LAS VEGAS — FilmLight (www.filmlight.ltd.uk) is hosting Color Day at NAB on Monday 8th at the Renaissance Hotel, right next to the Las Vegas Convention Center. The event will introduce colorists, DPs and the wider production and post industry to the opportunities and challenges of modern color finishing and delivery.
Headlining the day are four distinguished colorists. Doug Delaney comes from Technicolor in LA. Andrea Chlebak and Laura Jans Fazio represent Deluxe’s Encore in Hollywood. And Fernando Medellin comes from Oxido in Mexico. Between them they have worked on award-winning films, some of the most popular and prestigious television productions, iconic ad campaigns and popular promos.
“The buttons and knobs don’t make the grade, the ideas and execution do,” says Doug Delaney, who recently graded the latest Marvel blockbuster, Captain Marvel on a Baselight system. “I love the discovery process: working with filmmakers to find the right tone for the piece. Then refining and evolving that tone becomes the mission and joy of the job.”
With the latest generation of tools, color grading has become a routine part of more than just big-budget productions. In times of super-sharp, wide gamut cameras and displays, the colour team has to manage critical workflows and collaborative pipelines as well as apply a creative edge, often in front of clients in live review sessions.
There is a lot of functionality to learn and a lot of pressure to use it effectively. To give professional and aspiring colorists and creatives a head start, FilmLight developed a series of Color Days and Masterclasses in 2018 as a service to the industry, part of its education and outreach program.
The featured colorists will be joined on stage by FilmLight color experts Daniele Siragusano and Andy Minuth.
“The color process today has huge potential, given the remarkable quality in high-contrast digital cinematography cameras,” says Siragusano, image engineer at FilmLight. “The role of colorists is not only to use colour to tell the story, but also to ensure that colour fidelity is maintained at every point from on-set dailies to viewing at home or in the theatre.”
“Baselight's color management is very robust but also flexible enough that the color pipeline can be customised for the specific needs of any show,” notes Fazio.
“When you use the Baselight color pipeline, setting it correctly from the set to the finishing color grading, it becomes a powerful tool,” adds Medellin, “not only for producing multiple deliverables, but also for the creative decisions between the cinematographer and the colorist.”
The Color Day at NAB 2019 provides an opportunity to discuss challenges and creative technologies in a professional, non-commercial atmosphere.
The event will be held in the Renaissance Hotel, adjacent to the Las Vegas Convention Center. The room will be equipped with a full Baselight workstation and HDR monitoring, to replicate as far as possible a top-end grading suite. Material will be drawn from recently released movies, television productions and beauty commercials, chosen to illustrate key issues like HDR and color space transforms.
The NAB 2019 Color Day is free to attend but space is limited, so register in advance (www.eventbrite.com/e/nab2019-color-day-registration-59070846492).