Colorist, Educator & Presenter
Robbie Carman is a name that resonates in the pro video community – well known as both a colorist and an educator, there is a good chance you’ve seen him speaking at trade shows or read one of his books on post-production and color grading. The author of many courses on Linkedin Learning, Robbie was also one of the co-founders of Mixing Light, the popular color focused education site.
Robbie is the owner of DC Color, a state of the art color, HDR and finishing boutique specializing in everything from indie films to commercials, even political and corporate communications. We recently caught up to discuss our favorite subjects – color and scopes.
I’ve been a colorist for about 25 years. I actually started out thinking (hoping) I was going to be a rockstar! Music – both performing and recording has always been a passion of mine. To this day, I still maintain a small audio studio, collect guitars and play as much as possible.
My original focus in college was music, but from an experience editing footage of my friend’s band, I discovered my love for video technology. For me, the flow and creative/technical challenges of audio mixing and color have a lot of similarities – going back and forth between recording music and grading a film feels very natural and fluid to me.
When I graduated college, I went to work for several post production facilities. In those days there were a lot of opportunities for assistant editors to help out in linear suites or in the machine room. It was through these opportunities that I discovered the world of color correction. I learned first on a DaVinci 8:8:8 system, then later a DaVinci 2k and 2k+. I also worked occasionally on Avid Symphony and Media Composer.
In 2005, I decided to start a boutique facility with a friend and colleague and have been running the company since then!
People may not realize, but the Washington D.C. area is a large media market. There are major networks like National Geographic and Discovery, and of course government agencies, NGOs and other projects are always keeping us busy. We’re well known for being on the bleeding edge of technology while being fair and competitive on pricing.
We have also had the pleasure of working on some beautiful and successful indie films. A few of my favorites include Bini by the director Erblin Nushi, The River And The Wall directed by Ben Masters. Recently we worked on the PBS series Human Footprint (produced by Day’s Edge Productions) and Invisible Hand by director M.A.
We are primarily working on DaVinci Resolve, on a mix of Windows, Mac & Linux systems for workstations and assist stations. We leverage Flanders’s Scientific HDR displays including the XM310K, XM311K, XM651U, XM551U. We use Blackmagic Mini and advanced control panels. We use TBC consoles and the storage at all of our locations is based on iXsystems True Nas.
For software, beyond Resolve and Nobe OmniScope we use Neat Video, FilmConvert, Filmbox, and various OFX plugins and DCTL scripts for Resolve.
I was originally a big fan of Nobe Color Remap. When Time in Pixels launched Omniscope it was great timing – I was looking for something with HDR (PQ) support and the scope software that I was using at the time didn’t yet support HDR.
OmniScope integrated into our workflow pretty much immediately. One great thing about Omniscope is the pace of development and communication with users. if a user needs something, developer Tom Huczek integrates their ideas in a smart way. He is also great at coming up with small new features that really add to the overall experience.
Other features that I appreciate: Streamdeck support (I solo scopes all the time via Streamdeck). I love dropping pins for brand colors and the new multi-input options for HDR and SDR at the same time are great. NDI support is also really useful – I’ll often forward the scope output to a DPs iPad or iPhone in session via an NDI receiving app.
I use an ultrawide strip monitor directly in front of my control panel. This way, I leverage multiple layouts vs a lot of scopes all up at once. My most used layout is VectorScope, YRGB Parade, and HML Vectorscope. But I switch a lot into another view showing a CIE scope, Sat/Lum and False color.
OmniScope has lots of unique features – especially for QC, which I’am using more and more
There are a lot of them! But I would say translating clients desires and needs and generally knowing how to ‘run the room’. I like to think of colorists as post-production psychologists. Many (or most) clients describe things in emotive terms – ‘lets add some pop in this scene’, or ‘this shot doesn’t feel deep enough’ Our job as colorists is to translate this kind of feedback into actions that adjust the picture to what client wants.
That’s an important thing – while collaboration is a key part of the grading process, as colorists we’re trying to help clients realize their vision – not ours.
This is the ‘running the room’ part that I mentioned. It’s not uncommon in a session to have multiple opinions (sometimes even conflicting). In part, the job of the colorist is to manage these opinions, keep the process moving all while keeping clients feeling happy, heard and entertained.
Many new colorists are technically great – they can get a shot, scene or even an entire project looking amazing but the client management and session management parts of the job take years to learn and perfect.
Gear and software changes, all the time. I encourage new colorists to study amazing images and films! Focus on client communication and learn why “less is often more” is relevant to almost everything in color.