Wen Tong

Wen Tong is an imaging engineer and (aspiring) colorist — his job is to make sure what you see on screen is exactly what the director intended. Turns out, that's almost impossible. 

Two people literally cannot see the same color.

I went into this conversation expecting to learn about color science, and I did — but we ended up somewhere I didn't expect. We talked about:

• Why working in total darkness actually ruins a colorist's perception — you'd think the opposite
• The moment his first film looked beautiful on his laptop and terrible in the theater, and how that one experience pulled him into a career very few people know of
• Giving up computer science for art — "in a traditional Chinese mindset, that's insane"
• "Fun is always the thing that will make you do things. If things are not fun, it's hard to do for long."

Wen lives in New York and is still building the skills to tell the story he hasn't written yet. He's in no rush.

wentongcolor.com