The Color Timer Podcast with Colorist & Trainer Daria Fissoun, CSI

Welcome to the Colour Time Podcast. I am your host

Vincent Taylor. This is the

podcast where we speak to professionals who work

with colour and this is take

two because take one had a

microphone lead right in front of the

lens and I and I'm just getting ready to edit the

whole thing I went what what is

that? Second time's a charm. Today I am speaking to

Daria Fissoun. Daria is a

colourist, compositor and a trainer,

educator. I've been wanting to speak to

Daria for a long time. She's hard to track down.

She's a very busy person. This is

gonna be a fantastic conversation I

promise you and I know I say it every

time but it will it'll be great.

Yeah come on 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 colour to tell stories. Welcome to the

Colour Timer with Vincent Taylor.

Hey Daria. Hi thanks for joining me.

Hi Vincent thank you for having me.

Absolutely absolutely. Where are you in the world?

I am in London. Alright yeah

it's always hard doing the the time jaggle with

people. I kind of said to

you off camera that I hope everyone doesn't mind

but I've got my friend here

today because he was outside barking

at squirrels so it didn't want him to

disturb us. Let's just jump straight in. Let's do

it. If you cool with it. I'm

gonna start my little magical

gimmicky sand timer and I wanted to ask you

there's so many things I want to

talk to you about but I'm limited to

my 15 minutes but before I get into any of the

nitty-gritty I want to take you

back. Take you back. When you were little where did

you think you wanted to do

when you grew up? Oh a little little. I think the

first thing I wanted to do

was journalism. Yeah okay. Because I've really

enjoyed reading as a child so I

was like I'm gonna be a writer and my parents were

like can't make money off

that and I was like alright well and

then that kind of in my childish mind I

was like well you know journalists have steady

income because there's always

news you know so I'll be a journalist instead and

they were just like now it's

too dangerous you know so that kind

of like yeah I'm always I'm always

interested because you know that path of where we

start and where we are now and

and I mean your your job your

profession you're a colorist compositor

you're a trainer you you're you're all of these

things tell me about that how

what what ultimately pulled you into that world so

I went to film school and

it was like it was one of those courses that look a

practical course that just

pretty much teaches you like to be a

self-shooter that's what we call that

the time self-shooter so it's like it

teaches you a little bit about every

department and you try it out in a

practical sense you know you're on set

you know you help the film together and I realized

pretty quickly like at first

I thought like well maybe I want to

be on set doing all the really exciting

stuff you know maybe not director but like director

adjacent you know but then

I realized like a lot of it involved just sitting

around waiting for the shot

to get set up and I was like this is such an

inefficient use of my time like

I'm spending 40 minutes you know playing on my

phone or like reading a book and

then we do like you know a take and

then we reset and then whereas when we

started doing post-production you know editing and

compositing in particular I

was like wow like I am like a

hundred percent you know like focused and

involved and really like the quality of my output

is up to me the speed of my

output is up to me and I guess I don't know I don't

know what that says about me

you know just like really I just needed to be in

control of my own time and I'm

like this is perfect I'm also a kind of enjoy I

don't mind solitude I'll say you

know so like sitting by myself in the room is not

didn't really bother me so

I was like okay yeah yeah and then and and here you

are now I like I said I and

I wasn't kidding there are so many things I want to

talk to you about but I'm but

I'm gonna be disciplined and I'm

gonna focus on one thing you I feel really

grateful you shared with me recently you have just

finished a thesis which blows

blows me away anyway title legacy tell me about it

yes I wrote a thesis on the

etymology of color grading terms I had like at some

point like last year I got

really paranoid because I realized I'd

been working in the industry for like

approaching 15 years now you know and a lot of it

was self-taught because like

my entryway into the industry was not like via like

a post-production house or

like formal training so I was like man there's

probably like huge gaps in my

knowledge you know so like I decided to take a

course that of a lentex course

and at the end of it we had to pick like a thesis

topic and at this point I'd

already started thinking a lot about etymology of

terms because various like

it it's not you know those are not

would have a student in class

because obviously I'm a trainer for black magic

yeah they would ask something

like you know why is it called lift

gamma gain you know the first time

someone asked me that I was kind of you know I kind

of scoffed and I'm like well

obviously you know but then I thought about it and

then I was like wait is it

obvious like now that I think about

intuitive terms right so then I

was like okay well you know someone's

defined it very clearly you know like in some other

book so I looked it up and

no one had really like very clearly laid out like

why those exact terms why lift

you know why gamma why gain and I've

ended up going like down this rabbit

hole of like trying to trace back the usage via

like older software and then

eventually like hardware and you know actual like

devices hardware devices in

the case of like gamma you pretty

much have to go back to the 19th century

because they were already applying it in you know

mathematics and science and

basically all three terms come from completely

different industries from

different periods in time and

technologies you know so they're almost

like completely not related and have

just managed to land side by side you

know in our grading applications I found that

really fascinating and I decided to

do it for like every word that I can think of and

you know every UI that we

use for color grading so yeah ended up being I've

got I want to jump in because

and this is probably gonna be a

silly question how do you research that I

wouldn't even know where to start

yeah yeah it's a tricky one I found that

there were like more and less efficient ways as I

went on foolishly I started

off by using like AI as an assistant because I

thought like well maybe AI is

gonna be a do a good like do a better job of

scouring the internet and maybe

like pulling together resources and

maybe you know I'm not like trying to

trash AI or anything I think maybe it's in its

infancy right now and it ended up

giving me a lot of things where it would like

boldly state something and then I

try to like follow the links you know the

references and it would lead nowhere

you know I'm like where are you getting this

information so ended up scrapping

that and then just went the

old-school way so I was using stuff like Google

Scholar I was using Google nGram Viewer

right which tells you like the

frequency of term usage over time you

know so you can actually see how the

word you know vectorscope kicks off in the 1940s

despite not really being used

prior to that because obviously they were

integrating it in broadcast

technology so you can really pinpoint you know you

can find manuals from things

like SMPTE or like the ITU because

they were starting to discuss this

technology and then you can find the actual manuals

which is really good like

the scan versions so that's kind of what I was

doing is I was trying to find

white papers technical reports and yeah also

there's like some people online who

are obviously like industry

professionals who are archiving their

knowledge you know in the form of like blogs and

YouTube channel sorry I keep

my microphone keep my hands away and so it was

really exhilarating but it was

almost like a little daunting because I would have

like 150 tabs open and I'm

like I need to find the time to sit

down and read this whole post properly

because I'm just like pulling

information I need for my thesis yeah so

I've got a long reading list at the

moment but yeah I've got like version 1

of the thesis finished and submitted and yeah a lot

of I tried to find the most

like robust references I could for

all the terms I found so if anything was

like you know maybe speculated you know or

apocryphal then I would just kind of

be like so-so about citing it you know

but if I did find okay first you know

person sources of second person accounts that would

be more reliable yeah and

then I I've noticed recently I'm I'm prefixing more

and more by saying excuse

my ignorance and I shouldn't excuse my ignorance

because there's a lot of stuff

I don't know but the idea of a

thesis is you you make a proposition or a

proposal of an idea and then you prove it is that

accurate yeah yeah exactly oh

I mean it depends on the style of thesis that

you're right oh okay because because

you could have I suppose like a

quantitative or a qualitative thesis and

it quantitative is like the more heavy-duty like

scientific thesis you know

the BSC whereas the BA is probably what I was doing

so it is qualitative like I

was trying to find information that is to some

extent like open to interpretation

and then you say that this is classified as version

one so so what what changes is

that as you do more research or more

fact-checking or you know what what

becomes version two exactly yeah

fact-checking is a big one because like I

said I had like a word count limit and I had a

deadline so I put everything

together as well as I could but in the process of

working on it I ran into some

of my colleagues you know so Peter Chamberlain

who's the product project

the venture resolve I ran into Alexis Van Herkmann

who works for Adobe so he's

the lead color advisor so all these

people you know just chatting to and I

thought you know for sure like people on this

caliber that they don't they know

etymology like they know where these terms come

from but then you know like

I'll be asking like well do you know why we use

this term or this term and it was

really kind of interesting to see people get

stumped and go like no I've not

really thought about it like why are they called

primaries and secondaries you

yeah so that kind of stuff and it was reassuring

because I'm like okay I'm not

just wasting my time and researching something that

someone's already together

prior to me you're all going like well just send me

a copy when you're done you

know so the cool you know so I sent them out and

then I realized I'm probably

gonna get a lot of emails that are like you know

well actually you know dot dot

dot and I'm looking forward to that I welcome the

corrections and you know any

first-hand experience people might have with the

hardware that I discuss yeah I

gosh it's hard because there's so many things I'm

gonna no no I'm gonna do one

more on the thesis because I'm curious about this

what what ultimately and this

might seem obvious but what ultimately is your goal

for doing the thesis I mean

what what's your end goal for it for me is the

personal satisfaction yeah

knowing what these terms mean so next time a

student asks me you know being

able to answer or to give context

you know while I'm doing while I'm

presenting you know so if I'm

talking about like the temperature or tint

parameters you know actually diving into like the

CIE 1931 graph you know and you

know I would talk about the Planckian locus line

not fully understanding who

Planck was and what they were measuring you know

and actually wait wait wait

wait what what is that I don't even know that okay

so you know so the CIE 1931

graph is the one that maps all visible color on a

2D dimension graph within

that we have like this arc right along which the

white point travels right and

it's there to represent sort of the

variation or temperature of natural

light you know so then we get like

the the cooler tones which are actually

closer to orange and then we get the hot

temperatures which is actually blue so

it's called the blankian Planckian locus locus just

means line I used to call it

the Planckian locus line and then I

realized I was just saying the word

line twice so but Planckian as in Planck the

scientist who was who devised a

method of calculating these values and

mapping them yeah but then I realized

that his work was based of this thing called the

black body radiator which I

didn't know about until I started

reading into it so it's like this

hypothetical black body you know that reflects no

light you know so if we were

to heat to this black body you know to a certain

temperature like what color

would it radiate and that's essentially what we're

calculating so there's a lot

of really interesting stuff that I

learned you know as a result and the

kind of that's why I did the

thesis because it was like for my own

satisfaction but yeah I'd love to be

able to talk to students about this

obviously like not just diving into it like I did

just now you know I apologize

you know I just it's it's hard when I

beat because it's it's like yeah it's

it's a to say it's a huge topic is a

tiny bit of an understanding yeah yeah

I'll try to be succinct which is why

like I kind of jumped in with the terms

but I think you know if you're going

with students I'm obviously going to

take quite a few steps back and say like let's

establish some ground rules and

some concepts and like slowly start to build upon

those and I think it might

give people more confidence in how they approach

color grading or how they use

certain parameters by understanding how

historically these tools have evolved

and what their original intention was yeah yeah

it's it's incredible to me how

often and not just in this scenario we use words

and we do not even consider

where they come from and and I mean a perfect

example is how many French words

we use in the English language you know but I man I

want to keep going but I the

other topic I really want to talk to you about is

the subject about learning

because you're you're you're a teacher a trainer a

really really good trainer by

the way no seriously like I've watched a lot of you

you've recently done a whole

series on on the scopes for OmniScope

which are amazing which is another

whole topic but what I want to talk

to you about is you're gonna love this

question how do you learn how do people learn it's

a big one isn't it yeah I so

I used like I started I told you start off in film

school and like well after

I'd been there for a few years I started like

working in the what I call the

supervisor department which is where

you hand out like equipment and I was

also like freelancing so eventually I started like

training students like on

a really base level so the school

invested in me and they sent me to get

like a PG search postgraduate

certificate in higher education so I

spent a year learning about learning and it really

helped me understand like how

learning occurs and it's really funny

because the models you know like the

sort of new learning models have been in

development since the 70s and we've just

been implementing them in you know

modern education as much as we should

because I remember like reading this one

description you know there's like a

breakdown of the type of teachers that there are

and one of the descriptions one

of the first ones was like well this type of

teacher you know spends hours

putting together training materials

and you know presenting everything to

students and you know like running you know like

tests or essay submissions and

marking everything thoroughly and I'm just sitting

there like you know reading

and going and patting myself on the

back and going like yeah this is me a

hundred percent like I love this is me as a trainer

and the paragraph ends with

this line that says this is the least

effective at least effective type of

trainer you can be and you know like my blood just

ran cold I was like wait what

you know and I reread it like two times and I'm

like but this describes me to a

tea and then I realized that you know I was kind of

like in this mindset where I

wanted to spoon spoon feed you know my students

everything because I thought

that's the correct way to do it but

actually the most effective way of

learning is it's described as intrinsic learning

right it's when something deep

inside of you wants to learn regardless of who's

telling you to learn or what to

learn you know so a good way to describe that

sensation because everyone's had it

everyone's experienced this is like if you're you

know at a at a bar you know

or like with friends at a house and

you're having a conversation and you say

like hey you know that movie is coming

out it's got that guy in it from that

sci-fi last year you know the guy he's married to

what's her name you know and

then yeah we've all done that we've all done that

right so what do you do you

pull out your phone and you start typing in the

last movie you remember that guy

and to look up his name and that's intrinsic

learning right that's that

completely natural motivation

of needing to find something out. You know, and I

see it in students all the time, right,

especially like in, you know,

like first year or second year.

higher education students where they

have an idea for like a green screen

composite but we're nowhere near

learning green screen in our module so

they will go and watch YouTube videos and teach

themselves green screen you

know compositing yeah and it won't

look spectacular right but they just they

really need to know because they want to put

together this idea and that's sort

of my approach as well with education is I want to

get people excited about the

color grading I want them to see the end results

and what they can accomplish and

rather than just giving them

information that means nothing to them

you know that will need to be like

repeated a year down the line because

that's when it will start to matter

you kind of want to put them in this

mindset of where they're excited you know this is

why I teach absolute sense

I teach like compression last because if you teach

it first you know people are

like like who cares why do I need to learn all

these codecs and all these

numbers but if you actually wait

until they have to deliver one of their

assignments and they realize that

everything that they're rendering out

looks really blocky and horrible that's when they

get intrinsic motivation and

they're like I want to learn how to make this look

good you know for YouTube or whatever festival delivery

That fascinates the heck out of me

something you said then oh

that's what it was about you know you

don't want to have to then repeat it

further down the line to them and so my my last

question because as per usual my

time has run out but my last

question is okay so you've done intrinsic

intrinsic learning and you've got this thing in

your head and you understand it

how do you remember it I know that's gonna seem

like a silly question but

then because the number of times I'll

I'll I'll do exactly that okay oh man

why doesn't this work and I'll do intrinsic

learning I'll investigate and

I'll work it out I'll do the thing I

went great got that don't use it again

for three months four months five months you know

and then I have to do it again

yeah so how do you remember these things

perfectly normal, I think.

So it's like use it or lose it, right?

But I just sort of accept that that's part of like

the human experience, you will remember

a lot of things that you learn.

I once came across a document

that was about 30 pages long

that was a notes that I had taken apparently

when I was researching something.

And I had no memory of doing any of that research.

Like I had a bit of a crisis that moment.

I was like, I feel like I sunk weeks into this

and how do I not remember a single word?

So it is kind of, it's concerning, but yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Daria, I'm gonna put it out there

that I really wanna talk to you again.

Maybe next season,

cause there's a whole lot of other things

I wanna ask you about, but thank you so much

for taking time out to have a chat to me.

I've really been looking

forward to this conversation.

Thanks so much Vincent.

I had a lot of fun.

Daria, thank you so much for taking time out

to have a chat with me.

That was fantastic, that was really, really cool.

Thank you to you, the listener,

for listening, for watching, for subscribing,

liking all that jazz, buying T-shirts.

Who the thought?

And thank you to my

executive producer, mixinglight.com.

If you don't know what MixingLight does,

check them out, mixinglight.com.

That can help you all things color and beyond.

It's an incredible resource.

And that's it.

I feel like I've forgotten something.

It'll come to me when I hit

stop on the record button.

All right, thanks, see ya, bye.

The Color Timer, a micro podcast experience.