Owner/Colorist
AlphaDogs, Inc.
Burbank, CA
WHY I LOVE IT: My day to day work primarily consists of color correcting television shows and feature films. Having multiple platforms in house gives me a choice of different systems to use. With all the systems on the market, I have yet to find one that performs better for my workflows.
The biggest advantage comes from the source relationship mode that Symphony allows one to use while correcting. I can choose to have the corrections I am performing apply only to the shot I’m working on, or to every shot that came from the same master clip during capture, every shot with the same name or even every shot from the same tape. In a typical three camera reality show for example, I can correct one shot from each camera per scene, and as long as they don’t rebalance their camera in the middle of the scene, I’m done with it. This leads to enormous time savings.
Another advantage over a tape based color correction system is that I have access to all of the layers of video. When multiple shots are composited together, I can correct each layer individually. Transitions such as wipes aren’t a problem to track as I’m able to correct the underlying footage.
The Symphony color correction toolset is amazing. Using a tabbed palette structure provides numerous ways to approach any given job. It doesn’t matter what system you are used to using to color correct, Symphony has an option you will understand.
One of my favorite is the channel blending option section. It allows you to borrow from one color channel to add to another. A good example is a blown out shot. When analyzed, it may just be one channel that is overexposed, and that channel can be recreated by stealing from the other color channels fixing an otherwise unusable shot.
Lately, I find myself using the spot color correction a lot on feature work to add shading. Fortunately, Symphony let’s you draw any shape and even use the built in tracking software to apply it exactly where you want it.
