BERKELEY, CA — Colorflow (www.colorflow.com), a full-service post company that specializes in color grading for independent films, documentaries, long-form television and similar projects, has opened a new facility in the Saul Zaentz Media Center, here. The 7500-square foot facility features three color grading and finishing suites, and a DCI-compliant DI grading theater.
Colorflow recently provided color grading and finishing services for a number of films, including Heatstroke, a suspense thriller from Bold Films; and A River Changes Course, a documentary set to premiere at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. According to Alexander Black, who serves as managing director of the company, Colorflow needed “a larger facility with a more robust infrastructure and a theater environment in order to properly service the type and number of projects we are attracting.”
The centerpiece of the new facility is its DI grading theater. Originally built as the Jacobs Theatre by Saul Zaentz, it includes theater-style seating for 20, a Christie 2K digital cinema projector, a 20-foot screen and an Autodesk Lustre color grading system. Three HD color and finishing suites feature Assimilate Scratch, Autodesk Smoke and DaVinci Resolve. All of the company's resources are linked via a high speed fiber optic network that allows access to HD, 2K and 4K media in any suite. Its infrastructure is fully file-based and can directly accommodate raw media from digital cinema cameras such as the Red Epic and Scarlet, Arri’s Alexa, Canon’s C300/500, and Vision Research’s Phantom.
“Our theater mixes the best of all I've seen over the years at post facilities around the globe,” says lead colorist Kent Pritchett. “I can't imagine a better working environment, and I am thrilled to offer this environment to clients.”
In addition to color grading and finishing, the company also operates a full-service digital lab, providing dailies, visual effects pulls, standards conversion, film restoration, digital cinema packages (DCP), data back-up and archiving, and tape deliverables. The location at the Saul Zaentz Media Center positions it just a short distance from Skywalker Sound and Lucasfilm, and near the heart of the growing Northern California film community.