space, does that also happen with colours?

AP: Its general knowledge that colours create depth, it has been done for centuries. Cyans, blues and cold colours tend to move away from spectators giving a feeling of depth and distance, whereas warmer colours feel closer.
You can see this in landscape painting, where the background is cyan or bluish grey. That’s why the composition of a film in terms of art direction is very important. How you design the set or the colour of the actor’s clothes determines the depth of the image. However, this kind of thought is rarely seen in modern cinema…

JS: You’ve talked about the art director who does in fact work with colour. As a cinematographer Alfonso, you deal with that person a lot, but do they go to the projections? Because colours can be changed during colour grading…

PC: They do go, but after the first copy an at director has little to say because they’ve already had their say in the silent cut

AP: Their direct work is with me.

PC: Of course. The art director has to work very closely with the cinematographer because otherwise their work might have been in vain, which has already happened in a few films, and more commonly in digital.

AP: There have been cases when whole walls have been painted green, and then during colour grading someone else has added blue and taken off green so that it doesn’t look so yellow: completely different to the original design. You have to respect the work of the art director and his team, and if a colour has been decided upon it should be maintained, this should be decided in advance.

JS: I assume its important for the art director to know if the shoot is in digital or on film to work on the colours and tones.

AP: There are two fields in which digital and 35mm are significantly different and those are art direction and make-up. For example if you have silk and gauze costumes with purple transparencies, digital will only pick up the purple, the transparency will not show because digital is unable to reproduce different shades in such subtle colours: 35mm would be able to do it. Digital would need darker purples. In make-up you need to give a green dominance because the camera gives a red dominance, although there have been improvements on that. That’s why tests are so important

JS: Have you done any B&W films on digital? How does the process work?

PC: You shoot on conventional film or on digital and in the colour grading you delete all the colour information and leave it in B&W. Then you do a colour process negative with a tendency to go towards magenta in the highlights and towards green in the low lights – exactly what happened in photochemical -, that’s why it’s a good idea during colour grading to leave the highlights slightly green to compensate for the magenta. In digital you can correct the whites during the shoot so they are less luminous or don’t start burning. The positive will also be in colour. Obviously, B&W will be purer if its shot on B&W negative and you process it to a B&W positive. JS: Do cinematographers and colour grading operators meet before the shoot?

PC: Usually we meet beforehand to discuss the kind of stock, the brand, changes in sensitivity, the values of the negative, grain, screen ratio…Some cinematographers decide without previously discussing it, but its unusual, if they know what they want, they’ll listen to advice. You have conversations specially if you have a good relationship with them, but anyhow tests are done beforehand.

AP: Its vital to talk with the colour grading operator because 40% of the photography work is done during colour grading. Its very important to define the parameters the film is going to exist within, and any ideas or suggestions are welcome. Colour grading operators are constantly working with different films and negatives; we depend on them.

JS: I assume you’ve met many kinds of directors: careful, quick, indecisive…you adapt to them I assume.

AP: Its easier when they know what they want, it’s a lot easier for us. With the ones who doubt you never know

JS: Have you had any arguments with any of them?

PC: Ive had arguments with some, but the relationship didn’t end because it was a professional issue, we’ve respected each other and continued working together. The problem comes during projections, because there’s not only the director but the producers, there are different opinions and what used to be an easy going relationship becomes tense…

JS: At which point should the director and the producer attend projections?

PC: Ideally not before the second copy because by then its been graded and if they want to discuss the tendency towards warm or cold etc, there is no problem because the base is already made.

AP: We shouldn’t forget that cinema is essentially images, which are even more important than narrative, so we should be careful with what we show.

JS: Alfonso, have you had any arguments with colour grading operators

AP: Fortunately not. I’ve had misunderstandings

JS: What about with directors? During projections, not shoots.

AP: Not really, its happened with some producers. Its normal considering the amount of people involved in this job and the different opinions people have: it’s a sine quanum condition. Its not the end of the world if you don’t get along with everyone.

JS: Thank you both, it’s been very interesting