LOS ANGELES — Panavision’s (panavision.com) Light Iron company has responded to the increased need for remote workflows with a range of innovations for dailies, offline editorial, DI and finishing. Additionally, the company has welcomed three executives to its senior leadership team. Seth Hallen, Phil Harrelson and Laura Borowsky will help grow the company’s infrastructure, expand its service offerings and support in-house talent.
Photo (L-R): Seth Hallen, Phil Harrelson and Laura Borowsky
When production halted earlier this year in the face of worldwide lockdowns to combat the spread of COVID-19, projects already in post had to adapt on the fly to take their workflows remote.
“From the beginning, it’s been our mission at Light Iron to guide our clients through post production’s constantly changing technologies and workflows so they can focus on telling their stories without compromise,” explains Peter Cioni, co-managing director at Light Iron. “Having long embraced mobile tools and remote collaboration, we were able to seamlessly transition our artists and clients offsite, bringing our in-facility experience right to their homes without missing a beat — or a deadline.”
Light Iron was an early pioneer of mobile dailies workflows, and the company continues to innovate with Outpost Remote Control (RC), the latest generation of its Outpost near-set dailies solution, which now allows a Light Iron dailies colorist to control the complete system remotely, regardless of geographic distance. The Outpost RC system can be quickly deployed in a production office, data center or wherever is convenient for the production, providing all the benefits of a realtime, near-set solution without requiring a colorist to be physically present on-set. This allows the production to keep their on-site crew numbers down — which remains a priority during COVID-19 — while simultaneously giving cinematographers the flexibility to collaborate with any dailies colorist on Light Iron’s roster.
Light Iron has also expanded its offline editorial rental solutions to bring the experience of its New York location’s in-facility offerings directly to clients, equipping them with a complete home installation that’s securely connected back to Light Iron’s main infrastructure. Light Iron provides everything the client will need, from the furniture to the hardware — including an SDI confidence monitor — with comprehensive, step-by-step support to get the system up and running. Once set up, the client’s system connects to and reads from the secure Avid NEXIS server that’s housed at Light Iron. The company’s remote offline editorial rentals are currently being deployed in the New York City area, with targeted regional expansion in early 2021.
For DI and finishing, Light Iron provides a variety of synchronous (live) and asynchronous review solutions to meet clients’ needs. Projects that Light Iron has recently finished with remote workflows include the series What We Do in the Shadows, Next, The Queen’s Gambit, The Haunting of Bly Manor and Social Distance, and the features One Night In Miami, Wander Darkly and What the Constitution Means to Me.
Supporting its expansion of services, Light Iron has bolstered its leadership team with the recent hiring of Seth Hallen, Phil Harrelson and Laura Borowsky. Hallen joins Light Iron as co-managing director, bringing extensive expertise in production and post to the team, along with decades of leadership experience and a wide range of industry relationships. With a background as a business unit owner within Sony, an entrepreneur and a CEO, Hallen currently serves as president of the Hollywood Professional Association (HPA), a role that he has held since 2016.
As Light Iron’s VP of operations, Phil Harrelson will be responsible for managing the company’s overall operations, with a particular focus on implementing systems and processes to help better serve customers. Harrelson has more than 20 years’ experience in the post production industry across VFX, dailies, production and sales, including six years working at Deluxe.
New director of business development Laura Borowsky brings wide-ranging experience garnered over 19 years working in tentpole features, indies and commercials. She began her career with Technicolor, and through her work she’s developed strong relationships with studio clients as well as creatives, including cinematographers and directors, making for a strong synergy with Panavision. Based in Los Angeles, Borowsky hails from Atlanta, and her new role will include a focus on developing the Southeast market.
“We’ve spent a lot of time ensuring that we have the best team to support all our clients’ needs, and this phase of recruitment marks the next significant step in this effort,” notes Cioni. “Seth, Phil and Laura bring a huge amount of industry experience. They each will boost the creative insight we can give our clients and put us in the best position to continue charting our course through and beyond the disruption caused by COVID-19.”