ADVERTI SEMENT FEATURE | F I LML IGHT
TALKING COLOUR At the NAB Show, four leading colourists – working on high-profile material using FilmLight’s Baselight v5 – are talking about their unique experiences and individual approaches to grading
IMAGES From the top left: Doug Delaney, Andrea Chlebak, Fernando Medellin and Laura Jans Fazio
To give colourists and other creative professionals a head start, FilmLight developed a series of Colour Days and Masterclasses in 2018 as a service to the industry as part of its education and outreach programme. With intensive live presentations and practical discussions, these events are designed to guide colourists, DOPs and the wider production and post-production community through the opportunities and challenges of modern colour pipelines. The 2018 Worldwide Colour Tour took place in locations as diverse as Los Angeles, Mumbai, London, Amsterdam and beyond. Following a very popular event in association with IBC, FilmLight is now planning a Colour Day at the NAB Show. The day is led by four top colourists, working with recent, high-profile material using the latest Baselight v5 software. COLOUR PROFILES At Oxido in Mexico, Fernando Medellin grades commercials, features and television: he was in at the beginning of the colour workflow for Oscar-nominated Roma , grading dailies for Alfonso Cuarón. At the NAB Show, Medellin is talking about his collaborative creative work with the director and DOP on set. He is also explaining his grading approach on high-end beauty commercials and his work on the new HDR Netflix show, Monarca . “I started as a stills photographer, then I began to work in a studio that specialised in 3D animation for commercials,” says Medellin. “I have always particularly enjoyed colour in art, and I love the look developed in European cinema, so this was a natural progression for me.” Doug Delaney, senior colourist at Technicolor, started his career in VFX
THE ROLE OF THE COLOURIST HAS changed over the years. High-end colour was originally the province of big- budget productions: feature films and lavish commercials. Now, with the latest generation of tools, grading has become a routine part of many more productions, in television as well as movies and commercials – and they look all the better for it. The justification is the same. Managing the colour palette with sophisticated tools to best serve the story; making creative decisions about how far to see into the shadows, or how to differentiate highlights. MASTERING THE CRAFT The challenge is how best to fit this potentially time-consuming stage into the production and post-production cycle. That means communicating a consistent
look across on-set dailies, editing, VFX and finishing. It means taking Raw files from wide-gamut cameras and tailoring that to the resolution available in television, HDR, digital cinema, laser projection and so on – all on the same project. So, the colour team now has to manage critical workflows and collaborative pipelines, as well as apply a creative edge, often in front of clients in live review sessions. The latest grading tools have remarkable capabilities, but there is a lot of functionality to learn and a lot of pressure to use it effectively. Passion for your craft helps, but how do you find your way around the toolset and the workflow planning? There is clearly no quick fix to this – it takes years of experience to see an image and know precisely how to make it look the way it appears in your mind’s eye.
“FilmLight developed a series of Colour Days as part of its educational programme”
40 DEF I N I T ION | APR I L 20 1 9
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