Welcome to the Montage!
Hello!! And welcome to Cut To: Montage! If you've found your way here... amazing! Seriously.
This blog is a place for me to share ideas, the workflows I use on set and in post, the things I've learned (usually the hard way), and the research and teaching ideas that keep me up at night. Behind every cut is a story, a workflow, and a lesson, and I want to start writing these down.
The name of the blog comes from the idea that no single post tells the whole story. Each one is a collection of multiple shots. Put enough of them together and, hopefully, you get a montage that's worth knowing.
So let's start with..
Who am I?
I'm Aaron Henriques. By day I'm Head of Foundation and Film lecturer at SAE University College Dubai. Outside the classroom I mostly work as a colourist in DaVinci Resolve. However, I have a lot of interests and skills, that I love expanding on.
I got into colour because I was obsessed with it early on. Not because it was such a fascinating medium, but because I could not figure out how to use it correctly. A lot of my interests stem from curiosity and the drive to learn and improve. The funny thing is, the more I graded, the more I wanted to be involved earlier in production, because so many colour problems are really lighting problems in disguise. That pull towards set turned into a genuine love of lighting and cinematography. These days I'd honestly call myself a gaffer at heart.
My path here wasn't exactly a straight line either. I started with a degree in Multimedia and Animation, moved into a BA in Film Production, and then did a Master's in Professional Practice, where my thesis looked at inclusive colour methods for colour-blind audiences. I'm inquisitive by nature and I love research, which is probably why I can't stop poking at things to see how they work.
Why start a blog now?
A big part of my job is explaining process. Students ask me how I organise a project, how I get footage from the camera to the grade, or why I do things in a certain order. I've explained some of these things so many times that it felt silly not to write them down properly.
I want to be upfront about something, though. The workflows I share here aren't set in stone, and I didn't invent most of them. They're the ones I actually use in my own work, pieced together and adapted from all sorts of places: mentors, colleagues, manuals, forums, YouTube rabbit holes, and a lot of trial and error on real jobs.
Over the years I've learned which parts of a process hold up and which ones fall apart, and that it often depends on the situation. It's never one solution fits all! What works on a calm studio shoot can collapse on a fast run-and-gun day. So when I write about a workflow, I'll try to explain why I do it that way, where it came from, and when I'd do it differently. Take what's useful and adapt it to your own process. That's exactly what I did.
Let's explore the different Categories!
The blog is split into five main categories. Each one maps onto a part of what I do, and I kept the names simple on purpose so that anyone, whether you're into film, animation, audio or something else entirely, can tell at a glance what they're getting into.
If you head to 'The Montage' tab in the menu, you'll find every post I've written, all in one place. I named it that on purpose. I like to think of it as each post on its own is just one shot, but when you see them all together, the workflows, the lighting setups, the rookie mistakes and the messy research, they start to cut together into something bigger. That's the montage!
It's the best place to start if you just want to browse and see what catches your eye. If you already know what you're after, you can also filter by category to jump straight to the topics you care about. And as the blog grows, The Montage will grow with it, slowly building into that library of knowledge I'm aiming for.
This is where my research lives, and it's a little different from everything else. In Behind the Cut I'm not worried about showing you a final, polished version. You'll see my full process as it happens: the research, the experiments, the dead ends, and work that isn't finished yet, updated as I keep chipping away at it. Projects like the DIT report tool I'm building for film students, my teaching practice, and the inclusive colour work from my Master's will all show up here, showcasing all the struggles and showing the mess! There's a reason I'm doing it this way. Let me explain.
I have noticed that a lot of my students have always struggled with committing to an iteration because they want it to be more polished before the move on to the next version. Here's the thing about most tutorials and polished workflow breakdowns: they make it all look easy. Clean steps, perfect results, no drama. And that's useful, but it isn't the whole truth. Real projects are messy. Cards fail, footage doesn't sync, a grade that looked great on one monitor looks awful on another, and you spend two hours chasing a problem that turns out to be one wrong setting.
I think there's real value in showing that mess. As a lecturer, I've noticed that students often assume professionals just get it right the first time. We don't. We get it wrong, figure out why, and fix it. That process of troubleshooting, second-guessing and learning is where most of the actual learning happens, and it's the part that usually gets cut.
That's why Behind the Cut exists. It's the category for the honest, unpolished side of my work. Instead of waiting until a piece of research or a project is wrapped up and tidy, I'll share it while it's still in progress: the questions I'm chasing, the things that didn't work, and the rough versions along the way. Some posts may later grow into a cleaner Workflows post, so you'll be able to see both the messy journey and where it ended up. If a post sits in two categories, that's why.
I'll be honest, it's a little uncomfortable putting my mistakes out there for everyone to see. But if it saves someone else a few hours of panic, or reminds a student that struggling is part of the process, it's worth it!!
This is the bread and butter of the blog. Workflows are the step-by-step processes I have put together for anyone to use to get a project from the camera to the screen without losing their mind (or their footage). Expect posts on dailies and proxies workflows, data wrangling, organising a Premiere Pro project before you start the edit, syncing footage, going from picture lock to colour and audio, making a DCP and so on. I'll also break down roles like the DIT and the Post-Production Supervisor, and many a times include excel templates I built over time.
This is where the gaffer in me gets to come out and play. I'll be writing about lighting, camera work and the gear I rely on. I also want to explore lighting recreation and pre-visualising setups in tools like Set a Light 3D, because planning the shot before you get to the set is key and somehting if you master, is a game changer.
This is home turf. In this Editing & Colour section, i'll share how I approach colour in Resolve. For example topics like colour space transform (CST), getting perfect skin tones, understanding primeries and secondaries and so on. I will also explore editing topics and techniques like pancake method, multicamera edits, trailer editing, creating titles and credits, motion graphics and so on.
If you've ever been in one of my classes, you've almost certainly heard me say "Rookie mistake number..." more times than you can count. It's become a bit of an inside joke, so it felt only right to give it its own category. Roughly every two weeks I'll post a new one: a common mistake, why it happens, and how to avoid it. And yes, some of them I've made myself. Short, practical, and hopefully a bit of fun.
Who is this for?
My students were definitely the spark for this, but the blog isn't just for them. It's for anyone out there who's curious about the craft and wants to expand what they know, whether you're just starting out, working in the industry, or teaching it yourself.
Fair warning though, the level will jump around a bit. Some posts will cover introductory topics that are great if you're new, and others will get fairly technical and dive into the nerdy details. I'd rather write each topic at the depth it actually needs than water everything down to one level. If something goes over your head, that's fine, come back to it later. It'll still be here.
And that's really the bigger goal. Over time, I want this blog to grow into a repository of knowledge, a library of workflows, lessons and research that people can dip into whenever they need it.
Let's talk!
This is where you come in. If there's a topic you'd love to know more about, or something you'd like me to write a post on, please get in touch. The same goes if you've got a better way of doing something I've written about. I'm always happy to learn, and I'd love to hear how other people approach their work.
I'm super excited to finally get this off the ground, and I'm really looking forward to connecting with other professionals, educators and curious minds along the way
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Thanks for reading. Now, let's cut to the montage.
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