Victim of a Colour Change

You ever build something with your own two hands? I mean really build it—sweat dripping, mind racing, heart pounding? And then, just when you step back to admire it, someone comes along with a can of paint and slaps a whole new color on it. Doesn’t ask. Doesn’t consider. Just does it. Now, imagine that happening to your art. Welcome to my nightmare.

It started with a couple of friends making offhand comments. One said, “That’s bad art direction.” Another asked, “Why would you ever use those colors? That’s not your style.” And I stood there, gripping my phone, staring at the final cut, knowing damn well those weren’t my colors. They changed them in post.

I showed them the raw images from set. The ones with the colors I chose, the ones everyone agreed on. The ones I bled for. But what does it matter? The damage was done.

The Knife in the Back

See, people think color is just a choice. Like picking a tie in the morning. But color is structure. It’s the bones of a scene. The glue holding every visual thread together. You change one color, just one, and suddenly nothing fits anymore.

Imagine a haunted house, walls painted just the right shade of moldy green to make your skin crawl. Now repaint those walls bubblegum pink. See how that kills the fear? That’s what happens when someone messes with a color palette in post. The shadows shift wrong. The highlights pop in places they shouldn’t. The entire atmosphere warps into something else—something broken.

Why Even Have a PPM?

Pre-Production Meetings (PPMs) exist for a reason. That’s where the decisions are made, where we agree on colors, set pieces, lighting. Where we carve the visual identity of a project into stone. And yet, somewhere between those meetings and the final edit, someone with a little too much power and not enough vision decides, Nah, let’s switch it up.

Why? Who knows? Maybe they got scared. Maybe they got bored. Maybe they just wanted to leave their mark on something they barely understood. The result? A Frankenstein monster of a film, stitched together from choices that were never meant to coexist.

A Simple Request: Let Us Do Our Damn Job

To the clients, directors, producers—whoever is holding the paintbrush at the last minute—I have one plea: trust us.

You brought us in for a reason. We live and breathe this. We sweat the details so you don’t have to. If you want to change a color, no problem! But do it in PPM. Do it before we build an entire world around it. Because once we do, pulling the rug out from under us won’t just ruin the art—it’ll flush your money, your vision, and your credibility down the drain.

So, before you go tampering with things you don’t fully grasp, ask yourself: Do I really want to sabotage my own project? Or maybe—just maybe—you should sit back, trust the people who know what they’re doing, and let us create something great.

Because in the end, that’s all we ever wanted to do.