Question about Colorist credit

M

Mike@AF

Veteran
Since this is the color grading forum I thought I'd ask for advice here. I'm putting the finishing touches on a short film and have a predicament with regards to the Colorist credit.

I initially did the color grading on the film, but wasn't satisfied with my own work on the second half of the film. I just couldn't think of any ideas for the look. So I found someone who volunteered to color grade the film for free. He just wanted to have something for his reel.

I'm not happy with the end result of his color grading. He didn't have any suggestions for a look for those scenes in the film. We experimented a little and I finally decided on the look I wanted for the film, which essentially is the same look for another film I recently graded, but with some minor changes.

When I initially spoke to him he said he would use Color and Magic Bullet Looks for the grading. I gave him all the media, my FCP project, and my Color project, and all the Color rendered shots from the grading that I did. When I got the final color graded film I found out that he didn't use Color at all. He used 3-way Color Corrector filters on top of my already graded shots, then added Looks on top of that.

The film is 21 minutes long. He didn't even do any additional grading to the first 3 minutes of the film. With the next 9 minutes all he did was slightly bump up the exposure and saturation. The picture had even more noise in it throughout the film.

Now I'm going through the entire film from scratch and regrading in Color to get this new look that I want. I won't be using any of his grades in the final version of the film since I think my grades are coming out better.

So, with that in mind, how should credit for Colorist be given? Split credit or just myself, or some other option?
 
Sounds like a bit of a predicament. I would likely give him an assistant colorist credit, which would show that you're giving him credit for helping, but credit yourself as the colorist since it is your work that will make it to the final cut. This may be the best way to not burn any bridges (e.g. if you left him out of the credits altogether).

I've had this issue for the editor credits on a few projects where we hired someone to edit a project, only to be able to finish some very rough cuts that required someone else to step in and finish the project. Rather than split the editor credit, we opted to go Asst. Editor / Editor.

With these types of situations, it can get emotional for both parties. Good luck.
 
I've done a few jobs for credit and have tried to make the client feel a little more at ease by saying up front, "don't feel obligated to use anything I do".

Later down the editing road if my work makes it into the final cut, I usually get a request for a credit title that I think best describes the task I did.

The point is, the rule of thumb to me has always been, give credit where credit's due. In a case where their work is not used, the 'employee' should not expect a title credit, but the client can acknowledge a 'Special Thanks' or other mention.

There are exceptions to everything though.

In defense of your position, I don't think just because a person offers to work for credit, that they should automatically get a title credit based on that alone. I think that's an earned credit, if the work makes it to the cut, otherwise it could undermine other peoples work.

Asst. Editor / Editor sounds fine if you want to go with it, if it's applicable.
Otherwise a 'Special Thanks' may do it.
 
Last edited:
You make a good point there. I was considering a Special Thanks as well. Odd thing is I haven't heard from him. He didn't show up to our screening even though he said he would be there, didn't call to say he wasn't coming, and didn't even bother to call or email asking how it went. Sort of like he doesn't even care. I'll talk it over with the other producer and see what we come up with.

Thanks for the advice guys.
 
I like Raptor's advice, but I'm mildly concerned about one thing: If you give him any sort of credit, even a "Special Thanks", then he will probably be inclined to use it in his reel even though none of it is his work. He then may be getting work by presenting your work and then the next guy that actually hires him will have been duped into hiring a guy that cant do what he claims he has done.

I would thank the guy for taking a stab at it but let him know you decided to go in a different direction. Sorry, no credit. If he then causes trouble at that, then let him know that he really needs to learn what he's doing before he expects anything more. try to let him off easy, and if he cant take that, let him know what's what.
 
Another good point and good advice. I'm not too worried about him trying to use it for his reel if I just give him special thanks. Anyone who looks at the credits for the film on our website would see that he wasn't the Colorist or an Assistant Colorist. Now if I gave him Assistant Colorist then he probably could get away with claiming it was his work. So it sounds like just a special thanks is the better way to go. Thanks guys.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top