Colorist Communication – Dealing With Hard Clients

Colorist Communication: Dealing With Hard Clients

Once you get used to your grading tool of choice and have spend a couple of months grading the next big challenge as a colourist is communicating with your clients. Being a colorist means you are solely responsible for the look and success of the project. Unfortunately clients always tend to remember the negatives over the positives.

For example if you graded the job beautifully but accidentlly rendered the preview h264 at the wrong aspect or with old grades that is what you will be remembered for. With that in mind I’m starting a new series based on colorist communication and hopefully you’ll have lots of questions!

In this insight we’ll be taking a look at the dreaded situation of working with the hard client. The one that has lots of negativity about the current job and your grade. It can be an intimidating situation so I’ll share my attitude and show how I would speak to the client in a situation like this.

My personal approach is to try and include the client in as many decisions as possible and nudge them gently towards the look that myself and the DOP or director have been building. If you go in guns blazing and try and argue with them it will not end well! Remember they are the ones paying the bill at the end of the day and have the final say.  Check out the video to find out more!

– Dan