Toxic Member Ousted From Colorist Forum

“Ever since liftgammagain got hijacked by that lunatic, psychopath guy who sells calibration software, most smart people that know anything about color science or color have been out of it, nobody really wants to even write anything, because there’s always somebody trying to outsmart you and put links to their product, using it as a marketing tool, so the the quality of that forum has just gone down the drain.” – Dado Valentic, Color Scientist

After being permanently banned from the liftgammagain forums, Steve Shaw, CEO, Light Illusion, posted a message on his website, saying he’d no longer be partaking in 3rd party forums. Good riddance!

Cullen Kelly had this to say about the liftgammagain forums:

Aside from a couple of mentors, I’ve spent most of my 15 years as a colorist on my own, with no one to answer my questions. 

So when I first discovered the Lift Gamma Gain colorist forum, I was excited, and I started lighting it up with my naive questions:

If film is so great, why do the scans look drab until I hit them with a bunch of color correction?

What makes Arri’s color science “better” than RED’s?

Do I need to buy a control surface to be a professional colorist?

After a while, I started noticing a pattern: most replies would either mock my question, or give a completely unhelpful or wrong answer.

But I was desperate, so I kept asking, looking for that one response in ten that would actually help.

It was only after I got my first staff colorist job that I finally stopped subjecting myself to the unfriendly, low-value advice of those online forums. 

That staff job gave me the opportunity to learn from pro colorists I knew I could trust, and who cared about my success. 

I had the chance to see their exact workflow, watch how they solved problems, and ask big and small questions along the way – everything from “What does that knob really do?” to “How would you go about getting a Blade Runner look on this footage?”

And the biggest question: “Why did you do it that way?”

With this access, I felt my craft rapidly improving – and one day I realized it had been over a year since I’d last logged onto Lift Gamma Gain. 

But if both had professional colorists, what made the forum such a lousy place to learn, and what made that post house such a great one?

The thing is, “professional” really just says you get paid for your work. It doesn’t inherently mean you’re good, great, or well-intended when giving advice. 

And whether you’re on Lift Gamma Gain or elsewhere, the loudest voices on the internet tend to be egotistical, closed to new ideas, and looking more for recognition than to truly help others.

Those professionals I worked with in-person at the studio were different: they were curious, humble, and lifelong learners. When they answered my questions it wasn’t to validate themselves – it was to instill value into a team member they were invested in.