Color Science, or "Why We Can Get Away with Charging 100k for Something You Can Do with Your Phone"

A lot of skills in life are very domain-specific. You don’t know what you don’t know, what an expert makes look extremely easy actually only came from decades of practice and effort, “once upon a time a woman asked Picasso to paint a portrait of her and then got pissed cause it took him 5 seconds and he made her pay $$$”, etc.. You’ve heard this before.

A big factor to consider here, in both combat sports and video production (and plenty of other fields), is “common mistakes that the novice doesn’t know that they are making” that burn them down the line, and that they can’t undo. An expert is worth so much specifically because they work fast, and even more specifically because they get it right the first time. The expert has a system that works, and it works every time.

Video is very much a “one and done” thing. On a big set, every minute is gigabytes of hard drive space and thousands of dollars. And that’s actually the cheap way to do things.

Because if you don’t spend a ton on that one-and-done project, you risk getting it wrong. And when you get it wrong, you ether have to do it again, same price, or give up. Sometimes you don’t get a choice, sometimes you just fail.

That video right there is a professional Hollywood colorist giving an absolutely tiny view into the world of color science, into an error that is going to happen when you use your phone to make video. Because he’s an expert, he’ll also explain what, if anything, you can do about it when it does happen, assuming you own a copy of DaVinci Resolve.

Don’t let this dissuade you from using your phone to make content. It’s free, after all. But understand the spectrum of skill, and the wealth of difference between what you do with your phone and what this wizard (who’s rate is at least $250/hr) does with professionally shot footage. When the right project comes along, when you need your video to look amazing, it’s always worth it.