Pushing the Grade: A Candid Conversation with Colorist Brian Singler

0:00:00- Brian Singler
I'm not afraid to throw away detail at the bottom of the image, i'm not afraid to clip my blacks in one channel. If that looks cool, right, it looks retro or whatever. So it's really interesting because I think, at the end of the day, the technical is important, but people aren't coming to us for that. They're coming to us for a unique stamp on their image and for us to elevate their stuff And whatever it takes to do. That is, i think, really mostly what matters. Welcome to. 

0:00:34- Jason Bowdach
Color and Coffee, a podcast that focuses on the craft of color grading and the artists behind it. I'm your host, Jason Bowdach, and each week we'll sit down with some of the most talented and creative colorists in the industry and have a casual chat from one colorist to another. People share their stories, their insights, their grading tips and, of course, their beverage of choice. Whether you're a seasoned colorist or just starting out in the industry, join us for some great color discussion. Strap in, grab your mug. You're listening to Color and Coffee. Welcome to this episode of Color and Coffee. I'm thrilled to have a colorist, brian Singler, with me. Welcome to the show. 

0:01:16- Brian Singler
Hey, thank you, Jason. Glad to be here. 

0:01:19- Jason Bowdach
Well, I'm going to start with the most important question of the episode What are you drinking? 

0:01:25- Brian Singler
Well, i'm not a coffee person, which made me think immediately it might not be eligible for your podcast, but my drink of choice is and I get made fun of a lot it's my giant jug of water, so I can stay hydrated like an athlete having to pump out as many commercials, features, music videos as I possibly can. So that's probably why I'd go with it. 

0:01:46- Jason Bowdach
Well, you, my friend, are ahead of us. Took me a couple of years to figure out that I needed a nice strong glass of water next to my coffee, So I'm going to take a nice sip of that. There you go. 

0:01:56- Brian Singler
And thankfully I haven't spilled mine on my new advanced panel yet, So I'm doing good. 

0:02:01- Jason Bowdach
I usually I'm pretty brave right now having an open beverage. I usually have a no open beverage policy on my desk. 

0:02:09- Brian Singler
Why. 

0:02:09- Jason Bowdach
That's a very smart thing, but for this podcast I was rushing, so I just grabbed this open beverage, which I'm hoping that I don't have a problem with later. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. We're thrilled to have you on here, like everybody else listening. If you're only drinking coffee, definitely make sure to bring a little water into that as well. I highly recommend it. So we'll get this show going. I'm a huge fan of yours. I've been a follower on Instagram for a while. We were both on the Tac Resolve training masterclass And I'd like to know a little bit more about your background. How did you get started as a colorist? How'd you get in the industry? 

0:02:45- Brian Singler
I spent the first probably eight years of my career in sports journalism. So I was a play by play broadcaster for a baseball team. I was a television news, television sports anchor. I worked as a print reporter for many years. That was really kind of how it started, because I've even I love sports, you know, always have. So I wanted to tell stories kind of in that arena But I really wanted to, you know, kind of tell stories with a little bit of a higher production value. So, you know, just kind of morphed from there into trying to kind of try and do more commercial work and then, you know, slowly it started to get into better commercial work And then it kind of turned into doing short films and then into features. 

And then Instagram we talked about was, i think, really helpful for me just to kind of get a little bit of get the world to kind of at least see what I was doing and get me some more opportunities. So it just kind of snowballed kind of, you know, quickly, and that's kind of the route that it took to get me where I am right now. 

0:03:44- Jason Bowdach
Well, that's fantastic. So right now you're at TBD Post and you're part of a team. What is the type of content that you're working on? You mentioned you're working on features, you're working on commercials. What is sort of the variety that you tend to work on? 

0:03:57- Brian Singler
Yeah, it's really all over the map and it changes every single day and it's multiple projects per day. So you know, right now I would say it's almost all commercials and features. I don't get as many music videos, but you know what's? what's been really neat is that the commercial work is steady and you know, i've kind of built a lot of clients whom I love very much And so you know, i've been slowly able to pretty much, you know, work on every big brand out there that you can name. I've at least done, done something for them. 

You know there's kind of a steady diet of that. There's a lot of branded content you know in there as well. So you know the slightly longer pieces for those. You know those bigger brands and stuff like that. And then I do a lot of features. You know I'm doing kind of right in the middle of like four features at the moment, four narratives at the same time, which is kind of blowing my mind a little bit all along, trying to learn the advanced panel and grading in the theater and HDR and Dolby vision. So you know I'm trying to learn all this, all this stuff kind of at once. But that's mostly where all my work kind of it all comes from. Really one of those two streams. 

0:05:04- Jason Bowdach
Well, that sounds that's quite a lot to do at once. So you're taking on your, your traditional commercial work, while taking on, you said, four features at the same time. 

0:05:13- Brian Singler
Yeah, yeah. So that was. that was really interesting, bouncing back and forth and trying to remember like, well, what was I going for in this one? You know it's tough because they're they're wildly different ones. And you know, an action movie like a lower budget John Wick. Another one is a romantic comedy, another one kind of a defies explanation. We spend the rest of my podcast trying to explain it to you. But there's just a really great, big, big variety and there's other ones coming, big action epics and things like that. So I'm really excited to see that. You know, to kind of see the budgets and the production value just continue to go up And that's been, i feel, incredibly fortunate that that's been happy to me for the last couple of years. 

0:05:53- Jason Bowdach
So it's kind of what's going on right now. Well, congratulations. One of the things that I'd like to talk on that you mentioned in there is is your transition from I believe you're working on a mini panel over to the advanced panel, so you could do a little bit more work. How would you say that? that's, that's adjusted, your workflow, or the way that you work? 

0:06:09- Brian Singler
Well, let's, let's, let's be, let's just have an honest discussion, right Cause this is casual. I feel like I really suck on the advanced panel right now. It's one of those things that it's just difficult to learn new, new stuff sometimes. I mean, it feel like it's colorists, where where peop, where creatures of habit, and you know, i was pretty fast on the mini panel. But it's interesting to do is I never quite completely sold myself into the mini panel because I always wanted the big one, right. 

So it's neat, you know, obviously it's awesome to have it. I mean, i love the fact that literally almost every feature that I would want is right there Right Now. I just it just takes me too long to remember where it is at the moment. So I tried to, you know, get my kids to help drill me on you know where things are and stuff like that. But overall I'm liking it a lot, just trying to make that transition to be a little less reliant on the on the keyboard and the Wacom and and kind of where I was used to stuff Dean on the mini panel. But overall it's, it's absolutely fantastic And it's obviously going to make going to make me a lot faster in the long run. I know there's a lot of colorists who kind of say they prefer the mini panel with a bunch of stream tracks, and maybe that's true, but I think I'd probably take the advanced panel any day. 

0:07:20- Jason Bowdach
Okay. So that's that's a really interesting opinion that I was going to ask you, cause I'm also in in the middle. It's going to be a lot longer transition for me because I don't have four features on the on my deck right now, but I'm also in the transition of. I have a suite one suite with an advanced panel and most of my other suites with the minis, and so I'm slowly, just like you, feeling pretty stupid when I get onto the advanced panel and not knowing where, where my usual buttons are, and reaching and then going that's, that's not where that is, and then there's no button or no rotary wheel there. So that's and that's exactly what this podcast is about is for us to be totally honest in that we we do have to relearn things when we get new pieces of equipment, but I'm super interested to hear that you, still in this learning curve, feel that you will get more use out of the advanced panel than you will out of the mini with couple stream decks. 

0:08:09- Brian Singler
Yeah, i can go on all day And the, the jog wheel, is so useful. You know I pull a lot of frames or Instagram, so it's like the best thing ever to have the, that fourth wheel, to control my windows and, you know, pop me up my points on a curve or something like that. And then it's just the fact that when I open a palette, any of the, any of the palettes motion palette, the blur palette, magic math, right, i mean everything is right there. Things that are hidden in three dot menus are right there. And so I just think the fact that you go to any sort of panel or task and the fact that the advanced panel just remaps almost every control you need right there, is just so helpful, especially when you're doing a specific task right, like I'm doing a car commercial and I decide that I want to use the object tracker. 

The ob- Jason Bowdachject tracker happens to be really fantastic. It's like it knows what a car is. I've had shots where the car is like spinning 360s and it's it's following it the whole way perfectly, and so you know if I'm working on a car spot and that's, you know, a valuable tool for me there. all those tools are just. they're exposed. they're there for me and I'm able to kind of go through. you know that that part of it quicker. You know some people seem to like the way the track balls and rings feel on the mini panel more. I think they feel pretty much standard but yeah and obviously the the. 

The T bar is amazing. I feel like I can wipe and compare. I can wipe and compare clips faster, you know to to one another. 

0:09:38- Jason Bowdach
I love the T bar. If I could just take one thing away from that thing, if and a lot of people buy the speed editor for the equivalency. But man, that T bar is just a heart. 

0:09:50- Brian Singler
I'm still, you know, rather, rather connected to my Wacom, but, but I'm trying to. I'm trying to advance to a place where, you know, maybe with some foot pedals, like to control next clip, previous clip, and then maybe play and stop. If I had those underneath my desk and then I had the advanced panel and I could let go of the keyboard and the Wacom, that would be, though, i could advance through clips, play and stop without having to move my hands off the balls and off the surface, cause that's the sort of thing you press. 

I don't know, hundreds of times per day. Next clip, previous clip play stop right, i mean hundreds of times, if I can migrate that to my feet, and then, you know, kind of keep my hands on the wheels and my you know my focus forward on the reference monitor and hoping that that will help help help my speed there. You know I'm trying to get faster right, i'm not the fastest colorist in the world. There are some people like Luke Cahill and other people who are just unbelievably fast Like well, i just did. You know I'm watching this dude 700 shots today. You know, that's just not my Right. I mean, i actually have been getting better, i actually did that one day, but that's. That's not necessarily my bread and butter. So I'm trying to get there. 

But then of course you know you're working on a feature, but then the next thing you're working on commercial was just totally different. So you know, you kind of got to always flop back and forth between your approaches there. 

0:11:11- Jason Bowdach
Yeah, there's. There's different styles and obviously when you have when you have different tools and access to something like the advanced panel, you're gonna have different standards, almost Obviously. I'm not gonna be able to have the same output as someone that is fluent on the advanced panel. My speed is just not gonna compare, but I it's so interesting hearing your input on on the advanced panel. I think it's even more interesting than someone that's been on the advanced panel for years because they're already so used to it. Someone that's just transitioning is really, really interesting. So I'll ask you a question Is it's not cheap? I assume it's. It's probably your, your studio, that purchased it, but would you say that the advanced panel is probably something that is useful for somebody that is doing this in and out every single day And is totally focused on speed? 

0:11:53- Brian Singler
Yeah, yeah, oh, absolutely. I mean I think if it's your, if grading's your, full-time job, i think it makes a whole lot of sense. But it doesn't make a lot of sense if your budgets, you know, maybe aren't there yet or whatever. I mean it's right. You know I've made two, two expensive purchases in my life my, my home and the advanced panel. Right, the advanced panel number two on That list, right, never even paid as much for a car as I have to do advanced panel. But but the reality is, is that I'm on it, right? I'm touching it eight to ten hours every day for how many decades? right? I mean, i want to be a colors for a long time and to continue to move up levels. So how is something that you were, you were touching, you know, 40 to 80 hours a week every day, all day long, that I mean that to me that's worth Work, it's crucial and it's. 

0:12:43- Jason Bowdach
It's nice to know that it's been supported consistently by Black magic, just like their software has. Yeah, and what I can't? 

0:12:50- Brian Singler
And you know I was hesitant because I'm, you know, like everybody. I'm in the dark over whether they're going to release a new panel. But you know, when they, when they released the 2020, was it 20 points caps, i can't remember what. 

0:13:02- Jason Bowdach
I think I forgot exactly what year, but when they released the, i think it was the $700 keypad. 

0:13:06- Brian Singler
Yeah, yeah, when they released the new key caps, i'm like, okay, they're gonna stay with this panel for at least At least five years, i would think right. so because I've been holding out I mean how many years that? I've been holding out for five, four, six years, i don't how long and I've been holding out thinking that they were gonna come out with something mid-range, like too many panels put together. 

0:13:30- Jason Bowdach
I'm so happy to hear that you feel so positively about such an expensive purchase, especially in our industry. Our gear is constantly halfton priced so frequently, so I can't say that everybody has So many expensive purchases that they feel so positively over. So that's fantastic. So, moving on a little bit to some of the work that you've created with that, i'd love to talk about specifically the diehard spot that you did a couple months ago. 

0:13:52- Brian Singler
Got you still still. Yeah, that was a couple years ago now, but now it remains coffee years ago. 

0:13:58- Jason Bowdach
Oh my god, time flies, man. Well, it's. It's. Part of the reason that I like that spot is it has a consistent theme with a lot of your work Which is very strong contrasting hues on that theme. I'd like to ask how you approach a spot like that when client comes in and They're asking, say, a type of spot like that where it doesn't necessarily need to be the diehard spot Which, if you're not familiar with that spot it's they were asking for a look that was mimicking diehard. Obviously, when you have that, you're going for a strong look. So how do you approach a piece like that? 

0:14:30- Brian Singler
I mean it always. You know I'm sure you do the same thing. I call it the color kickoff call, right? I mean, i think that's the start of it, which is, hey, i want to talk to the DP, i want to talk to the director, i want to hear it from their lips what they want and what they're feeling. Right, i think, because I have a that background in journalism like we talked about. You know I did thousands of interviews, right. 

And so I had to learn in that time to be engaging with people, to listen closely And then to be able to like extract answers that I needed and to gain trust quickly and things like that. So you know, i think I put a lot of those skills to the test, you know, or I use them to my advantage right away at the start of that call, which is to be able to find out really what they want. 

And I think you know, i think, another thing I do a good job at I don't think I'm the world's greatest colorist, but I think I'm good at hearing clients say adjectives and feelings and hopes and then trying to turn that into being something tangible. So I think that that skill comes through time and experience. I think it's incredibly important That color kickoff call to me is incredibly important to kind of get where you know where they're coming from. But you know it's not just getting kind of their vision for it, but it's also even just communicating Hey, i care enough about you and your project that I want to know I'm going to ask these questions And then sometimes I give them something that they didn't even ask for, that sometimes even the opposite of what they said, because I thought, well, you know, you said this, but I think you actually meant this And I think this direction is going to accomplish your, your objectives, even if it may not be the exact palette or kind of contrast or texture that you were immediately thinking. So, you know, i really think that's the big part. Right Is having that initial kickoff call From there. You know it's it's. It's funny. 

I'm not a big research guy, as far as well. I'm doing a car spot, so I'm going to go look at a bajillion. You know car spots And I'm just, you know, i'm going to go to the car section on company three and I'm going to watch a bunch of stuff Right, which which there's absolutely nothing wrong with that approach. But I mean, i think you know The instant you need a reference for the piece that you have. You cannot find a single thing with the characteristics or the attributes of what you actually have in front of you, and so, you know, i guess I rely more on having constantly watched the best content in the world, which I'm doing all the time. You know, i'm critiquing movies. If I'm watching a baseball game at home, i'm looking at the commercial, i'm paying attention. It's more like I'm I'm so drowning in good content That then I can just let my intuition and my instincts kind of take over, right? so I do those two things the color, kickoff call and then just going with my gut instinct. 

Um, and you'd be surprised, it's just like I hear editors talk all the time about how they get footage. They got a billion takes. They kind of go through it all. They put together their first pass, you know, get something they really like, and then they show to the client the client's like well, i need to see everything And then they re-edit the thing for the next two weeks and they end up right back where they started, right. That happens all the time And I think that's very applicable to grading, whereas a lot of times your instincts are gonna be real, real right on, right away. 

If I know that I'm in a studio with brightly painted walls, i know that I'm not gonna probably put film emulation on that if it's a commercial, right Cause it's gonna put all this nuance that I don't want, right. So I kind of know where that's gonna be. But if it's a lifestyle piece, maybe film emulation is the right choice for that. So just kind of going with your gut instincts. Obviously, i do kind of hero frames initially and then I'll send those off for feedback. But when I send those off, i incorporate everything we talked about in the color kickoff call I incorporate in the frames I'm sending. So they'll be like well, i know you wanted this to feel, you know, gloomy and romantic, so I thought I would do this to accomplish that right. So I repeat back to them what they said. So that way, it's not my ideas, right, it's their ideas, it's my interpretation of their ideas, and that gets a lot of I think a lot of initial buy-in from clients. So I don't always get as much pushback. But so that's really kind of my approach And then I've become really really fast at basically demoing looks. 

So I've got a, you know, i've got a kind of a toolkit that I built and I'll try several different film emulations or things And then I'll I will just throw stuff at the wall, i'll invert the image and show it through the film emulation. 

I'll try a creative light here and see how it looks. I'll take that film emulation if I'm using it, and I'll throw a wild color balance into it And then I'll do something wild after it. So I'll just I'll just keep trying things to kind of see what kind of emerges. And and you know I used to do more of that I think now because I'm a little more experienced, i kind of know a little bit quicker, i don't have to try as many different things, so that I kind of have an idea about what will already work. But that's kind of the DNA of how I approach stuff And I do so many projects that you know a lot of the sort of research time and stuff. It just simply isn't there. I have to get it, i have to go, so you know, that's kind of how it works. 

0:20:21- Jason Bowdach
That's a really in-depth explanation of your process. Thank you so much for for going through that. Especially with as little time as you have to go through some of your projects. I'm fascinated that you have time to to do the experimentation with looks And that's why I think you call it a toolkit. I I could also call mine a toolkit Is so, so useful. Do you build your looks or toolkit on each project Or do you build them in like I call mine like a garage on charts and such? 

0:20:49- Brian Singler
That's. That's interesting. You know we've switched here at TBD to being, you know, entirely a DaVinci wide gamut workflow. Sometimes scene refers more work than it's worth, if you know it's a commercial with no, no chance of going HDR and it just needs to go out the door, and you know. So still, sometimes I'm a little more used to that, to to that workflow. But because everything's for the most part DaVinci wide gamut, i we've just worked closely with Cullen Kelly to develop a lot of lots and tools and stuff that work within DaVinci wide gamut. So you know we just have a big list of of lots And you know, sometimes we'll I actually haven't used it very often but well, something like Ravengrade or another sort of DaVinci wide gamut based tool set. 

So you know it's kind of a big garage of stuff And usually I can kind of mix and match out of it. But then sometimes I don't use it at all And sometimes I'm literally just taking my curves and splitting them right, which is like sometimes all you need right. So, like I, i I did just did a feature film And I got to one scene that the you know that the director and the DP were they were very frustrated with cause they thought it didn't look good And all I did was I split off the green curve and I pushed it up and it turned the whole spot like the whole scene, kind of this yellowish green, and it was very stylized. It was exactly what I needed and that was all it needed. So you know you've got the big toolkit when you need it. But then you know, sometimes you can make do with just simple tools underneath really good color management or or color science, right? 

0:22:27- Jason Bowdach
Exactly At that point where the client wasn't happy with that. It was your knowledge and your judgment that led him to be able to say, or actually led you to be able to say we just needed that green curve And that's, we're having a great colorist. Instead of saying let's throw the soup and nuts at this until we're done, you had the wherewithal to say all we need is just a tiny bit more salt and then it's done. I was talking with Robbie Carmon and we were talking about how it's so easy to overseas in a grade and then you can't pull that out. 

0:23:01- Brian Singler
Yep, and I I'm guilty of over-seasoning grades all the time. I mean I have to pull it back. And you know, one of the things that I tend to have, a very heavy stylized look, and I mean, i know a lot of older colorists are think that's probably not necessary. And here's the thing I totally agree with them, but there's, it depends where you are in your career and it depends on the expectations of the client and stuff. So with Walter Velpat I was able to do a lot of work on the front end of his feature to get a look, and then he's just tweaking after it. That's absolutely fantastic, right. But you know I do a lot of short form work and I don't have that ability. So sometimes, frankly, i have to throw the kitchen sink at it to see, you know where it's going to go. And also I have a client base a lot of times who are expecting that. They're expecting me to make it quite a bit different. They're not expecting me to just balance it and call it good. So you know it's really dependent on kind of where you are and what your workflow is and what clients are expecting. So you know you've got to be able to do both And what's. You know, i told you I've been doing more features and what's really neat about it is I have been pushing really hard and it's been really successful at being able to build lots and the lots are seen, referred right. So, like I worked on this wild you know this wild feature and I took my scene, referred lot, i dropped it on and voila, i am right there at what they saw on set And from there you know all freeing it is to. Then I can build off it right. I'm not having to recreate or decide well, how am I going to handle this? What's going to be this grand, global look that I'm going to have to come up with, that everything's going to have to fall into. You know I'm freed of that And so you know I've been really, really pushing for that. I've worked really hard to, you know, get budgets and schedules like for the whole movie approved like way before I'm going to touch it like six, eight, 12 months, because it's going to be so. I'm going to save so much time. I mean that looks going to go through daily, is going to go through editorial, they're going to see the same thing, and then when they get it back from me it's going to look better, but it's not going to be so much of a departure that I'm going to get temp love pushback, which for any colorist, i think is literally one of the biggest obstacles we face, is, yes, i can make it better, but it's not what the client is used to, so they reject it even if it is better. Right, and so you know. 

So I've been able to do more of that, and when I do more of the work on the front end, i actually just did a. I just built Lutz for a Lexus commercial, and that's the first time I ever built Lutz for a commercial. But I'm like, how cool is that? And I'm not going to have to reinvent the wheel. You know, maybe I can. I can focus on making it better or working on a scene that maybe needs more work. Or I can do, I can do the Walter method, which is I just get to take a quarter point of red and call it good, right, it's famous, you know story So well, you're not fighting as much. 

0:26:17- Jason Bowdach
It's funny because I used the term digital intermediate has this unanticipated association with drastically transforming the image, and it shouldn't. But that's what got associated with the 90s and a brother with art that went drastic changes And the fact of the matter is I much prefer the color timing method where we are doing as much as possible up front with the DP, like you're describing, using a show lot. 

0:26:46- Brian Singler
But then there's the time when you can throw the kitchen sink at it and it's super fun, right? You can be able to do both, but I would probably rather throw the kitchen sink at the front end than at the back end, because how many? 

times is a product, color or a costume or something, right And whatever global look that you build after the fact, right, it gets changed or it's not what they expect, And then I have to fix it in every shot And I'm just I'm kind of at the point where I'm, you know, staring at 2000 shots. I'm done with that, right, I don't have enough time to do that, So they may not have the budget for it. So, if I can, it's going to turn out better, right? I mean it's always cleaner. It's your greatest, always cleaner and better the less you throw at it after the fact, Not that there isn't a time and place for that, but it's always clean, There's no breaking. There's no breaking. There's no, no second. You know fewer secondaries. There's not image tearing, There's not windows. That I tracked in one shot, Didn't track in the other shot. You know what I mean. You just you have to be able to to It's cleaner color management All around and everything is working towards the same goal. 

0:27:53- Jason Bowdach
To me, it's a combination of both creative and technical are working towards the same goal, as opposed to creative going one direction and technical going. Well, we're going to go this way And then hopefully somebody that knows technical will bend it towards creative, towards the end. 

0:28:08- Brian Singler
And your colors are different. Right, many colors are very technical And I'm not. 

I mean, i thought I was kind of technical until I got to meet other colors who are, you know, far above me, like Cullen and other people like that, and I realized that I'm really not, and so technical is important, but you know, technical is it's the servant to the master right, and so I can't tell you how many times I make technically wrong decisions because I like, you know, i like what it did right And I, i remember I was working on a, on a, on a piece once for an Olympic snowboarder, you know he was obviously it's all white, you know, and all him going down the slopes and stuff, and by complete accident I dropped a, an IPP2 LUT on it And it did something so wild to like flattening the shadows, and I was like, well, that's really interesting. So then I went and turned it off and went I'm going to rebuild that, cause I think that looks really cool. Well, guess what? I couldn't really rebuild it. It was doing stuff that I didn't quite know what it was doing, both to the contrast and to the color. 

Bye, bye, i don't care, the image isn't breaking right, i'm just gonna, I'm gonna go with it and, and you know, i think I think you need to know enough technical to know how to break the rules. 

But you know I'm not a big rule follower. 

You need to do what's best for the, for the project, and I think sometimes you need to not be afraid to, even though you may get some pushback, and, and You know, you can throw the technical rules out the window, and I certainly do all the time. and you know what, sometimes, even if the image breaks a little bit. I know this is gonna people are probably not gonna want me to say this, but if there's a small bit of image breakup I'm kind of okay with that, sometimes right if it's achieving an overall effect, that's really cool because you know, you know Walter talked about that too and his stuff, which it's like you know, we can sit here and noodle film drain to the end of time But that's not really making that much of an appreciable difference. Not that it's not important, i'm not saying that but like you've got to kind of keep the big picture in mind and no one's looking at your science Breaking in the shadows of the out-of-focus area, you know. and if it does a little bit, but yeah bro. 

I was right. But if it does a little bit But but the overall impact is worth it, then it's worth it, and so I think we need to not be too hung up on that, because I Mean, many times, at the end of the day, a lot of people are, they're watching on their phones. I mean we can get away with stuff. It's not the end of the world, to kind of push the envelope sometimes. 

0:30:49- Jason Bowdach
And even if you're not watching it on your phone, even if you're watching it in a theater or at home on a 65 inch OLED screen. If you try and go and fix that, a lot of the times the fix can do more damage than the problem You actually have in the image. 

0:31:03- Brian Singler
Yeah, and you know, i'm not afraid to throw away detail at the bottom of the image, i'm not afraid to clip my blacks in one channel if that looks cool, right, it looks retro or or whatever. So it's really interesting because I think at the end of the day, the technical is important, but people aren't coming to us for that. They're coming to us for a unique stamp on their image and for us to elevate their stuff And whatever it takes to do. That is, i think, really Mostly what. What matters, you know, i mean to me the technical part almost comes in the beginning of the project and at the end of the project. 

Right, i mean that that your pipeline is, i know that my pipeline is perfect, and it took me a long time to just have that up So that my project settings and my timeline setting and my signal flow out my IO card, you know, through the, through the systems here, into my monitor. My monitor sayings are I know that it's perfect, right, and it took me a long time to figure that out. And then at the end it has to be perfect too. Right, that all my deliverables are. Right, that the color space tags are there and that I'm, but that's just. Those are just the piece of bread on the sandwich, right, that's not the meat of it. Once you've got those things right, man in the middle, you should just do whatever it takes to get you where you need to go the fastest and the best you know. 

0:32:27- Jason Bowdach
What a piece of gold man. So you, as long as you have your pieces of bread for your sandwich, however you want to make your sandwich is all up to you as the Artist. Yeah, and. 

0:32:36- Brian Singler
I'm, you know, i'm trying to be more and more, you know, realizing that you can throw away details in the shadows. I mean, you can, you can really clip channels because you know, i think we one, i think I do a good job at always remembering that viewers are not looking at the whole frame, right, they're watching in real time the way are. You know, if you read about how eyes track And scan, they're looking at eyes, they're looking at faces, they're looking at at the what's in focus. If you work on that And then just realize that everything else, the out of focus areas are, are there to a party feel, because because the viewers aren't, aren't focused there, they're not looking there. Even if you sit on the shop, right, they're not looking there. 

So so you know you work on where the person is looking and it's very easy to do that because If I just hit play and watch, my brain naturally does that too. You know it goes to the eyes and the people and Especially I'll turn the sound on so that I know I'm getting kind of the whole picture right And then realizing that everything else can kind of Go to hell if it needs to, if I need to crush the shadows, because a really dark, moody spot and there's just, and the main characters just hit with a rim light. I don't need any of the detail in that shop because that's not where the viewers are looking And it's not the most important part of the image, so it can go as far as. 

0:34:02- Jason Bowdach
I'm concerned Yeah do you like to work in passes? Is that something that you that you tend to do? 

0:34:07- Brian Singler
I'm I'm a mutt, that I'm very, in a very intuitive Sort of go with my gut feeling kind of person. So I kind of go back and forth with that. In feature work You kind of do have to, but you're also fighting your own psychology and your own Templar. So if you do a pass of a whole movie and Let's just say it's just a balance pass, you're not doing any stylization at all. You'll you'll start to fall in love with your own Balance pass and you won't push it maybe as far as you should. 

You know That that's part of the reason why I like to kind of I like to send hero frames off Early, because it forces me to, you know, i know someone's gonna look at it Right. So it forces me to kind of take a shot and like, push it to where I think it should go with. That would be really cool And in line with what they're trying to do. And so passes definitely have their value. And it has helped me immensely to follow Walter's ideas of, you know, kind of built stuff at the equivalent of the timeline level, so that I've got kind of one big broad canvas that everything at least lives on right. I know I'm gonna paint with oil paints and not pastels, right, at least I put myself in a in a sort of Container there, you know, and then from there, you know, you go to the group, you're the group level, you go to the scene and You know I, you know you do stuff at the scene level, then you go to the shot level. So it's super helpful, try to think more in that way. So I do do passes, but I try to maybe not do the pass initially so that I don't box myself in and Create my own template scenario where I don't want to push it because maybe it'll cause some problems or whatever. 

You know, i and that's kind of a little bit of a short form approach to where I tend to do a lot of really beautiful Montage spots where where I can be wildly different shot to shot, and so what I've been doing recently and we're doing done on these features And this is a way I really like to do passes, which I like to do, passes for the technical stuff, like I will not. I just learned I'm not gonna touch noise reduction until I am done with the feature, right, because it's gonna slow me down, whereas you know, if you're doing short form I would kind of do it as I went, but you know so then I'm done and I will do a noise reduction pass. I will do a pass for mtf curves or Halation or grain or things that I know Kind of need to be consistent for a whole. You know, for something that's you know obviously long, it has hundreds and thousands of shots, but sometimes the actual look development I guess you would say sometimes I don't want to do that in passes because I want to just kind of feel a shot and push it somewhere Hard initially, so that you know I think we'll get to a more interesting result. 

0:37:12- Jason Bowdach
Oh, it totally makes sense and actually it gives me a couple of ideas too. I do look development up front, but I do the the whole shebang up front and I actually never thought of separating it in two like you described it Main look development, like you were talking about, and then secondary look development halation, grain, noise reduction. I do do a noise reduction pass, but that's really interesting how you do that, because obviously clients aren't gonna Obsess about halation and some of the other secondary look elements as much as we will. That's super, super smart of you to do that. 

0:37:43- Brian Singler
Yeah, because you know and I don't know if you find this in your look development process too But you know, when it comes to look development and, like I said, i do heavy stylized looks, so that's a big part of it is that you know, i tend to be very, very careful with the first things that I try in my look development, because Often I will find something that I like right away. Right, and so if you think about that from your whole, from the whole perspective, like you're gonna look, like I don't know I feel like it's a human psychology thing that we kind of, if we see something that's good and And we like it, we just glom onto it. We don't want to let it go. And if your first passes are kind of more neutral and not, as You know, maybe not as pushed as they could be, because it's your first thing you did you're gonna love it too much. 

0:38:38- Jason Bowdach
Right, i could have gone to a lot. You could have taken it to 10, you took it to eight and a half right, right, right. 

0:38:42- Brian Singler
So you know that's, that's that's where I think that that kind of comes into play. And you know it's interesting too, because I know you go through this too, like you just evolve as a colorist. So you know, who knows, maybe maybe three years from now, when I've done like dozens of features, maybe I'll have a different. You know a different approach, but you know you're learning and growing and taking your clients along for the ride. 

0:39:06- Jason Bowdach
I'm sure you will. If any, I I certainly look back at the feature I did a year ago and I'm like that was that workflow needs change. Yeah, and that's that shows evolving and that's Hopefully it shows that we are evolving as artists and evolving is we're not technicians But we are learning the technology and the the workload that is is crucial for us. 

0:39:26- Brian Singler
Yeah, and that's that's. That's something that I think is now what I expected when I became a colorist. It was that I had this idea that, you know, after a few years I would work on a project and I would be Set right, like I would learn what I needed. My workflow would be down, you know, i would, i would have finally gotten to the plateau and I would just, i would just go when I'd be very Comfortable, you know, and and stuff. And the reality is is that I'm having to learn something new and I have to feel wildly uncomfortable and Have raging imposter syndrome on every single Project. And I'm I happy to use something new, or DCTL I haven't tried or or it's, or there's some new workflow, or the client throws a wrench into it, and I've never had to deal with this before and so it's just it's. It's been really interesting to see that that spot of being comfortable and knowing everything and and stuff is just It's not ever, ever, ever gonna happen. 

0:40:33- Jason Bowdach
Seriously it's. It's a constantly evolving job, and that's what makes it fun. It would be super boring if we were doing the same thing every single day on the same project. 

0:40:43- Brian Singler
Yeah, but but part of you, you know there's a part of our brains that really desire consistency and knowing what to expect and feeling comfortable and in the groove and and and stuff and and. So there's part of me that really Really likes the idea of people who have jobs, that where they can kind of know what to expect and it's not just this, their identity isn't tied up in what they did that day. But you know, that's not quite The job that we've chosen, so you know. 

0:41:12- Jason Bowdach
No, it's, it's different and I mean that's, i have a little bit of a different I have. I've separated my myself into this little tripod just what I call it where I do, obviously, migrating work, and then my development work for colorists, and then my training, because I Feel that if any leg gets pulled out, then there's no and I have my other legs to help me until I find something else gotcha. But uh, yeah, man, it's we. We live in a really interesting world and then we, we do, hopefully we create great work that people appreciate and Continue to want to use us. Yeah, you, as I've mentioned, have been creating incredible work. You're staying busy and it sounds like you're gonna continue to stay busy with at least four features. I'm glad that I had the time to get you on this podcast. 

0:41:59- Brian Singler
So thank you so much for joining us. I've always said I've always wanted to do kind of some of the training and development stuff And it's literally utterly impossible, right. I could, i could grade client work for a hundred hours a week Easily right. So there's like the the time to train and develop. It's just really not there. I'm having to, you know, i mean I know my clients a lot just, but I think my, you know People need to realize that that I am learning how to use this new tool in this technique. I'm learning on your project, on a live, on a real project, sometimes with you right there, because I don't have time Otherwise to you know, to train and learn and stuff. So you know that's it's, it's, it's just an, it's just interesting to You know, basically kind of have to operate that way because you're just so, so busy and you have three legs Has got to keep you super busy. 

0:42:54- Jason Bowdach
It's. It definitely keeps me busy, but one of the things that I find so funny is you you sort of consider that as a is a Like, something that's holding you back, when actually that's a major skill the fact that you're able to do that and your clients still consider you an artist that is Creating incredible work. The fact is, most people have to set aside time to learn these programs and not do Professional work, and you're learning these on the job while creating this work. 

0:43:26- Brian Singler
So you know I would. I would argue that I'd probably be better If I had some more time, to you know, to learn on the side learning how to use software is It's self a skill, and it's something that I don't think is probably taught. 

0:43:41- Jason Bowdach
I had to learn it. There is such a thing as is over tutorializing and taking tutorials forever, and Learning how to just jump in and learn how to software and learn how to use it on the job is itself a very important skill and clearly one that you have mastered, and it's something that I encourage all the listeners to develop. If you aren't already, and if you're feeling It's something that I'm weak at, that's fine. Both of us on this call are clearly learning new things. I'm learning how to do podcasting. Brian's picking up an advanced panel, and on every project He's potentially learning something new. So if you're trying to learn something new, we're both professionals learning something new almost every time We were working on a new project. 

0:44:22- Brian Singler
Yeah, it kind of gets exhausting, though right, because, like I said, for me it's it new monitor, new facility, the advanced panel, new clients, all my old clients grading in the theater, grading with other colorists, having an assistant, having just new expectations right at a new facility, right. So it's all of it at once, while I'm expected to, you know, be as fast and condon as much stuff as I do already. So it's, it's wild. 

0:44:53- Jason Bowdach
So, on the subject of learning, i wanted to ask you If I were to take you to a desert island and were to give you a very small piece of luggage And when I say small I mean carry on size only you were only allowed to take one grading control, not the whole advanced panel. Single grading control. What would that control be? 

0:45:13- Brian Singler
Oh, okay, so we're talking about a physical tool. 

0:45:17- Jason Bowdach
Well, it doesn't need to be like a physical tool, but I'm saying we in resolve 18, we have so many of these grading tools like you can choose, obviously, curves, lift, gamma gain, offset, printer points, same thing. But like I'm taking you back And you have to choose one of these tools Theoretically to go on the island with you and I'm gonna give you all of this work now on this island, remote. Okay, you only have this one tool to work with, all right, what would it be So? 

0:45:42- Brian Singler
that one tool I could I could fit it on a floppy disk right would be a brilliantly engineered Film print emulation. That is a great answer. Because if you have that, i mean we all know that a film print emulation done well Can Handle any type of project. It can handle under exposure, over exposure, dark, bright scenes. You know, you can throw warm looks, cool looks, split tone looks, right there, a well-built one can handle Everything you throw at it. And then you could, if you're doing a commercial on the desert island, you could just dial the opacity back if you want to, you could. You could double it on itself and go really stylized. But I mean, a film print emulation contains thousands and thousands of individual organic characteristics that are impossible to recreate Manually. And if you had that one tool you could create looks for the rest of your career. 

And I think we all know that there are facilities and colorists Who have been banking on color science and using it for most of their projects. It is part of their look, it is part of the reason they can grade a music video in an hour, because they have so right, they've done so much work on the front end to build something beautiful. That's both a combination of negative and print emulation with Their own style, and they've built it outside themselves, right, and that's why I would want that tool, because there's this. There's this great myth that you get log-looking plain footage into your grading suite and then it comes out Something amazing and it was just you right, right, and so I could take that film print emulation, i could take the knowledge of color scientists, i could take a hundred years of film engineering with me in a 10 megabyte file. 

I think that would be my one tool. If I could pick a second tool, i think and I know this is probably not what you're expecting but I would pick a healthy brain. The reason I say that is because, as a person, if you are speaking from vast experience, if you are a person who is tired, who is unfocused, who is distracted, who is maybe struggling with imposter syndrome, who maybe you haven't gotten enough sleep or enough exercise, you haven't eaten well, you can't do your job very effectively. I have had to push myself through poor choices like that. When I take care of myself well, my brain is healthy. I can come up with the ideas that I need, the speed that I need, the way to approach a project that I wouldn't have thought of before. But if I'm too tired or I'm afraid, or I'm overwhelmed or just not healthy, that's just a huge problem. Your brain health is maybe one of the biggest tools that you have, so that would probably be my second thing. 

0:49:14- Jason Bowdach
Fantastic man. I was not expecting either one of those, to be honest. And then, last but not least, if listeners were to take away one tip. Not that you haven't given away a huge amount of tips in this podcast, but if they were to walk away with one tip from this podcast. 

0:49:35- Brian Singler
I've talked about this before. Colorists, and especially newer people, think that they have to master the advanced panel, they have to master film print emulation, they have to learn all this look development, and I would argue that that's probably number three on the list of most important things you can do. I think if I could give them one tip. One tip is it would be to genuinely care about the people who are bringing projects to them. 

It's not something that you put on for the project because they're paying you or whatever, but it actually comes from your heart that you realize that, that these filmmakers that you work with are just like you. 

They're trying to reach their dreams, they're trying to make their project better. This project matters to them And if you communicate that you care about them as people and that you care about their projects and it's not, like I said, it's not a put on thing, it's actually something that you really believe I think that will get you further than any single skill that you could ever learn in a suite, because, at the end of the day, behind every beautiful project is just real people, and the projects will come and go, but the people won't. And I feel like if you care about your clients as friends, almost like they're your family. You spend more time with them than you do with your own family. If you genuinely care about them, they will come back. They will refer you to other people. If you get that one thing right, everything else you need to do will follow. 

0:51:24- Jason Bowdach
It's a great piece of advice. I hope everybody takes that to heart And if people want to learn more about you, find you where can we find you? on Instagram, on the internet? 

0:51:35- Brian Singler
On Instagram. It's at Brian Singler, which is my name. I have bryanseglercom. You can see a lot of my stuff on there. I've actually started to update it a little bit, which you know how that goes, and sometimes it goes on the download for years. You can go to TBD Post to their website. You can see a lot of my work there. I have a reel there as well, but it seems like Instagram is kind of the thing for colorists. 

So I am DM'ing and talking to people on there. It's constant, right, it is constant. So one of the things is that many, many years kind of despairing that there was a level I was never going to reach. So if people do reach out to me, i will almost always respond And I'll try to respond not just with a thank you but with actually kind of a, you know, trying to help in whatever way I can, because I remember being the person who was like I have no idea what the hell I'm doing And I know that somebody out there who does could probably save me a lot of time, push me in the right direction. So I try to be that person for other people. So you know, send me a message or something and I'll do what I can. 

0:52:52- Jason Bowdach
Well, you've always been great. We've had some really great conversations on Instagram And thank you so much for coming on the show. It's truly been a pleasure to have you on. We've had a really fantastic conversation. 

0:53:05- Brian Singler
Absolutely Thank you. Thank you, jason, have a great day. 

0:53:07- Jason Bowdach
And that's our show. Be sure to follow us on Instagram, YouTube or your podcast, Apple Choice. If you're using Apple Podcasts or Spotify, please leave us a review. It helps us quite a bit. If you are looking for DaVinci Resolve tools, please be sure to visit our sponsor, PixelTools. We'll see you guys in two weeks with another great interview. Be safe and happy grading. 

Transcribed by https://podium.page