For a start, at $99, it is incredible value for money and affordable for most low budget filmmakers like myself, but I think it’s simplicity is it’s key. Clearly it has been designed by people who know exactly what they are doing and is backed by the pedigree of the Technicolor name, and when something is so apparently simple you know that behind it is a world of complexity.

Most colour correction tools that are bundled in editors are fairly basic, not just in what they can do, but how they are used, and the quality of the results obtained. I also find that they are not consistent. For example the provision of scopes, being able to balance each channel, and how much noise gets introduced. In addition, the more plugins that get applied the less realtime the performance becomes, making editing less productive, but I am one of these people who like, in fact almost need, to be able to see more or less what the final result is going to look like. I find it helps with editing process as it establishes the mood and keeps me more in the story rather than being distracted by unfinished looking shots (particularly with rushes that have been shot flat).

So now to briefly mention some others that I have and used. Apple Color, very full featured but also very complex, a strange interface (for people like me anyway) and really is something that is only suitable at the end of the production pipeline. Apple color is standalone, sitting outside the editing environment completely, and requires that you render your clips then roundtrip between editor and color, something that can end up as a workflow nightmare. I’m sure that in the kind of setup where you have editing then colouring, it works or has worked well, but it’s not dynamic or responsive and doesn’t let the editor make choices.

The other suite of tools I want to mention is RedGiant magic bullet (which is $799). This is a good suite of tools but for me has always lacked in that the scopes can’t be resized, you can only work with a still image when in the grading interface, and it is anything but realtime, always needing rendering. I also find it very hard to match clips.

Technicolor Color Assist just works differently and fits into the workflow at so many different levels. I have recently been shooting a drama using Canon DSLR’s and we elected to shoot with a flat picture profile (in fact Technicolor cinestyle) across all the cameras. Flat picture profiles look quite bad as they are but having Technicolor Color Assist on set meant that we could show the director what the shot could look like by simply loading the clips onto a laptop and applying a style straight away. This prototype grade was kept and can be used as a quick reference right at the beginning of editing. Did I mention realtime? Color Assist, and the plugin used in the editing packages, is realtime. Not only that, you can swap between different grades in realtime with the click of a button.

For my recent short, ‘Into The Light’, I ended up removing the Magic Bullet grades in favour of Color Assist because it was quite simply faster, more intuitive, easier to copy grades, and so much more easier to see different grading options. More over, I actually think there is less noise using Color Assist. I only wish at the time that After Effects was supported (although I found a way of getting around this), but of coarse, it is now officially supported.

All the functionality is documented on Technicolors website. What probably isn’t apparent is the complete portability of he Color Assist grades. I work with a group of filmmakers that all seem to use different tools, some use Premiere Pro, others FCS, or FCPX, or even After Effects. The grades are small files that sit with the media, so if I am editing in FCS3 I can export an xml for the Premiere Pro guy, send him/her the grade files (.xcsl) and the grades will work right inside their editor.

But more importantly than this, Color Assist is simply a joy to use. It’s really hard to explain why, but it’s a tool that you just seem to get a feeling for, a trust and confidence that it is working right. I really like the scopes. It provides a consistent interface between all the editing packages that works. The way the color adjustments seem to work just feels nice, a little change here and little change there and it starts to come together. I used the split screen feature to match two shots. The first one was too blue, the second was too orange; both were wrong. I balanced the first shot, then loaded the second one in the split screen and managed to match the two almost perfectly, and really quickly. I can seem to get to the grade that I want and without too much effort. Some tools just seem to pull or push the footage too much, but Color Assist and the cinestyle profile work incredibly well together.

Color Assist is now my first choice of tool for colour correction and grading and I push it’s merits to all the filmmakers I know. If I could have a wish list though, it would look something like this.

• Support for BlackMagic cards and DV out (so it can be seen on a proper monitor)
• Vignettes
• More Secondaries (although I have a workflow for this)
• Support for more editors, like Sony Vegas Pro and HitFilm
• It’s own timeline so a whole sequence of clips can be worked on in it’s entirety
• Option from within Color Assist to bake or render a file
• Ability to have looped playback
• LiveGrade - When in the field, would be nice to have directors view of the scene graded rather than flat.