Color, Craft & Calm: Why Great Colorists Are Part Therapist with Colorist Luke Cahill

I always say that we are like 30% technician and 70% therapist. We are most often dealing with people who are at the farthest end of this very strenuous, stressful journey. They've run out of money. Every possible thing that has gone wrong has gone wrong for them. They're in a vulnerable state. We need to be really sensitive about that as colorists, as people who are able to take this project that means a lot to these clients and to be able to shepherd it. You want to instill that you are the person to shepherd this project along creatively. You're the person who's going to put it in its best light and give the care that is necessary. Welcome to Color and Coffee, a podcast that's focused on the craft of color and the artists behind it. I'm your host, Jason Bowdach, and each episode we'll sit down with some of the most talented artists in the industry and have a casual chat from one artist to another. We'll share their stories, their insights, their tips, and maybe even a little gear talk. Whether you're a seasoned pro or just getting started, join us for some great color discussion. Sit back, relax, you're listening to Color and Coffee. Hi, I'm Jason Bowdach and welcome to another episode of Color and Coffee. Before we dive in, I want to give a huge shout out to our sponsors, Flanger Scientific, Demystify Color, and PixelTools. Thank you very much for sponsoring the show. I'm really excited about today's guests, someone I've been wanting to bring on the show since his name first came up in conversation during season one. His name is Luke Cahill and he's an incredibly talented and incredibly busy colorist here in Los Angeles. Luke specializes in high-end documentary and indie feature films, with projects like Icarus, With Love Meghan, Tangerine, and American murder Lacey Peterson under his belt. Welcome to the show, Luke. Pleasure. Thanks for having me. Normally, this is where we would ask you about coffee, but we're going to drive right into the episode because we have a lot to talk about. So real quick, you've told me your story, but can you give sort of a brief summary of how you got into being a colorist and how you got to where you are now? Sure, I'll be as brief as I can. I think I've always loved filmmaking from a young age, even from 11 years old. My parents got me a camera and I was making movies with my friends. Senior year of high school, I made a film in an effort to get into college with that film. I remember I went to the Video Maker Magazine Expo, if you remember Video Maker Magazine. I know that Premiere was out and maybe like this pinnacle video editing system was out, but there wasn't really a lot of non-linear editing options with the computers we had at the time. So I rented a standalone non-linear editing box called the Casablanca, where you could take your mini-DV footage, digitize it, and edit it on the CRT TV as like a display. So I edited my senior high school film with that. And ever since then, I feel like it's been an embrace of technology and creativity. I've always been kind of a techy person, which I think we all are as colorists. Did a lot of black and white photography and darkroom photography in high school and eventually got accepted into film school. I went to SUNY Purchase Film Conservatory, which is a great conservatory in upstate New York. And you know, really fell in love with film and was on the path to be a filmmaker and potentially a director and a DP. And concurrently in college, I actually was in a band because I play music and I started a band with a couple of friends from college. And right at the end of college, a couple of members of the band went out to Los Angeles and they got a manager and they played some demos for that manager. And we actually had an opportunity to do a little tour, take the show, play a bunch of gigs in Los Angeles. Basically what I did was I left filmmaking. I took a sabbatical right at senior year of college and joined a band and was in a band for three years in Los Angeles. And it was amazing. It was got to play famous venues like the Troubadour and the House of Blues. And spoiler alert, the band never got famous and it was five dudes, five egos. And eventually we broke up and I found myself a little later in life, maybe 23, 24 at a college after being in the band to enter back into the filmmaking world. There was a little bit of gap in my what was this film trajectory in my life. And I entered back into a company that just to get my foot in the door that was creating DCP servers. It was a company called Cube Cinema where we created DCP servers and created the software to make DCPs. And then we're distributing those servers all throughout Landmark cinema. So I got to go to all these theaters and install these DCP servers and learn what JPEG 2000 encoding was and XYZ color space. So kind of entering from that area. And then concurrently I got a job essentially being a post PA at a company and was doing a lot of their after effects work and a lot of their promo material. Again, I think we're all like jack of all trades type people, right? Yeah. So at this company I was working with, we actually got some footage that they wanted me to edit and create a promo for the show. And it was Alexa log C footage from the very first Alexa. And I'm coming at this having shot film, having shot rec 709 video. I don't even know really what I'm looking at. So I pull this into what I think was final cut seven at the time. And I start messing with the S curve and I'm just going like, well, this must be something wrong with this footage. It's really milky and gray. And I think, you know, I didn't really know. I think it was like the first log image I had ever seen. And, you know, cut to a couple of days later, once I had edited the promo, we walked into a color suite. And I walk in, there's the big DaVinci panel there, we're in a dark room. And I see this footage, this log footage I've been looking at with a click of a button turn into something colorful and beautiful. And it took my breath away, I think that change. And it's something kind of ubiquitous now. And maybe now it's something that we're so aware of color grading and image processing as a society as a culture with Instagram and all these other things that the logs switch into a color image may be even a little cheesy. But I gotta say for me, it was kind of revelatory, you know, it was it was that moment when you're, when you're standing in front of a beautiful painting, and it kind of like takes your breath away, right? And I always try to keep that in mind, that initial feeling, because I think you can still make clients have that feeling when you show them a before and after and you get that kind of gasp or that audible reaction from them. And that's a really creatively satisfying moment. I don't know, I think from there, I just kind of realized I was like, Oh, this is what I want to do. It kind of like it was an intoxicating moment, it's so funny you mentioned that like, I feel like that's a common we all come from different paths. And we all come from different places. Some of us from Telesini, some of us come from the digital background, some of us come from the world of cameras. And I feel like a lot of colorists have had this experience of essentially having this magical moment. And I call it magic, because it really is sort of magical when you just have this snap. And it's an emotional thing, I think it connects the technical to the emotional. And for me, it's like, Oh, my God, there is somebody that does this. But not only that, it's not just a technical thing. There is emotional context to this. Because I also remember the first time I was in a color suite. And I had that similar emotional connection where it was like, Oh, my God, I've also messed with log footage. But this is what it's supposed to look like. And it happens so quickly. And then, then you get to balancing. And then it's like, whoa, when you actually see a professional do this, it's like, I mean, I thought I was watching an astronaut, to be honest, I was just watching a professional at work. I mean, it's probably closer to a painter, but it really was just like watching a master craftsman. Yeah, it's something psychologically primal, right? It's like some kind of an instant dopamine hit, I think, you know, just seeing that switch. I'm not afraid to admit that like, when before I even knew my path in this industry, and I thought I was going to be along with the effects end, I really enjoyed the before and after. And when I decided to go in a different direction than the effects, one of the things that I decided to do was take things I liked about the effects and use that as a guide. And that's actually how I ended up in color, because I really liked the effect of before and afters. And I wanted to sort of use that as a guide, what are similar professions that allow me to do that. And color was one of them. It also allowed the technical nature, it also allowed the client management. And so for me, it was sort of a natural transformation over and it always is about I don't want to say it's about the dopamine hit, but it's about that emotional connection that you can make with another human being and inspire that feeling with them. So I love that you are able to remember that and try and inspire that with your client. That's a super important feeling to try and push on to somebody else and get somebody to experience that because I don't know about your projects, but it feels like most especially with an indie film, they might be working on this for years and years and years. And we have it for such a short period of time that revelatory switch can feel like I'm seeing the light finally. Absolutely. I mean, you said it before, I think magic is the right word. You know, I think that filmmakers who, you know, sometimes, especially with these documentaries, people have been working months or years on a project, they've been slaving away and they've been doing the gritty work of production of editing. And that can take a lot of the essence of cinema of film, the love, the magic of it out of it, right? And I think what's so beautiful about what we do is we're the people who get to inject that magic back into it, not only for us, but for them, like we get to show them something beautiful about their own film. It's like all that effort that they've been putting in all that non glamorous part of filmmaking, you know, how the sausage is made stuff, we get to actually introduce the magic back into the film for them. I mean, that's just such a creatively satisfying thing we get to do for clients. And maybe this is just something that I'm most satisfied about is what I like to remind clients is I frequently hear the phrase like, Oh, my God, you made it look so good. But I like to remind clients, it's been there the entire time you guys shot this. I'm just bringing it out. And it's so amazing that to watch the look on their face when they realize, Oh, my God, this was mine all along. Yeah, no, I mean, that's the amazing benefit of what we're able to do. I take that responsibility very seriously. And I think it's a great honor to work with these artists and to do that for them. Essentially, we bring its order out of chaos. So let's talk about a couple of these projects. You've worked on some really high end projects from some high end documentaries like Icarus with Love Meghan and American Murder to some now very high end directors like Sean Baker and Tangerine. Let's talk about Tangerine and your relationship with Sean Baker because I believe you just finished a new film with him. Yeah, so we just finished a film that Sean was the editor and producer on. The director is his longtime producing partner, Xi Qing. And it's a film all shot in Taiwan, uh, in Taiwanese language. And it's coming out on Netflix in November. I don't know when this is going to drop, but it should come out in November 2025. And it's another film all shot on the iPhone. He is such an interesting guy in terms of what he decides to use for his film. So that's super interesting. How was that for you? Because I know it's really easy to get caught up on the technical. But how did you feel greeting a film shot on iPhone? What? Well, for Tangerine, it was interesting, right? Because it was introduced to me as like, okay, there's this feature film. It's kind of low budget. And it was all shot on the iPhone. And I think if, you know, as us were like, we want the, you know, best and shiniest cameras available. And I didn't understand at first what we were getting into. But with a filmmaker like Sean, he's such an artist and such an auteur that his vision is so clear and so specific. And he's he's a cinephile. He's the reason the word auteur actually exists. I mean, his passion and attention to details like second to none, right? So he came in with a ton of looks, a ton of like pre grading that he had done, I think in Final Cut seven, it was really inspiring because he basically, you know, the problem with the iPhone, or just the nature of the iPhone footage, that was the iPhone 5s. So it was just and shot on a Moondog Labs anamorphic adapter. So it was super sharp all the way through from the person face right in front of the camera to the street sign three blocks away totally in focus and pretty perfectly balanced, right? Just kind of very plain and clean. And our job was to, you know, just really creatively find an interesting look. And some of the creative looks that he presented to me, you know, it's really interesting. It's something I would have never done on my own. But the moment I saw them, I think we need to be chameleons in that regard, right? Like we need to lock into a look. And once we've committed to that, that's what we need to kind of paint over the whole image, right? All the different all the shots that we encounter. So we really came to a really interesting look on that thing and added a ton of grain and the black levels not balanced, the white levels not balanced. It's it's really out there. And you know, it was really outside my comfort zone at the time, to be honest, but I kept the faith that was true to his vision. And, you know, it was this huge hit at Sundance, and they didn't even tell anyone at Sundance that it was shot on the iPhone until the last day. So that was kind of a big reveal. So oh, wow. I thought that was a whole part of its marketing thing. So that's super interesting that they sort of hit that. I think after the fact, you know, maybe concurrently left handed girl this new movie, he is the editor and producer was a similar type of vibe, we kind of spoke the same language. And I think it was a lot more of an elevated look, because I think this was the iPhone 11 or 12. So a little bit more image to work with, you know, we got to employ a lot of new techniques that, you know, are available to us now, like halation and bloom and grain and giving it in log, because I know previously, the iPhone 5s is all it had was rec 709. But now we have, I mean, the iPhone is basically a pseudo cinema camera, if you set it up correctly. This one was shot with filmic pro, I believe in the log, the Apple log setting. So yeah, it was log ish better than rec 709. So definitely moving towards something that we tend to like to work with a little more. Yeah, yeah. No, it's the process for you. It was an absolute joy of making each image look as cool and as like filmic and punchy. And it's a very punchy film. It's shot all in a night market in Taiwan, mainly. So there's neon lights, there's, like all sorts of different color temperatures, a lot of fluorescent lighting, it was really like running the gamut of the different color palettes that we had on offer. And I think it looks great. I'm not excited for people to see it. It premiered at Cannes this year. Oh, I'm really excited to see that. That sounds like a really interesting looking films. I really love directors that are, I don't know if experimental is the right word, but willing to push looks and technology in a way that is experimental like that. It may not always result in the best final result. Like Tangerine wasn't personally my favorite film, but I appreciated it for what it was, which was opening up and proving you can make a full feature phone on an iPhone, sort of open the doors and said, Go run. I'll speak for myself, but I think I'm speaking for most colorists. I mean, we get locked into our way of doing things, right? Especially because of our time constraints, you know, you can get burned by experimenting, right? You can try a new tool and you've done it on 1700 shots. And you know, a week later, you're like, Oh boy, this is I need to reverse engineer all of this because it's breaking this light or this part of the image, right? And there's so many tools at our disposal. You know, I think it's really important. I have to remind myself this all the time. It's really important to almost try something new every single project to not get stagnant in your way of doing things. I mean, I'm guilty of that more than anyone. I think we all are. It's becomes, it's a comfort and it's, it's difficult to be uncomfortable when you're supposed to be the expert and you're supposed to be the professional and the client is saying, what do we do or what would, what would you do? And to suggest something that is uncomfortable is a brave move. It's so much easier to go with what you know that works because you've done it on every other project. And obviously the budget and the timing has to allow for that. But being brave enough to say, you know, I'm not sure about this, but I think we should try this. And if it doesn't work, we have a backup path. But this sounds like an interesting attempt. And part of our skill is you got to convince the client to go along with that if they're not on board. You know, that's the huge, you know, it's like, I think we are in the hospitality business. We want to satisfy. We want to please. So I think we all know a way of doing something that'll make the client say, yes, that looks good. That looks perfect. Print it. Let's move on. But to push the boundaries and to creatively explore with the client, that can be a scary world to navigate. And I think that comes with experience. I think a lot of people who come to me now, fortunately, know what I do, and they trust me. And I think that's the biggest hurdle to get over is to gain people's trust, not only gain trust, but not lose it. Because I think the biggest issue once you've gained it is keeping it because if you've lost it, it's almost impossible to get back. It's even harder than gaining it the first time because broken trust is gone forever. It's like a piece of glass. You've shattered it. You can't glue it back together. Yeah. I mean, relationships are, I definitely talk to younger colorists who are either asking advice or picking my brain. And I think most people will say relationships is the most valuable commodity in our industry. Right. Your next job is coming not from a job board or from a Facebook group or from LinkedIn is coming from a relationship that wants you to be on their next project. That's the most likely place. And it's hard to find that information out, right? I think in a world of the proliferation of YouTube videos and online content about color grading and on Instagram or on YouTube, on TikTok, a lot is about the tools and not a lot is about client relationships, what the vibe is like in the room. That's the stuff that just comes with experience. And that's the stuff that you, I don't know if you can't teach it, but you can only learn it by experiencing it. Experiencing it and unfortunately sometimes making some pretty bad mistakes and having to analyze that and figure out, well, can you do better next time? I've made all the mistakes. I've made them all. So let's jump to one of your other projects, which honestly is, if I'm not mistaken, one of the highest profile projects I've seen you do, which is With Love, Megan, tell me a little bit about that. So the production company's IPC here at my company, Lightwave. We do a lot of shows for them and it was a very high profile show shot on the Alexa 35 by the DP, Jeremy Leach, who he has a long standing relationship by shooting most of the Anthony Bourdain content, like parts unknown. And this was an interesting challenge, right? It's a cooking show all shot basically at this beautiful property in Santa Barbara. And on paper, that sounds pretty easy peasy when it comes to color and pretty straightforward. But I think creating a unique look for that show, the diverse cast of guests and characters, making it look beautiful, shiny, poppy, open, cozy, bright, all those words were thrown out. There's a lot of nuance that goes behind crafting a look like that. I think the hardest looks are the ones that don't look like looks, but they're there. And so that's why that program is so interesting to me is it really looks like it was shot like that. But I know there's a look there. And I know there's a significant amount of work behind it. And so that's why I was so impressed is it just looks so bright and elegant and happy. That was the mission statement. And hopefully we delivered. But yeah, no, that was a really fun project. Jeremy did a great job. Some of his other operators, Andre Krenach is a good friend and colleague, Woo Lovenger. The whole team on that was top notch. You and your whole team as well did a fantastic job. So that's feature. Check that out. That's on Netflix. There's something you want to talk about early on in my career. I think something that I was fortunate to experience was I was given micro budget features that were shot in 11 days and needed 16 hours where 16 hours was the allotted time for the grading. And that meant a four hour set look and a four hour review. So you essentially only had a day to grade an entire feature phone, usually shot on the Alexa with some stock footage in between. When you have that as your boot camp, I'll say I literally have done several dozen of these, right. And I think what that teaches you is when you're doing your first pass, which to me is the that's the most fun I have. The most fun is getting the clean project kind of on your own. And you're just you just need to cruise through those 1700 shots and put a look on them. I think what that time constraint taught, I don't recommend grading a movie in 16 hours, I don't recommend, but if you have to do it, if that's what the budget constrains, I think it prioritizes your thinking. I think it prioritizes what you need to be focused on. And that's where being fast about balancing like really having an instinct for what serves the scene. And I think as you move through shots quickly, especially in that first pass, it trains you to hold the look in your head, right? If you have an idea of a look, we all know we can get bogged down on one shot. We can just sit on one shot and tweak and add windows, you hit play the shots three seconds long, and you're like, Oh, geez, that was a lot of work. I don't like to do that at first, right? I think my very first pass is an overview of the whole film. And I just kind of like to cruise get into a flow state. And it's surprising after over the years doing films like that, it's really surprising what you get. I feel like you're 90% of the way there. After that pass, I feel like that is really well represented in the fact that so much color grading is over complicated with plugins, film emulation and the newest coolest trend when the fact is if you just properly balance the footage throughout the film consistently, it'll look pretty good, especially if it's shot. Well, like you said, no one's recommending doing a film in 16 hours. But if you have to do that, focus on it looking as best as possible and consistent. And I feel like that's entirely forgotten by a lot of colorists. When that's really the first thing that you should focus on, not on gear, not on technology, it's fun, it's sexy, I love it, but just getting that balance down. And that's actually one of the reasons I wanted to bring you on the show was when you were mentioned in a previous episode, you were mentioned in the context of being a master balancer, you could balance a shot faster than so many other colorist. And really, that's one of the most impressive things you can say about a colorist is they balance shots just like that. Well, thank you. That's that's nice to hear. Yeah, I think that just comes from muscle memory and experience, right? And I do think that is the key to at least being successful and thriving in this business, we can all sit on a single shot and tweak it to death, right? I'm guilty as the rest of them to get into the tools really get into the nitty gritty. We have so many amazing tools at our disposal at this point. I think I've showed you my node tree. And I know the node tree is it's a big discussion amongst colorists. But I basically only I'm twisting lift game again, essentially one node, there are other nodes that are doing other things. I have one node that I just call color. And that's where most of the kind of twisting the knobs is happening. That was what I walked away with. Like I was most impressed how much you were doing in that single node. And I have what I'll call a medium sized node tree, because I like to separate stuff out. But I was most impressed how much you did in that node and how much of the entire grade was comprised in that node. Yeah, you had saturation and little stuff down here. But really, the gist and you could delete almost every other node and really, the grade would be fine if you just had that color node right there. And that I thought was incredibly impressive. And it shows that while fixed node trees are really, really useful, it really is just about getting that bounce down and learning how to spin the wheels. To me, it's the most important thing. I mean, everyone has a different way of working, but that was what was ingrained on me early on with the older colorist that I had the chance to ask questions of or learn under. That was what was ingrained in me. I mean, I used to have to grade without a lot. I used to just have to twist the knobs with the log footage and get a workable image and you can do that. I don't recommend doing that. Nowadays, you know, we have a bunch of other protocols that make a lot of more sense. But I think that's good training. I mean, if any younger colorist is thinking about, you know, what skills they need to actually practice, I think it's just really getting everything done in one node as a limitation. The limitation is your strength there. It's a feature, not a bug. Totally. And other people have different ways of working. I'm just speaking for myself, obviously, you know, that's how I kind of like to do it. I think it goes back to the fact that we all come from different places and we all have different ways of working and we're all just going for a fantastic, consistent looking images. But also, clients want so many different things. And I mean, your credentials show you have people that love your work. Your work looks great. And it's varied, which is something that I love about colorist is when they don't have a specific calling card, when they're able to be like you called it a chameleon, they're able to read what their client wants and adapt to what the project calls for. I think that's so important because again, we're in service of the client. We're in the service industry. I keep saying that like when I started lightwave, the company I own here in Los Angeles, one of the biggest tenants was that we are in the hospitality business. We're in the service industry. I think we're here to serve the creative needs of the client and the project. And I've definitely sat there for hours before a client comes in and I've thrown a crazy film emulation, grain, halation, bloom, gate weave, whatever you want, right? And I've just been like, Oh, this is so cool. They're gonna love it. And they've walked in there and been like, Hmm, I don't really like that. I think the grains too much. I think it's too contrasty. I don't like this. What is that halation? I don't like that. I don't think you can fight that. I don't think you should fight that. I think you need to be an open antenna and receive what the client is giving you and you need to adapt to that. I mean, that's at least my philosophy. So I want to dig into that a tiny bit because I think one, it's easy to get defensive about that. And two, how do you tend to respond when a client says, I don't really like that because it's almost some people sort of freeze and go, okay, now what? And they instantly go to their next look library, which is a great step. But what do you personally do? Do you ask your client, what are you guys looking for? Or do you try a couple things out of your look library? Or do you just start going live and start grading live with them to see what they like? Each case is different, obviously, but it's an important point to keep in mind that I always say that we are like 30% technician and 70% therapist. We are there to facilitate a vision. I mean, we are most often dealing with people who are at the farthest end of this very strenuous, stressful journey. They've done all this hard work with production, with post production. With budget issues, they've run out of money, every possible thing that has gone wrong has gone wrong for them. And then they're at this very, they're in a vulnerable state. Most of the time, they're in a fragile state. And I think that's we need to be really sensitive about that, as colorists, as finishing artists, as people who are able to take this project that means a lot to these clients and to be able to shepherd it to the finish line for them. And what you want to instill is confidence. You want to instill that you are the person to shepherd this project along creatively. You're the person who's going to put it in its best light and give the care that is necessary for this project. So I guess to answer your question, if I've come up with a look and a client is just not feeling it, then I'm happy to just literally wipe it out, wipe it out completely. And then maybe we start from scratch where we just do a simple transform. And then I can break down each layer because I think the real skill that we must possess as colorists is, I say 30% technician, 70% therapist. Part of therapist is translator too, right? I think oftentimes, especially with me starting out, you misinterpret what the client is saying because either the client doesn't have the vocabulary, the technical vocabulary that maybe you have, or they're saying what they feel, but it's not technically what's happening on screen. Like I've had people say it's too contrasty, and they mean it's too saturated. I've had people say, it's too pink, when what they mean is that vase in the top right corner is too pink. And I think early on, you hear it's too pink. And at least for me, I was in this mode where it's like, oh, it's too pink, add green, you start reacting to the note instead of actually receiving the note being that antenna to receive the note for what it actually means. So I think if a client is hesitant at first, I think I proceed with care and I proceed, I want their needs to be met in that moment. If I strongly feel a certain way about something, if I think something looks really cool, I'm definitely going to push for that. But I'm going to do it in a very thoughtful, caring way, not going to be aggressive about it. I'm not going to bully the client into doing what I think looks right, because what I think looks right, you can take that or leave it. But at the end of the day, that's irrelevant. We're hired to do a job. I love that in the sense that it really feels like that you are trying to get to the heart of what the client is visualizing, when in fact, we can't really see that we can't get into their head and project what they're seeing. And so we have to get them to essentially describe it. But as you mentioned, they don't necessarily have the technical vocabulary to clearly define sometimes an extreme detail of what we're asking. Sometimes they don't even understand the question we're asking, we have to simplify or use analogies, however we need to, to understand their vision. And I've heard a lot of colorists that either get frustrated or just decide, you know what, you brought it here, this is my project now, and I'm going to tell you what looks good. And I've always found that to be a little egotistical in the sense that, like you said, we have this project for such a short period of time that there's just no way that I can understand its DNA and the way that the producer and director could, I can give my own opinion on it. I'm a highly opinionated guy, as everybody knows, but it's not going to be the person that created this film. I'm just a team member that, like you said, that's meant to shepherd this film to the finish line and hopefully hand it back over to the whole team that says, this is exactly how I saw it. It's like you took the projector from my brain and it's on the screen now. I've had dozens of projects that are handed to me and I'm the second or third colorist to work on the project. And I think there's a lesson to be learned there. You know, I don't take that as like, oh, I'm better, you know, I don't take it as that at all. I analyze, well, what went wrong? Like what needs of the client were not being met? It's a shame that it takes several colorists to do that. But I've heard that story from quite a few people in the sense that our job, like you said, is about hospitality. It's making them feel safe. It's making them feel like we care about their vision. And most importantly, it's making sure that we understand what they want and what they're looking for, even if they don't necessarily know it yet. It's about opening up that freedom and that safe place to discover and experiment and try and find out and find out, okay, we are starting with this log negative like I just like, like I used to describe it. And we're going to try and figure out how it looks when it's processed now. I think clients, at least my clients, for the most part appreciate you going on the journey with them. I'll explain my thought process. I'll break down the node tree node by node. I'll explain how I've reached this look or how I've come to this look for the footage. And I think that really opens up a bond between you and the client, they want to be let in, it's kind of a mystery to flash on and off images for people and show them something that's a little magenta or a little green or a little saturated or not and just be like, what do you think? What do you think? I mean, that's a lot on people's brains who don't do that. It's a shock to the system. So I think you just need to be very mindful. It's funny, I've actually never thought about the sensory overload, it must be to be in a color suite when you actually haven't had to make all those decisions before. And that's such an amazing point you made because it is so difficult when you're just overloaded to decide what is the decision if you haven't thought about it. Like not everybody is Sean Baker and comes in with, I know what my vision is, this is exactly what it is. And we can go from there. Sometimes it's a discovery, like you mentioned, and giving a safe place for that I think is incredibly important and not feeling like you're going to jump down their throat and be, hey, this is my color suite and this is the way it's going to go. Or this is a cool look and trust me, this is how all the other features are, is overwhelming. Also, nobody wants to be talked down to, especially on your own project. It feels disingenuous. So I think the fact that you include them on your journey is part of your success. I think so. I mean, I think it's probably why people come back. I mean, I've definitely had a lot of positive feedback that comes with experience, right? I can't stress that enough. Like this is something that's learned over a long time. Absolutely. Something like balancing is not something that you can balancing client management, all of these skills are something that you certainly pick up over time and experience and continue making mistakes and hopefully learn from them. You're never done learning. I think that's one of the things that I picked up in this profession and why I love doing this podcast is I literally learned something from interviewing every single color as I pick up something that I can take away and bring to my own practice. I think it's hard, right? I think it's hard for us who sit in the dark all day and are image processing and tweaking all day to see the forest through the trees with that kind of stuff, right? You know, it's hard for us to know. Like we can just add a point of saturation or a point of green and just back and forth it. And to assume that someone's going to even receive that in the same way that you are, I don't know, that's probably a mistake. You know, you really need to meet them where they're at. And some people are going to be used to that. And some people are going to be totally overwhelmed. So I think creating creative open environment and open dialogue is probably the most important thing for at least that first day that set look session. And I think, again, putting everyone at ease, having them say like, I've had plenty of people say after one or two hours of a set look session, they're like, we're good. You got this. That's the best thing you could hear. They have utter trust in you. And you can go about what you do best. And they are, I mean, obviously they're going to look at reviews, but they have trust in your professional ability. You proven yourself. Yeah. No, I think that's probably not talked about enough. It's funny because I've gone to lunch and beers with other colorists and they say like, man, I just wish I could find those clients like they are that way from the very start. But I think you nailed it on the head. You have to build that trust with them and get them to the point where they can trust your decision making. They have to one understand your decision making and then trust it. Those are two different steps, I think. Assuming that you guys are on the same page is, I think, a false assumption. I mean, some people come in totally intimidated to the point of early on, it would be like if you change it from log to rec 709, it would even be like, oh, no, no, no, no, this is too contrasty. This is too colorful. If they've been watching the log for months at a time, the offline edit, I call that logitis. Oh, yeah. 2011, baby. Yes. But that's okay, right? You have to meet them where they're at. You have to be empathetic. You have to guide them on that journey out of log. Obviously, teaching and knowledge goes a long way, but I think a guiding hand is a really, really helpful thing to help a client pass that stage. I think the, like you called it logitis that we saw in 2011 with the introduction of red and Alexa is a result of us and a lot of colorists not knowing how to do that properly and not knowing how to address the workflow and really help handhold the client because obviously the film development process was you had to develop film and you had to print it. Otherwise, you couldn't do anything with it, but obviously now you can just send the log progress file and call it a day. So it's a totally different process now. And I think most people were just like, oh, cool. We don't have to do anything with it. So we shouldn't need to. And oh, by the way, you should know what to do with this. And we just assumed clients were as smart as we were. When the fact is, this is as new a process for them as it was for us. Yeah. And I can't stress enough. I mean, you're totally right. I can't stress enough that I don't take that as aggression or defensiveness. This is their baby. You're kind of like taking their creative project that they hold dear that again, sometimes with these documentaries, I mean, I just did a documentary. Someone had been working on for seven years. So it's a lot. It's a lot to come in there and just start really just kind of changing the way it looks. I don't know. I think it's really important to have a sensitivity to that. So I'll ask you like a general question. So you have a client that's coming in there and you just know that they're going to be defensive. You got to call with them and you just get off the call and you go, they're going to come in with the nerves totally rung up. They're going to be already protective of this film. How would you approach that session or would you have do you have an exercise or do you have any way that might sort of set them at ease? Because I think that's really important is sort of understanding the client beforehand and sort of setting the stage. Like would you have any way of approaching that? I think if someone's coming in hot, coming in defensive, again, I think empathy is first and foremost, you have to understand that they want the best for their film, you want the best for their film. And I think if someone is is maybe opposed to the idea of you changing anything at all, then I think you need to take gradual steps with them and you need to play the game of before and after, right? Because I think at the very least, our job is to make it to improve upon the offline. I would hope that's our job. I would start at a base level. I would find where their base levels at and what they like about it. We can pull up the offline and we can be like, what do you like about this? And maybe they'll respond like, oh, I love how it's soft and airy and I love the way the trees look and I love the way this flower looks. And so, okay, that's a baseline of what they like, right? And then I can say, well, what do you not like about it? Let's go to a shot you don't like. Let's go to a problematic shot that has always kind of bothered you. And there always is something like that, right? There's always a scene or a piece of footage that so I'll start with the most problematic thing in the movie in that case. I think that's a valid technique, right? Because I think let's scratch that itch that they've been wanting to scratch probably for the last six months. So let's go to the scene that's completely wrong. White balance or way too dark and let's balance it. Let's throw some neat video on there and just have them get them to that place of like, wow, probably one of the more satisfying things you can hear is I never thought the footage could look like this. I've heard that before and really it just it makes my heart sing when because you can literally hear the trust being earned with that. That's such a great response. And honestly, that's if you're listening and you have, I love that term, a hot client. I think that's an incredible way of calming them down. And in true therapist form to what do you like about this? What don't you like? How are you feeling? It's exactly exactly what you started with. And I think that's a fantastic way of approaching it. Now, as we are starting to get to the end of our time together, where can we find out more about you and your team? So you can go to lightweight post dot com. That's the facility I own and run in Studio City, Los Angeles. You can check out our website, check out our work there. You can find me on IMDB with my many credits there. I try to keep that up to date. I have a website, but it's impossible to update as we, you know, we kind of work on a new project every week. So I feel like the IMDB is the most up to date CV that's that I have out there. Fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us on this episode, Luke. It's been such a pleasure having you. Likewise, man. Thank you. Thanks for inviting me. And for this episode of Color and Coffee, I'm Jason Bodeck. Thank you so much for joining us today. That is about it for this episode of the Color and Coffee podcast. I want to thank our sponsors, FSI, Demystify Color and PixelTools. We'll see you guys at the next episode. Thank you to our guest, Luke Cahill, and happy grading. And that's a wrap. Be sure to follow us on Instagram, YouTube and your podcast app of choice. Search for at Color and Coffee or at Color and Coffee podcast and join the conversation. If you're using Spotify or Apple podcast, please leave a review. Huge thanks to FSI, Demystify Color and PixelTools for sponsoring the show. Until the next episode.