Digital Intermediate Colorist

Movie theaters aren’t the only places to see movies. Thanks to technology, you can now download movies to your computer, then watch them on an airplane, or even stream them through your phone for watching in line at Starbucks.

Because it’s changed the way they’re watched, it seems only logical that technology has also changed the way movies are made. As a Digital Intermediate Colorist, you’re proof that it has, as you’re part of a relatively new process for making motion pictures, called “digital intermediate,” or “DI.”

Here’s how it works: Movies used to be made exclusively with film that was photochemically finished in a film processing lab. Today, however, many are finished digitally, instead, in which case they’re either scanned or — if the movie was recorded on a digital camera — downloaded, then manipulated electronically before being recorded back to film.

As a Digital Intermediate Colorist, you’re the 21st-century version of a Color Timer, which means you digitally manipulate the color in a film as part of the post-production process. To accomplish this, Digital Intermediate Colorists use special color correcting consoles to color each scene, one by one, like you’re coloring the pages of an electronic coloring book. This allows you to make sure color, contrast, and brightness are consistent from scene to scene — even when different scenes were filmed in different light — and to create different on-screen moods by saturating scenes with more red, yellow, or blue.

Along with the Director of Photography, you create the “look” for a movie. Because you work for a DI house, you just happen to do it digitally!