How is the scope of a digital intermediate colorist in near future?

Answer 1

The colorist is responsible for the "look" of a film. They work directly with the Director and are a very important part of the film making process. They can determine the mood of a scene and of the entire film. More examples include the ability to draw the viewers attention to a particular part of the screen and the ability to make a scene shot in the day appear to happen at night.

The first film to use the DI process entirely was "O Brother, Where Art Thou?". Cinematographer Roger Deakins said, "Ethan and Joel favored a dry, dusty Delta look with golden sunsets. They wanted it to look like an old hand-tinted picture, with the intensity of colors dictated by the scene and natural skin tones that were all shades of the rainbow."

As this is a very subjective field, good colorist's are usually born... not made. A good colorist, who can give a director what they want, will be in high demand and can demand a very high salary. There are really only a handful of colorists who work on the majority of feature films. For example, Stefan Sonnenfeld (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0814406/).