Jason Bowdach CSI: Reverse Engineering Color With A Creative Mindset

Welcome to the Color Timer

podcast. I'm your host, Vincent Taylor.

This is the podcast where we speak

to professionals who work with color.

Today, I'm speaking to Mr. Jason Bowdach

Jason is a freelance colorist.

He comes from a color

science and workflow background.

He also has a very

interesting company called Pixel Tools,

which is what I'm going to focus on today. So I

hope you enjoy it. Let's go.

Take your seats because the

hourglass is about to turn.

We are entering the world of the micro podcast.

Explore the craft, creativity,

and science of professionals

who use color to tell stories.

Welcome to the Color Timer with Vincent Taylor.

Jason Bowdach, welcome.

Welcome to the Color Timer podcast.

Thank you so much for having me on.

I'm really glad that we were

able to get on each other's podcast.

It's so much fun that there is a

lot more color grading information

and stuff for people to listen to.

So thank you so much for having me on.

It's true. I did.

I did kind of consider through

my little brain this morning.

Is this a version of nepotism?

Because I'm on your podcast, you're on my podcast.

And, you know, is it kind of, you know, I don't

think so because, you know,

I don't think so. I've I've

I just started my first podcast.

I have one season down.

So I consider myself very much

a beginner in creating podcasts.

But one of the first things that I was told was

work with other podcasters

to spread the word about that podcast.

And that's how you discover new podcasts.

I enjoy podcasts in a

variety of different subjects.

And I'm constantly looking for new ones.

And so the fact that we're

on each other's podcasts,

we're spreading the word to people about that.

Enjoy color grading that, by the way, if you're

interested in this topic,

here's something else you can watch.

It's yeah. Yeah, it's it seems to.

And you think back to I'm

going to say the old days,

but you think back to years ago and it was just so

hard to get any information.

You know, so it's it's kind of nice.

I feel I feel so you kids are spoiled.

You kids are spoiled by all these, you know.

But listen, I'm going to jump straight in.

I do have my my little note here

to remember to start the timer.

So I've I've I'm kind of

already so so let let's go.

Let's let's I'm going to turn it over officially.

Let's let's I'm going to turn it over officially.

Yeah, flip that timer, man.

And in a way and a way and your time starts now.

Now, you are a colorist,

you're a freelance colorist,

but I am not going to talk to you about that.

I'm not going to speak to you about that because

I'm going to talk to you about

your company, Pixel Tools, and about what?

What is it? What is this company?

Tell me all about it.

Well, I think I probably should

start off saying that I'm a huge nerd.

I love color grading.

I love filmmaking.

Everything about it is

something that, as my wife says,

"I wish I loved my job as much as you do."

So the fact that I spend my days working

and making pretty pictures and

telling stories was something

that I felt really lucky to do.

But as a lot of artists, we

have a set of tools that we're given

or were taught to work with.

And as I started to work in

color grading, I found myself

limited is not the right word, but I found myself

wanting a couple of additional

tools, especially working with Resolve.

And as I expanded my knowledge of color grading

and especially color science,

I found myself more interested

and I found myself hitting

walls in terms of what traditional

color grading tools could do built into Resolve.

And I decided to start to explore that area.

And that's where I found that

there's a huge variety of tools

that we can build for Resolve, whether it's

plug-ins or power grades,

which are presets,

essentially, that weren't being done.

And for me, that was a

complete missing opportunity.

And I sort of waited.

As a beginning colorist when I

was considering starting Pixel Tools,

I didn't really consider

myself the right person to do that.

I can I thought there is

somebody that has a lot more experience

that should be building these, not mine.

So I waited about two years.

Right. You always wait for

somebody that knows better to build stuff.

I'm still I'm still waiting and I'm

glad people like you are doing it.

But no, no, I hear you.

So after about two years of

waiting for for somebody that's a senior

to step in and to build

these tools, I decided, fine,

I'll start building power grades

for colors to make things easier.

We don't all like to start from scratch.

And so I started doing that at

about four, wow, about four years ago.

And I started offering these

power grades to other colorists.

Now, I'm sure a lot of people build power grades,

but these are specifically power

grades designed for other people to use.

They're labeled, they're documented.

They're created in a way

that other people can use them

without having to know every single inch of it.

And that's a little bit different

than the current tools that are around.

Maybe you work at a facility and

someone shows you, oh, by the way,

we created this internal tool.

You touch here, here and

here. Don't touch anywhere else.

And I didn't really like that.

If you didn't work at a

facility, you didn't have the ability

to get into a facility, you were stuck.

And I wanted to sort of open that up.

And that's really what

Pixel Tools got started with.

Which I mean, you're talking about specific tools,

which tool did you start with?

What was the one thing? So

you know what I really want?

Really, it got started in a pretty pedestrian way.

I loved. I liked third party LUTs,

but I didn't like the black box that they were.

And so as I started to learn

Resolve and as sort of a petty excuse

to get better at color

grading and reverse engineering,

I started to reverse engineer

popular third party look up tables.

And I said, well, look up tables are nice, but

they're not very helpful.

And when they don't work,

they don't work really hard.

Yeah. And I can't really fix them.

It's not like a plug in or a

color grade where I can go in

and find where it's broken and essentially fix it

and get the project out the door.

If it doesn't work, the door

is slammed and it's locked.

And I really didn't like that.

And so at least for me in my

basic stage, I figured out, well,

if we can recreate these LUTs inside Resolve with

curves and lift gamma gain

and secondaries as much as possible

using the color warper and hue curves.

Well, we have a lot more control over these tools.

And so really the first

popular three look up tables

I started reverse

engineering were just client LUTs.

LUTs that they brought in that

were like, hey, we shot with this.

Can you grade with this?

Or I bought this popular third party LUT.

I want to use it on my film.

And it just broke on three or four scenes.

And so the ability you've

encountered that, I'm sure you have.

And they love that LUT.

They like something that it does,

or they like the way that it

makes the the scene or the movie feel.

And they're attached to it because

of course they used offline with it.

And so for me, the first

sort of entry into this pond

was I need to make this into a tool that I

professional colorists can use.

And so the first product we created was the volume

one power grades collection,

which was essentially a hundred

different LUTs or common corrections

that I reverse engineered.

That's a lot, man.

It - you can ask my wife for a

lot of time we were watching TV.

I just had my laptop out sort

of reverse engineering them.

And then I would take them

into the suite and really

make sure that they were to to

the proper level of precision

because reverse engineering

LUTs, you're just doing it on charts.

You're you're it's a lot of boring work.

And I get it. Nobody really wants to do that.

But the result of it is so, so important.

The ability to have now

three or four different nodes.

Here's the curves. Here's the hue changes.

Here's the Luma changes is a really important task.

And so for me, I just want to jump

in for a sec, because you're talking

about the reverse

engineering and looking at charts.

Is it possible to explain in layman's terms?

What is it when you reverse engineer?

What where do you start with

that? I don't quite understand.

So this continually gets more complicated as you

start to reverse engineer,

more complicated looks.

So obviously on the top end, you have film

emulation, which is very nebulous.

But let's start at the very beginning.

Let's just start at I have a a LUT that's changing

blue skies to teal skies.

And so you might be given this and the client's not

going to tell you what it is.

They're going to say, I really

like what this is doing to my skies.

Or this is what I like, the look of this.

And you are in charge of saying,

OK, what exactly is this doing?

And so you might pull out a

common couple of common shots,

whether they're from Ari, a

couple of synthetic shots,

and you're going to apply this

and you're going to analyze it.

You're going to go look at these color charts.

You're going to say, what is it doing to red?

What is it doing to yellow?

What is it doing to different

shades of hues, essentially,

and trying to analyze it?

And one you can do that's the first step, which is

just trying to understand,

OK, what is it touching

and what is it not touching?

And then you start to get in.

OK, now I can start to put points on my curve.

Where are we starting to build our contrast curve?

You can put it on a grayscale and start to see here

is literally where it's expanding.

I can see it on my waveform.

I can see when I apply the LUT

it pulls and stretches my image.

And when I disable it does that.

And then you can start to

rebuild that with Resolve's own tools

to the level that allow that. Right. Right.

And and are you almost you

know, you're rebuilding it

and you're checking back to

those curves and those scopes to go.

There we go. It's the same

kind of world. And yeah, exactly.

And it's it sounds like dull work because it is.

And you're just trying to

make your A/B'ing it to see, OK,

my work, the LUTs work.

And there's times where you're like, you know what?

I can see something that the

LUT is doing that I don't like.

So I'm going to rebuild everything except that.

Yeah, that's going to be a problem. Yeah. Yeah.

And that and then I'm back to what you're saying

about it breaking or something like that.

You're just kind of refining

that and getting all those elements,

but rebuilding in such a way that

it's not going to break your image

and it's not going to do

those nasty things. Exactly.

A lot of the problem, at least now, a lot of us are

working in scene referred workflows

where we're not including the

camera transform in our looks.

A lot of the stuff provided by

our clients has that baked in there.

And so we have to figure out, well,

how can I apply this creative transform

without my technical camera transform?

And so there's a lot of.

I mean, it gets more complicated,

but you are reverse engineering.

So you might you might apply

their their applied camera LUT

on a different project, pull stills, and then

you're going to have to go

into your scene referred

workflow and try and match that.

So it can get pretty complicated, but the gist of

it is you're essentially trying to

A/B things with synthetic charts and real charts

and at different exposure levels.

Because remember, sometimes these things will react

different at bright scenes

and then at dark scenes. OK.

Now, I know I kind of pulled you off track a little

bit because you were talking about

you started off by, you know,

building all these power grades, right?

And and and developing. Where'd you go from there?

So power grades for me, once I discovered that

Resolve had a form of color

grading presets that they call power

grades, which essentially allows me

to build a preset of notes that I can continually

use on a variety of different

projects, but also document

and give out to other people.

My next step was, well, what can I do with the.

Essentially, a tool that I

want to go beyond Resolve.

So, for instance, a very popular

request is I want subtractive saturation

or saturation that gets darker as

it gets more saturated, not brighter.

Really, really common sort

of filmic saturation vibe.

You can do that theoretically in Resolve.

It's going to require a a

node sandwich kind of thing.

You're going to have a bunch of different nodes.

You might compound them.

But for me, I was getting distracted with that.

A big. Around that time, I decided

that it was time for me to decide

what I wanted to do with pixel tools.

There's a lot of people that were starting to

create color grading tools,

and I really decided to define why

am I creating color grading tools

and what are going to make mine different?

And what I decided to define at

that time is a lot of plug ins,

Resolve, the built in tools are highly complicated.

They have more sliders and true.

Yeah, different different adjustable features that

you can throw a stick at.

For me, I'm not going to

create a new plug in or tool

unless there's a really definable benefit to it.

So for me, pixel tools outside of the power grades

going into what are called DCTLs or

essentially a programming language

that we can use to create plug ins.

I wanted to make sure that I

created color grading tools

that were simple and easy

for professional colorists.

We are jamming through sessions,

and I find that a lot of us use

tools that we ignore things on.

So for me, as a working professional, we're paid

per hour most of the time.

I wanted to simplify the workflow.

So there's a lot of tools out

there that makes things more complex.

I wanted to simplify them.

So for me, it's all about

making it so I can work on the panel.

So that I can work quickly so that I don't have to

leave my creative mindset.

I don't want to go into working.

OK, what color space do I need to go into?

I go to HSB, I go to HSL, I change the gain.

OK, now what was my what did my client want again?

They wanted punchy colors.

I don't want to switch between

technical and creative mindsets.

And the requirement that resolve

makes you do to do some of these creative

solutions to me was a big problem.

Certain colorists can do that.

Not everybody can.

And I don't think being highly technical is a

requirement of being a good colorist.

So for me at this time, it was to create highly

precise color grading tools

that even just the creative colorists could use.

I really love that.

I really love that because, you know, I'm not I'm

not a technical colorist, you know,

and and the things that the tools that you've

developed are really useful.

And they are simple to use, you

know, which which is a delight.

Do you have and I don't know if you can talk about

this, but do you have some other

tools coming up? I do.

I'm - here's where I am right now.

Right now, I'm in this

interesting area of I'm examining the scene

and I'm looking like it's easy

for me to just go, you know what?

We need a new contrast. Cool.

We need a new split toning tool.

But it's really crucially important

to me that I'm not recreating the wheel

for something that is

already well done in Resolve.

It needs to be something that I'm having trouble

with that is causing me slowdown

because. There are a lot of

people now that I think are are more -

What's the right way to put this?

I think are just trying to make money off plugins.

And it's really easy to do that.

I think it's really important to

remember how very good resolve is

a lot of color grading operations and only go

outside the box if you really need to.

A lot can be done with power

grades and creating an entire DCTL tool

is not always necessary.

So before I go, it's I'm sorry,

but I'm just because you're speaking

from a place of integrity and, you know, it's not

you know, you've got to make a living

and you've got to make money off these things.

But it's really lovely that you're doing that.

It's I've always been that guy that it took me a

really long time to to to sell things.

Even if it's a great product.

But like my split tone

tool is there for convenience.

You can do everything you can with

our split tone tool in the curves.

But not everybody wants to do that.

To answer your question,

what do we have coming next?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I'm looking at.

Filmic contrast and some of the restrictions that

we have with the current curves tool in resolve.

It is an amazing tool, especially

now that they've given us our Gigantor

Mode back or gigantic curves

where you can pop out the curves mode.

But I want to make it faster for you

to make nice, soft, precise curves.

I want to make you so you can make

a nice soft S curve with sliders.

And I haven't quite figured

out how I want to do that yet.

But that's really my next goal is so that you can

create those really nice soft film

at contrast curves without having to

be so fiddly with the built in curve.

That's great.

And with included with that, because obviously not

everybody knows what a good

contrast curve looks like.

I'm going to try and include some pre built filmic

contrast curves based off some scanned

film emulations, which I

think is a really important thing.

That is cool.

Yeah, I think it's really important that we always

have a basis to go off of.

It's really easy to just like take a tool and go,

OK, I'm going to make it look really cool.

But for me, I enjoy working off

something that has come from something.

So for me, yeah, I enjoy making a contrasty image.

But for me, the interest of now, once I have more

precise controls, that gives

me the ability to match stuff.

I have our timer's run out.

You know, I'm thinking I made this bed.

I made this 15 minute sand timer bed.

And I wish I had a 20 minute

sand timer because so quick.

I've got all these questions for you.

And and and I'm my own worst enemy because I keep

interrupting you and asking

you other things on top of it.

But but listen, just quickly before

you go, I want to get your take on AI.

About, you know, everyone's talking about AI this,

AI that and how you think it is going to how it is

impacting us as colorist or how you think it's

going to impact us as colorists.

Absolutely, I certainly have been helping that

timer rambling on and on.

But I have a pretty strong opinion about AI, but

it's not one that I think is very usual.

I actually feel that AI is going to help us quite a

bit in taking away a lot of those.

Boring tasks that you don't really want to do.

So for instance, the task that I talked about

matching, we may be able to have AI help us do a

match to a grayscale in the future

or labeling clips or renaming stuff.

Instead of being afraid of losing your job or

having AI come in to replace you, reevaluate your

job and say, what about my job

do I hate doing or do I put on a podcast and listen

to and just don't really pay attention to?

And with that extra time, what could I do instead

that I want to do or what

could I learn to do instead?

Because the fact is, a lot of our job is just busy

work, prepping, transcoding,

renaming, organizing, labeling, clip coloring.

This stuff is perfect for AI and

we can do so much more precise work.

The fact is, we just don't give ourselves the

opportunity to look and

say, what could I do instead?

So I feel that we shouldn't be afraid of AI just

like every tool that's come before us.

It's nowhere near the point where it's going to be

getting rid of all of our jobs,

but our jobs will be changing.

And being open to that is the most important thing

that I can recommend to people.

Be open to your job changing and start to look at

things that one, you enjoy

doing and would like to do more of.

Well, I'm I'm very glad that I'm not talking to an

AI version of Jason Bowdach and

that I'm talking to the real Jason Bowdach.

Mate, thank you so darn much.

That was good. And don't you dare say say anything

about rambling because I could keep talking to you

for so long about all of this.

It's really, really cool and

really, really interesting.

And my hat goes off to you

100 percent what you're doing.

Well, thank you so much

for having me on the podcast.

It was truly a pleasure.

And it went by way faster than I could have imagined.

Thanks, mate. Cheers.

Thank you so much. Have a good one.

Jason, thank you so much for being

my guest on the Color Timer podcast.

That was amazing. It does go painfully fast, but

that was it was really, really good.

Thank you, everybody, for listening.

Like, subscribe to all that kind of stuff, because

it does actually really, really

help and keep the comments coming.

They're really cool.

Thank you to my executive producer, MixingLight.com.

If you're watching this on the Mixing Light

website, you already know what they do.

If you don't check them out, MixingLight.com,

everything color and, anything else?

No, that's it. See you on the next one. Bye.

The Colour Timer, a micro podcast experience.