Juliette Wileman - Colourist
Job title - Colourist
Experience - 5+ years
“Frustratingly, a lot of films that I love the grade on are all done by men, and there’s a distinct lack of female colourists in Hollywood. But thanks to social media, it’s inspiring to see the likes of Simona Cristea, Ruth Wardell, and Megan Lee making waves.”
Tell us about your job role and the kinds of projects you work on;
I'm both a Colour Assist and a Junior Colourist. As a Colour Assist, I pretty much do what it says on the tin - assist colourists. This involves ingesting footage, wrangling it, and prepping it for grade projects - once prepped, I then render approvals to send to clients and update the projects as needed. Being an Assist means I get to be involved in every project that comes through grade - from promos to commercials, to feature films - and pretty much everything in between! My role as Junior Colourist has the added bonus of grading some of these projects! Working with a range of clients across lots of different projects means I'm always doing something different.
What does an average day look like in your post-production working world?
It's always busy! For Assist jobs, I'll ingest footage in Resolve and wrangle to the required format for grade and online work. This involves conforming edits to the master footage, checking everything is relinked properly. Once rendered, I'll then prep the grade project by re-conforming the edits from the master footage to the wrangled footage. This means we only work with the required shots (plus handles), which reduces the amount of footage on the server - every GB is precious! Assisting also involves rendering grade approvals, which is rendering MP4 and ProRes viewables with all grades and resizing applied to send to clients for feedback. This is all in-between doing my own grade jobs; I'll set an initial look on a select number of shots, then once the client is happy I'll apply the look across the entire edit and send out full approvals. Then it's a case of back and forth feedback until everyone is happy, which is when we render the grade out for online work.
How did your career in post-production begin?
As long as I can remember, I've always wanted to do something creative. Initially, I wanted to be a Photographer and I always enjoyed the colour correction part of the process. As soon as I found out I could do that on films, my career path was set. Media GCSE was the first step, then a degree in TV Production - with a small detour as an Editor post-uni - before finally getting a Runner position at Absolute. The rest is history!
Tell us about a career highlight;
Definitely working on the UN Women UK – ‘Safe Spaces Now’ project, with Director/Writer Florence Winter Hill at Missing Link Films. The project was hugely important and beautifully shot, so I really wanted to do it justice. Florence and the DOP, Ronnie McQuillan, were wonderful during the session and it's been really rewarding seeing it help make progress towards a safer world for everyone.
Which women in post do you admire?
Does all of them count as an answer? It’s still a fairly male-dominated industry, but I’m surrounded by inspiring women every day.
Frustratingly, a lot of films that I love the grade on are all done by men, and there's a distinct lack of female colourists in Hollywood. But thanks to social media, it’s inspiring to see the likes of Simona Cristea, Ruth Wardell, and Megan Lee making waves – they’re producing some beautiful colour work and getting the recognition they deserve.
Favourite piece of work?
That's a difficult one - I'm very critical of my work and, like many artists, I always find things I'd change! But if I had to pick, I'd say the promo for ‘Everything’ by Gotts St Park. It was maybe my second ever 'proper' colour job, in the suite, attended by the wonderfully talented Director, Silence, at Curate Films. The combination of rich blues and deep oranges is always pleasing and the actual process of getting to the final look was nothing but positive. I'm a big fan of grading promos: there's always the opportunity to experiment and take the colour in interesting directions!
What advice do you have for other women wanting to start a career in post?
Go for it, and don't let imposter syndrome get to you! It's a very fast-paced and intense industry but so worth it once you get to work on more and more amazing projects. Put yourself out there and don't be afraid to go after what you want; just don't tear anyone else down in the process. Most importantly, learn from those around you; there are so many talented and creative people, don't waste an opportunity to pick someone's brain (at the appropriate time, of course!)