Color Talk With Tom Parish

Kevin talks the issue every entrepreneur has of finding the value of their product idea and the challenge of demonstrating value to a client to create product tracking. How can you do this quickly?

Up next is a conversation with Robb Jacobson about the lives of people who are affected, both by birth and by injury, both drastically and unknowingly with some form of color blindness. Robb is a story producer and a filmmaker who is partially color blind. One day it hit him - In our society, we cherish our visual field, but we also demand it to be understood uniformly. Policemen, firemen, pilots, army men, coast guard, railroad workers, electricians, astronauts, artists, and many more occupations won't allow for any inconsistency in color determination. Visit TomParish.com for more details.

Ezra Venetos is a film producer in Austin Texas many of us know locally for his successful indie films. I ask Ezra to talk about what makes him unique in his approach to producing films. We discuss the central theme I've been exploring in this mini-series "have we unconsciously evolved ourselves into a bad habit of thinking production quality is related to how much 4k or 5k gear you budget to rent or own? And more importantly what needs to change.

Think about it - what could you learn from a distributor, really? For me it was a stretch. if you're like me and you assume distributors are gatekeepers then it's difficult to get over the mind talk running in your head that a distributor is out to get you in some way. Or at best just someone you have to pay along the way. Clearly this isn't the case but then there are those horror stories we've all heard over the years. Has this changed with the growing video on demand (VOD) marketplace evolving so quickly? You might be surprised what you learn from Linda Nelson of IndieRights.com during this 60 minutes of non-stop high-intensity flow of ideas to help you be more successful with your film. Learn more about this interview and color grading at www.TomParish.com

Up next is a conversation with Andie Grace VP of Acquisitions and Head CheerLeder at Devolver Digital Films - a film distributor in San Francisco. Why a film distributor? Turns out they have similar problems that as a colorist in helping a filmmaker be more successful.

In the next conversation of this mini-series on "What Can a Colorist Learn from a ...?" I speak with Ellie Ann Fenton, a Director of Photography in Los Angeles. Lucky for me she was in Austin working on a film. She called asking if she could bring the scriptwriter, the editor, and others on the team over to the studio to see some test clips on the large screen. Needless to say, I was delighted. We all met and talked about the feeling of the movie and how light and color will be used. This led to a technical conversation over what color space to shoot in with the Sony F55 and what LUTs to use. Then we did some testing with DaVinci Resolve. As the colorist for the project, I was thankful to have an opportunity to contribute early in the process as this will lead, I believe, to a more creative look because there will be fewer color correction issues. During this interview Ellie and I discuss how the cost of digital filmmaking has dropped dramatically (even 4k productions are doable), so what is the secret to

Have you seen any of these movies - Boyhood which is winning awards left and right.. Dazed and Confused, Fast Food Nation, A Scanner Darkly, Bernie? In this interview I ask an award winning custom designer Kari Perkins who is from Austin Texas to explore with me what a colorist can learn from a costume designer and how that collaboration can impact the creative strength of a production. Kari and I discuss the renewed importance of early collaborating in the filmmaking process on the use of color versus attempting to fixing color in post production (if at all in small budget films). It’s a team sport and it starts early if you want to really stretch your budget and maximize your creative efforts.

In this episode of Color Talk we dig in deep with Kevin Shaw, Instructor from the International Colorist Academy, about his new class - Advanced Color Grading. We do not talk about the specifics of how you use Resolve or SpeedGrade or the Nucoda color grading system or Baselight. Instead we delve into Kevin’s particular approach to teaching color grading, which is less about the tools and more about the philosophy of how you think light and color.

Join in on our my conversation with Warren as we talk about the International Colorist Academey which he cofounded with Kevin Shaw and the evolution of teaching colorist over the last few years. We talk about how the attendees and the course work has changed over these last few years for this wanting to become colorists. This was a fun and relaxing opportunity to speak with Warren about his experiences while he relaxing at home outside on his back pourch. I just wish I could have been there enjoying a beer with him. Well maybe next time.

Join 1047111me in a conversation with Eric Norrell, Product Manager for AJA, to talk about AJA's LUT-box. This new addition to the AJA family was released at NAB 2014, and later this year some significant updates were added. The AJA LUT-box provides an easy, inexpensive way to help with more precise color calibration of displays and look management in production and post workflows, and for handling camera matching on multi-camera shoots.

Tom Parish interviews Emery wells Co-founder of www.Frame.IO. Here is a question for the listeners - how’s it going - really - in sharing files with remote clients and teammates on your projects? Let me guess you use Dropbox to access to files or something Hightail or GoogleDrive. It’s a guessing game to see what the client is willing to use. Then you have Vimeo viewing files that need review or discussion, yes? Ok so where are the notes? How far back in my email what that last comment about changes which can spread out over days or weeks. Alright you get the point. This whole process of collaborating with new prospect or a client is rube Goldberg collection of disparate tool. Learn how Frame.IO is approaching this differently and promise to have a much better online solution. I'm all about that.

Aleksandar is a New York-based visual artist. His work often crosses and re-crosses a thin line between art and design, and it ranges from deceptively simple to highly political. In 2010 his diverse body of work was collected and published in Aleksandar Maćašev / Book. “Color is not essential, but very influential … Color is ever changing, it is very relative and relational …”

Imagine having the opportunity to sit down with a senior colorist who has graded dozens and dozens of shows over his career in the TV and movie business. That is what it was like as Randy Starnes and I conversed over FaceTime between our two locations, Austin TX and Santa Monica CA. Picking out one key point from this rich interview is difficult because Randy speaks with such ease and depth and care about his profession and the people he works with. He is a teacher, mentor, and seasoned professional colorist who remains fascinated with color. I'm grateful for this time with him. Clearly there are many important people in the creation of a TV series, but as a colorist your relationship with the DP is critical, and Randy makes this point with insight, finesse, and emphasis during our interview -- multiple times. Randy has deepened my commitment to push harder on all my projects to get to know the DP as soon as possible, any way possible. You will see why he feels so passionately about this as you listen to

I'm entering a new phase of exploring color in a deeper, more intentional manner. Working with color has always been a fascination, and I have come to realize that there is much more to learn beyond the technical nature of how to use DaVinci Resolve or any color-grading tool. In this podcast with Art Schmehling, Business Manager for X-Rite/Pantone, I’m going farther along the path of the language of color. This interview is what I hoped for – an open conversation about color use and color awareness with the Munsell Color system as a basis and starting point for talking about color. On my blog I provide a much more detailed write up about the podcast so be sure you visit there. what-exactly-is-the-munsell-color-system-and-why-should-i-care

In this podcast I speak with David Corley CEO DSC Labs located in Ontario Canada about the history and use of color test charts. For more background on the show visit http://www.tomparish.com

Everyone is talking about 4k, right, but who can afford a 10-bit 4k monitor that will have reliable color accuracy? For most of us, our desires outstrip our pocketbooks. Well, maybe there is a way .... Even though we have MacPros now that easily manage 4k workflows, the real issue is the display, and anyone doing media work knows is how important it is to have a color-accurate monitor. So we make HD and 2k monitors work for us for now. An extremely reasonable solution has emerged from HP through a close collaboration with SpectraCal and really a great number of high-profile animation and media production companies all over the world. Listen in to this show with Greg Staten, DreamColor Architect from HP, and Derek Smith, CTO at SpectraCal. We talk about HP’s new DreamColor Z27x that is a 27”, 10-bit panel with 2560x1440 pixel resolution, BUT this baby supports 4k inputs and displays 4k images in a number of novel ways. So how exactly DOES this panel support color accurate 4k video? What about multiple col

This is Tom Parish and I’m here with WayTao from RemarkHQ and we’re here to talk about a rather cool tool for media creators that allows you annotate video, review and approve video with teams and stakeholders. This product RemarkHQ,com got my attention late ly because I’ve been working in on a way to improve the approval process on ads and narrative films I’m working on with clients. There is alway a scene or clip or segment that seems require a lot of back and forth to get it right. Hurling Dropbox URL’s to large files back and forth with long emails where you manually type in the time code for each little issue is time consuming and often inaccurate. People get confused writing down time codes So the guys from RemarkHQ were in Austin and they gave me a call about doing a podcast. I’m looking forward to using this with my clients. There is an iPad version also so you’ll want to be sure you try that out along with their free trial. The price model they are using seems very reasonable to me so this cou

I was going to use the following title "Michael Chen asks What Color Glasses would you like to wear Red Green or Blue" because Michael tells a revealing story in this show in working with clients to evoke them into seeing and thinking differently. But before we get into Jedi Master Michael Chen's wisdom let me do a proper introduction. Michael Chen who is an early pioneer of the field of TV display calibration. In fact Michael helped create the original THX training courses for video calibration and remains one of the premier teachers in the world. You can find out more about Michael here. I’m personally delighted to have an opportunity to learn more about the art and science of display calibration given especially given he’s been doing it for the last 20 years. If you want to learn how to properly calibrate your TV you want to visit his website and learn from Michael’s generous collection of articles. He stays current and doesn’t hold any punches back when it comes to BS. I reviewed testimonials about h

If you’re a colorist with an interest in color checking or calibrating all the displays in your studio — including your reference monitor, client displays, projectors, and periodically updating those 3D display correction LUTs — then you’re going to want to know that CalMAN 5.3 now provides a way to use DaVinci Resolve as a pattern generator. In fact, there is a dedicated version of CalMAN just for Resolve users. When you use a WiFi connection with Calman 5.3 interfacing to Resolve, the patterns that Resolve generates come up on all the displays you have video connections to in your studio. Here’s a quick picture I took in my studio. It's not a beauty shot but you get the idea. Well you'll need to see this picture at tomparish.com). I get a kind of smug satisfaction knowing I can put up the same pattern on all displays and then check or calibrate each one directly from SpectraCal's CalMAN software anytime I want.

If you have an interest in learning about 4k video production equipment and visiting with a colorist to improve the production quality of your projects then I invite you to come this free event in the Austin Film Society screening room at 3pm and 5pm on March 3. The OmegaBroadcast Group is sponsoring this event for the local community and it’s free. Honestly this event it’s going to be a lot of fun because you get to see quite a bit of new 4k gear well before SXSW and NAB 2014 without having to travel out of town. In the screening room colorist Tom Parish will have example footage from various cameras used for low budget video projects shot locally and used for full length narratives submitted to Sundance and SXSW this year. He'll be using Davinci Resolve 10 with a Tangent Wave. Tom will provide examples of how color is used in storytelling and explain why it is important to improving the production quality of any size project for 2014. He will be available for general question and answers at the end of