Finish the picture without leaving the cut

A rough cut with colour and titles in place reads as a film. Without them, a client spends the screening asking who the person on screen is and why the second camera looks green. B/side lets you settle both in the cut.

Colour, shot by shot

Each shot gets lift, gamma, gain and saturation, with scopes beside the picture. Match two cameras in an interview, or bring back a shot that came in dark. The scopes tell you when you are there, so you are not trusting a laptop screen alone.

When log footage is cut against a phone or a drone, put a camera LUT on just the log shots. Your own LUT files work too.

Titles you fix once

• Lower thirds for names and roles.
• Slates and cards for chapters and credits.
• One fix, every use. Change a name in a title and every place that title is used updates with it.

That last one matters on a long project. A misspelled name in forty lower thirds is one correction, made once.

Keys and layout

• Chroma key for a green or blue screen.
• Luma key for graphics and shots keyed on brightness.
• Resize and crop for a reframe or a cleaner edge.
• Picture in picture, with keyframes on all of it so an inset or a reframe can move over time.

Transitions

Dissolves and fades are there on picture and sound.

Why it matters

Clients and producers judge what they see. When the colour matches and the names are right, notes are about the story. You also keep the work in one place, so a late change to the cut does not mean redoing a grade or a title somewhere else.

When a show goes on to a colourist for the final grade, your shot by shot colour has already shown everyone the look you were after.