Working with a Colorist

The biggest part of working with a colorist is preparing the production for it early in the process. Make sure it is clear they must budget for a colorist in the beginning, before you even start production.

Without a DIT on small passion projects, it may be advisable to create proxies for the director with a look baked in. This will stop them from looking at the footage with the wrong LUT or with no LUT at all. If they do either of those things their opinion on the color process may be greatly skewed since they have been looking at an image that was far from the final result. By baking the LUT in you'll maintain your original creative intent and make it easier in the color process to push the image where you'd like it to go.