What Does A Color Scientist Do? The Scientist Behind Suicide Squad and Matrix Revolutions, Explains

Welcome to The Color Timer.

I am your host, Vincent Taylor.

This is the podcast where we speak to professionals

who work with color.

I've got a quick test for you.

You ready?

Here's my list.

I'm gonna read these films out,

see what they have in common.

Suicide Squad, Skyfall, The Avengers,

Matrix Revolutions, Air Force One,

Venom Let There Be Carnage,

Passing, Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance,

The Irishman, but I've got a bigger list,

but I'm only reading part of it.

What do they have in common?

Matt Tomlinson.

Matt is a color scientist
based at Harbor in Los Angeles,

and I'm gonna be speaking to him about

what the heck is a color scientist?

We'll be using my 15 minute sand timer

to keep things focused.

Wish us luck because we both love to chat.

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.

- Matt, thank you.

Thank you for joining me.

- Great to be here.

- Yeah, man.

It's a bit of,

we're recording this on a Saturday morning,

for those of you who don't know.

So Matt and I are both kind of waking up.

I had to, the kids were outside on the trampoline,

I had to go, "Kids, go inside.

I'm talking to Matt Tomlinson."

And they're looking at me going.

- I'm in my Saturday morning attire.

Just nice, nice warm sweater.

- Nice.

Well, the rules of the game.

I've got a little color timer here

to start our conversation off.

And I don't wanna break the rules.

So are you ready, sir?

- As ready as I'm gonna be.

- Okay, all right, here we go.

Turning over.

Dum, dum, dum.

All right.

- The countdown in the back, it's so nerve wracking.

- All right.

Now, you sir, are a color scientist.

And I am going to ask you
the most asked question you get.

What the heck is that?

- Ha, okay.

So there's actually, I've been thinking about that

because I actually get that question a lot.

And there's, I realized I attacked this question

from different angles.

So if I am talking to
someone in casual conversation

that is a friend of my dad's or someone like that

who isn't in the entertainment industry,

I basically, I realized
that they drone out very quickly.

So I usually say something along the lines of,

okay, so when you go see
a movie in the movie theater,

and then you see the same movie on say,

a streaming or on Blu-ray,

you expect that movie to look the same

in the theater and at home.

But the reality is,

those are two vastly different technologies.

And if you weren't, if you
were just to put one in the other,

they would look completely wrong and broken.

So what I do is I create the Rosetta Stone

that allows it to look the same from the theater

into the home and vice versa.

So I do that mathematical translation with that.

And sometimes that goes, oh, okay, I get that.

If someone's in the entertainment industry,

and I might say something like, okay,

so the first thing that color scientist does

from my perspective is set up trust.

So the idea is that if you're looking at something

on a display, a projector, an iPad, a whatever,

you see what you expect to see.

It's not a, is this set up right?

It's just, you sit down, you look at it and you go,

that's my show, that's my movie.

Yep, let's just be creative.

And now let's make,

not technical decisions, but artistic decisions.

So what is the definition of color science trust?

I think that's really
kind of what it boils down to.

Now that's one, that's kind of a base layer.

The fun stuff is where I get to work with colorists

like yourself and cinematographers and their shows.

And I help create what
might be called the look of the show.

I work with you and the DPs to kind of help.

in the beginning of the show, like,
okay, what do you want your, what do you want your

show to look like? And the cinematographer
might say something, well, I really, I'm influenced

by, by Renoir. I like, I like, but I
really like the movie, The Godfather, or, you know,

I'm a big fan of, you know, Pete's
Dragon from 1975. And, and, and you get to like,

you know, like, okay, I see where
you're, my job is to get inside their head and, and

try to physically create something so
that when we apply a color, brightness and hue

and color onto an image, that it's that
kind of image that they're starting to get in their

head. And that, that, that can, that's
also helped by, you know, they may present like

what's called a Look Book, which is just
like maybe images pulled off of like Google images

of other, other movies or just still
photographs. And anything that, that they can point to

and say, I like this on a picture. Can
you make this color or this contrast? Can you

make it so when I go shoot my movie,
those inherent qualities are built into the look

as a starting point. It just happens. So
I help build those tools to present. And then,

and when the cinematographer goes off
and does their hair and makeup test, they come

in and they sit with you, the colorist,
sometimes I'll be there. A lot of times I'll be there

maybe a little bit in the background.
And then, you know, first thing first is the DP

goes, either it goes, ah, yes, this is
kind of what I was envisioning in my head or no,

or no, no, no, no, this is not, which is
actually equally as important because he can go, I

like this part over here, but I don't like
this part over here. And then we can start adjusting

from there. Sometimes the colorist is
making adjustments. Sometimes I'm running away and

building new kinds of tools and bringing
them back to try out. But it becomes a very interactive,

like jam session, if you will, at that
point, you know, almost it's, it's almost like live

jazz. I like to call it like it's digital
jazz at that moment. And, and, and then finally,

there's this inherent moment where the,
the, the creator will go, wait, this is it. This

is what I, this, I feel it. It's just a
visceral thing where they're like, yes, I like it. And

that's when we locked down the look and,
and, and I, I create it, you know, the transform,

the LUT that is provided to dailies and
then VFX and then DI and finishing, you know, so

basically one of the things that I do is I'm
a shepherd. So I shepherd the show along from the

beginning all the way to the end. And I make
sure that everybody's on course, you know, we're all,

here's the roadmap. If you, if we know where
we are on the roadmap and somebody veers off on that

roadmap, I know if we know where we are, we
can bring them back in and we can, we can maintain

the creative intent, if you will. It's
helpful that, you know, I, my first 16 years of my career

were in VFX. So I'm very apt at talking to
the VFX group and making sure that they're taken care

of. I, you know, I know, I know their,
their language. I can talk with the dailies people,

I can talk with the finishing people. So,
you know, kind of like I see myself as kind of an

overseer of, of maintaining creative intent
in that respect.

- How did you, uh, you know, you say

you come from a VFX background. How did
you cross over into the role of a color scientist?

- Well, I'd always been doing color science
within VFX. So I started off back in like the mid 90s. I,

I, um, I, my first job was at a place called Boss Film. They did Air Force One. What I

did is I, um, I was part of the imaging
science department, which was imaging science and color

science are interchangeable a lot of times
within this industry. And it's the first time, you

know, imaging science was just being born. I
mean, this is, this is before Jurassic Park. This is like,

time of The Crow and, and these kinds of
things where, where, for VFX, it was, it was just

getting into the digital world. And the way
it would work is you would scan in the negative and

then, people would work on it, you
know, digitally VFX, and then it would get recorded back

on to negative and that negative would get cut
into the actual o-neg of the show. It wasn't like

now where it's just when you would film out
an entire DI on, on the film, it was just, you would

cut out the film, the snippets and
cut it into the o-neg. My job for the first

like seven years of my career was I was a
color corrector where I would, actually color

correct the background plates for VFX shots
that were scanned in. And I would, uh, the way it would

work is they would get scanned in. I would
look at them on a display and I would have a light box

next to me. You know, I'd just be looking at,
uh, you know, an eyepiece on a light box, looking at

the screen back and forth. And the tools were
like, you know, really rudimentary, which really gave me

a good, you know, I was working with imagery,
so I knew how to like, okay, this is how a curve works.

This is what balances is. This is, you know,
in the shadows on the toes. This is how it affects

things. This is when you shift things. These
are the, you know, it really gave me a feeling of how

to attack an image just by looking at it, just by repetition. And, and the way you would check it

is you would, you correct it on a screen,
but then you'd have to film it back out to film and

look at film versus film. So you're doing a
lot of mental gymnastics back in the day, because

like back then, like, I mean, it was just, it
was the wild west, you know, you know, comparatively,

like what the knowledge base that I have now
in comparison to then it's like, it's, it's crazy.

It's crazy.

- What, what would be, this is such a wide open question, but what would be a really

tough part of your job? What would be a hard
day for you? A hard day for me actually would be where

there's not enough bandwidth or time for me to
give proper attention to everyone that deserves it.

Interesting. Yeah. So because

Like there will be times where
multiple people will want to talk to me in almost

the exact same moment like those
perfect storm moments and I you know I have to

compartmentalize it a little bit like
I can give you what you exactly need right

now and I do that and then I'll I'll
try to follow up with them when in reality

what I want to do is I want to say
well you know get get real zen about the

whole thing like let's
let's talk about it what's going on

Tell me about it.

You know, like, keep it very...

chill and relax because I just find

Sometimes what people are asking for is not
really what they're asking for, because it's hard sometimes

to convey actual, you
know, what, what they're thinking

in their head when it
comes to visual, if that makes sense.

It does.

So, so that's, that's

I've always said, like a color scientist,
if I was a colorist, if I had a color scientist,

that color scientist would be my best friend.

Because I would just, I would
always just, hey, can you help me?

Can you make me faster, better?

Can you put what's in my head out on the screen?

Because like CJ, Julian, the other color
scientist that I work with at Harbor, my partner in

crime, if you will, you know, he came up
with this, I think just wonderful analogy where

the, you know, the colorist and
the cinematographer, you guys are painters.

Color scientists, we...

paint. And we give, you know, here's a new
piece of, here's a new color of paint for you to try and

you're like, oh, I'm going to use this paint.
And you can, and then you blend it in and you, you

create the imagery that is art. That's a
great way of explaining it. Yeah. We, we, we, you know,

we're the people at Home Depot with the
big shaker cans. Um, uh, I was thinking, you know,

because things are changing all the time
with technology all the time. Oh my gosh. How, how

the heck do you keep up? It's, it's a full-time
gig. And, and honestly, the people that I work with,

are, are very, uh, inquisitive and very, you
know, they want to know, uh, what's going on. And

I'm very grateful that I've been a, we have
been able to set up an environment where sharing in

knowledge is a, is seen as a good thing.
When somebody says, Hey, something's wrong. Um,

I always try to start off with the concept
that I messed up, that something I did was wrong. So I

have to prove it out to myself that, okay, did
I do something wrong? No, I didn't. So what's actually

going on here as opposed to like, well,
what's wrong with, what are you talking about? You know,

and being defensive and being defensive and,
and, you know, putting up shields and guards, you know,

I'd much rather be the person who's like, Oh
really, what's going on? Tell me, show me, you know,

oh, you know, like everybody who's
expressing a moment of stress or a moment of concern or, or,

or anything is, you know, their, their, um,
expressions are valid because it's real. Perhaps

the issue is concrete. Perhaps the issue
is nebulous. Calmer heads prevail, I guess, if you,

if you can say in that way, like, you know, I
try to, I, I'm, I was a big fan of, um, Gil Grissom

from the old show CSI. I actually used
to have a calendar of like his little sayings.

And one always just stuck with me, which
is, and I use it all the time where it's,

the moment you feel that you should go very,
very fast is the exact moment you should go very,

very slow. And, and I actually say like,
everyone's slow down, slow down. Yeah. Let's,

let's just take it out because then you can
get to the, the root of the cause and get past the

panic of it all. I think, I think your
ability to calm a room is yeah. You know what, I'm going

to use the word legendary because, I, I
work with you and I've, I've, I just recently had that

situation where the client monitor, the
client noticed it actually because there was some credits

that should have been on black and the black
wasn't black. And of course I'm looking at my monitor,

so I wasn't noticing and she went, that
doesn't look right. That's not right. And the great thing

was I can just, I called you, you, I could
keep, I just carried on. I called you, you came in,

you not only fixed the problem in split
second, but then you reassured her. And not only that you

went on to explain a few things about what was
going on and, and which she delighted in, you know,

you totally put her at ease. So that's,
that's a skillset. Yeah. If anything, there's, yeah,

I enjoy that part to be honest. We're out of
time. I know. I know. Isn't it cruel? It's cruel.

I've got so many questions, but, uh, part
two, part two is going to be a

season two, but I do tend to be a little
bit naughty and throw in one more question. Okay.

Break, break my own rules. And,
and, and this one is, is a good one. People are,

and I am not exaggerating. People are
very fascinated by your job. All right. And you get

asked questions all the time. What do you
think is a question you would like somebody to ask you?

Oh, God. And it's hard. Um, what a
question that I'd like someone to ask me

about your job, not just in life. Yeah,
yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. Exactly. About the job.

now you can push this off to season two if
you want, and I can get you back on and you can have

a good thing about it. This is tough, man. How

about this? Is there
anything you'd like to purchase?

Matt, I have a question for you. Yes. Is there
anything you would like to purchase? A lot of gear.

That's a good answer to your question.

Matt, um, look, thank you so, so
much. And I'm serious. If you're up for it,

if I end up doing a season two, can you
jump in? 100%. Thank you, Matt Tomlinson. We will

definitely be doing a part two. There are so
many more things I wanted to ask you. Thank you to

my executive producer, MixingLight.com. If
you're watching or listening to this on the Mixing Light

website, you already know what they do. If
you don't check them out, they can help you all things

color. Thank you to my friend at the show,
Filmlight, and to my producer, Kayla. Thanks for

listening and like subscribe do all that kind
of stuff because it does really help. Until next time.

See ya. The Color
Timer. A micro podcast experience.