Today we’d like to introduce you to Marshall Copous.
Hi Marshall, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Howdy! Well, I am a freelance colorist in the Austin film industry. My story started as a kid, watching countless movies with my older brother and sister. Big movie franchises like Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and Lord of the Rings filled me with wonder, and others like The Godfather, Shawshank Redemption, and T2 completely blew me away. That’s when my love affair with film started. We’d watch the Oscars every year and even write story treatments for our sequels and “original” films that were maybe too similar to other movies we liked, haha. So early on, I had this dream to be involved in making movies. My high school in La Porte, TX, didn’t have a film program, but the theatre program was huge, so I devoted much of my four years to that. Acting and dancing in our musical theater and one-act plays are still to this day some of the best experiences of my life. For a while, I wanted to go into acting.
The summer before my senior year was a defining moment when I picked up a camera and started making videos. My first project was a short documentary about my experience in China for two weeks with 19 classmates in our Global Studies program. Piecing together all that footage in the editing room and making a movie made me fall in love with the process. That year I made some comedy sketch videos for our student television program even though my focus was still theatre. I got accepted to UT as a theatre major, but started to consider pivoting to film. I loved the collaboration I experienced in our high school theatre program but expected the college experience would be more cutthroat and competitive.When I arrived at UT, I transferred to RTF and found that many other eager film students were looking to collaborate on each other’s projects. It was a wonderful experience, studying classic films, learning all sorts of filmmaking techniques, and then using what we learned on our projects. I moved to Austin in 2010, and I’ve been here ever since, collaborating on films, music videos, and commercials with many of the same people I met back in college. I started to get interested in color grading in school, but because there weren’t any classes on it, I didn’t begin to learn about it until afterward. I taught myself grading techniques through online tutorials and then applied that to friends’ projects. Now eight years later, I continue to work in Austin as a freelance colorist on all sorts of cool and exciting projects.
You wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle-free, but so far would you say the journey has been smooth?
It’s only possible to do full-time freelance work with struggles along the way. Sometimes there are slow periods where you have more free time than work. It was challenging getting new clients early on, so I had to work hard on the projects I was getting. Over time, the people I worked with would recommend me to other creatives in town. Now I’m fortunate enough to have a steadier flow of work than when I first started in color. The freelance lifestyle is only for some, especially if you like the security of a consistent day job. However, I find it rewarding to always work on unique projects that keep me on my toes and keep life from getting mundane. It’s especially nice when it comes to having the flexibility to plan travel, which I enjoy most outside of the film world.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I primarily work as a freelance colorist in Austin, TX. For people not involved in film who have no idea what that is, it is the film equivalent of photo editing. It’s my job to help achieve the filmmaker’s vision for the look of their project, whether it’s hyper-stylized or more of a natural aesthetic. Equally important is to ensure that the look remains consistent between all the camera angles within a scene. It’s always really rewarding whenever the people I collaborate with, who usually have been editing their projects for several months, finally see their films the way they envisioned them from the beginning. What sets me apart is that on every project, I push to make it look as good as possible and ensure that the people I’m collaborating with are satisfied with my work. I work with the project’s timeline and budget constraints but ultimately deliver on the director’s vision because that’s what I hope for when I need collaborators for my projects. On the side, I enjoy photography work, whether portraits and events for a client or travel and landscape stuff for fun. I’ve always been attracted to visual storytelling, so in addition to working on other people’s projects, I also like to look through the lens myself and see what my vision has to offer.
What changes are you expecting over the next 5-10 years?
It’s tough to say because the industry is always evolving. For the last few years, streaming has been blowing up the industry and forcing creatives to reconsider the traditional ways of doing things. I am a big supporter and believer in the theatrical experience, and there isn’t any better way of experiencing visual media. Still, the reality is that streaming is here to stay, and so much new content is only available online. That doesn’t affect my color grading process, but it has been interesting to see the shift develop.
On the one hand, so many new platforms need new and original content, which is great because it opens the door for many more creatives to use their voices to tell their stories. Still, it doesn’t feel great to be afraid that the movie-going experience is constantly jeopardized. Regarding the local Austin industry, there is always the potential for some of the bigger studios to bring more work down here, which is exciting. Still, I am skeptical because it doesn’t seem like the Texas legislature cares to invest in our industry. Austin is growing at a rapid rate. Where it’ll be in 5-10 years from a film industry perspective is a question I can’t answer. I hope that the collaborative “smaller town” identity and feeling between creatives is something that doesn’t disappear.
Contact Info:
- Website: mcopous.com
- Instagram: @mcopous
Image Credits
Matt Stryker
