CINELAB INDUSTRY
BETTER TOGETHER WORDS KATIE KASPERSON
Cinelab Film & Digital and post-production specialist fluent/image have been aligning behind the scenes; now, they’ve made it official. We speak to the team about the recent acquisition and how it’s unlocking smarter workflows for productions N ow under one umbrella, Cinelab Film & Digital and fluent/image go way back. Both with credits on projects like The King’s Man
and Argylle , the two companies offer complementary creative and technical services. “For nearly ten years, though we weren’t directly working together, we were still on the same projects,” begins Joshua Callis-Smith, CTO and colourist at Cinelab. “It wasn’t until Matthew Vaughn’s last film that we were a lot more collaborative.” Cinelab recently acquired fluent/ image, bringing the two companies under a single roof while capitalising on their distinct strengths. According to Jon Ferguy, director and founder at fluent/ image, the deal had been in the works for ‘a couple of years’. “Every month that we worked alongside each other, it became clearer that this was a natural fit and we should find a way to make the acquisition happen,’” he recounts. “It’s obvious now that this was the right move.” “Cinelab’s strength lies in supporting the early stages of post-production,” explains Callis-Smith. “We specialise in film dailies (including processing and scanning), digital dailies and dailies colour – everything needed to carry the creative intent from set into post- production, whether it’s a film shoot, digital capture or hybrid workflow.” Fluent/image specialises in the later stages of post, typically picking up at the point of VFX turnovers and guiding content through VFX submissions, QC and delivery into DI. Its flagship platform, Coherence, ensures that all teams are looking at consistent images throughout post – flagging content issues before they can impact production schedules. “There’s always been crossover in the services we offer,” says Callis-Smith. “But now that we’re one team, we can focus our respective expertise where it matters
Learn more about what Cinelab and fluent/image can do at cinelab.co.uk handling, we’re solving those details.” With their teams now fully integrated, Cinelab and fluent/image are focused on offering efficient capture-to-post support for productions navigating increasingly complex post and imaging workflows. our own tools for workflow automation, image processing and colour science.” “We’re going to use those tools to make sure everything that we deliver all the way through the pipeline is absolutely bulletproof,” adds Callis-Smith. Speaking of colour science, Cinelab’s mission rests in ‘protecting the integrity of the image’, according to Callis-Smith. “The relationship between the DOP and the dailies colourist is about ensuring creative intent translates through post – from the point of capture into the final stages of grading.” Cinelab’s in-house team handles digital dailies reviews by meeting with DOPs in real time and often remotely. “We recently did a show on Easter Island. Despite being 2000 miles off the coast of Chile, we were still able to conduct remote, real-time collaboration.” In short, “supporting post pipelines has a lot behind it,” states Ferguy, “from calibration and colour pipeline to content
ON POINT Productions fluent/image worked on include Mission: Impossible – Fallout (top) and The King’s Man (above)
most. That means Cinelab continues to lead on dailies and image integrity from capture, while fluent/image brings deep knowledge in workflow design, automation and delivery. Together, we’re covering the entire post pipeline – more cohesively than ever.” “We’re a good fit because our roles in the workflow naturally follow one another,” Ferguy notes. “Another reason is that fluent/image is a small, software- focused company, whereas Cinelab is a larger company with a far more capable infrastructure. On fluent/image’s side,” he continues, “we’ve had to develop a lot of
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