Hiring a Colourist in the world of AI

I recently did a colour grade for a client that had already attempted to colour grade their project using AI. I was fascinated to understand their reasons for why they were now coming to me?

The client had used fylm.ai to colour grade a 60 minute documentary, they sent the results to me as a reference. I was impressed with the colour grade from a technical perspective, but I quickly understood why they were now approaching me.

The colour grade was pretty, but the story wasn’t. Each frame was well balanced, but on many occaisions the subject and the environment were fighting for the audiences attention. The story was emotionally charged, but the images felt…dull.

I began grading some of the hero shots from the film and I could immediately see from the clients face that they were becoming happier about the look of their film. We then entered into a conversation about how the story should flow from element to element, and I was using my wealth of experience to translate their instructions into image changes. “Can you make this shot more dirty?” “This needs to feel lonelier”, “here she is feeling hopeful”.

None of these instructions relate to a button or a dial in my software, they relate to emotion and mood and this is something that they couldn’t get AI to understand in any meaningful way.

6 days later the client walked away from my suite with a film that met their expectations and in some ways exceeded them.

So what’s my take on AI? I think its a really useful tool and I use it everyday, Magic Mask, Depth map, etc, but do I think it can replace the human element in creative filmmaking….not yet. Creative filmmaking is a complex endeavour and although the technical aspects are integral to making work that has impact, its also the creative collaborations between people that really add flavour to a finished film, and its these collaborations that are hard to quantify.

I remember reading this: “AI can mine and scrape the internet for every piece of information about falling in love, but it cannot know what it feels like to fall in love”. This is wholly human.