I've got to cut you off here. I probably spend more of my life in VFX/compositing than in a color correction suite, but this ranking you claim between the capabilities of an After Effects workstation and DaVinci/Poggle. etc is simply false.
Certainly there has been a convergence of functionality between compositing/VFX and color-correction per se. Among the loudest proponents of this extended functionality have been the colorists themselves. And there is indeed a great deal of interaction between color and FX work. This has historically required a back-and-forth collaboration between the timer and the FX crew: it would be great if that could be achieved without as much delay & frustration, maybe even with a single tool or a common interface.
But to claim that there are "orders of magnitude" of technical and artistic difficulty between the task of the colorist and that of the FX artist is a specious. Your view implies either an exaggerated estimate of the VFX problem or a naively simplistic estimate of the timing problem.
If AfterEffects were, as you claim, even as much as 10 times more "competent" than a modern color-correction suite, the world would be a far, far better place.
(And AE is great, mind you.)
In the end, this dichotomy is a false one anyway. The depth of specialization that a person in our industry can sustain is pretty deep: that does not imply that they contribute less or that their
skills are less estimable, technically or aesthetically. Some tools are similarly specialized. That can work too.
But if I had to give up one tool in filmmaking, I would give up the entire field of digital effects before I gave up color timing.
Joe Beirne, New York
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