Zachary Gobetz was born in Baltimore, and then moved across the country twice before finally landing in Florida, where he went to school. He then headed to the Northeast to attend New York University’s Kanbar School of Film and Television (ilmtv.tisch.nyu.edu).
Gobetz spent most of his time working on short films, commercials, TV pilots and feature films, usually as one of the head producers. These projects took him all over the Northeast, as well as to Hawaii, California, Tennessee, Kansas and, unforgettably, Abu Dhabi.
“It was while working on sets that I began to see that, although a lot prep often went into the shoot, poor execution in post caused many shorts and commercials to linger and not be fully finished,” Gobetz explains. “Drawing on my youthful affinity for puzzles, I saw an opportunity to work as a DIT and with color correction on the set in order to make sure everything was properly prepared for the editors.”
While still in school, Gobetz worked as a freelance colorist and interned. In the fall of 2013, he had what he describes as “the great honor” of working with Sikelia Productions as an office intern. He also worked on-set with David Tedeschi on his latest documentary The New York Review of Books: A 50 Year Argument.
“I told Mr. Tedeschi about my interest in color correction and he responded, ‘Oh then, you have to meet Ben.’ He was referring to Ben Murray, head of The Room, a digital intermediate boutique located within Technicolor-PostWorks New York (www.technicolorpwny.com). I had a fantastic talk with Ben near the end of December and he asked me to contact him after I graduated. I reached out to Ben again in May. He hired me immediately and I started the next week.”
Prior to Gobetz joining The Room, his post production experience was limited to the editing platforms he had experienced at school. That included Avid Media Composer, Final Cut Pro 7 and the Adobe Creative Suite. Gobetz learned DaVinci Resolve on his own.
Do Us Part
“At The Room, I work as an assistant editor,” he says. “I primarily use [Autodesk] Smoke and Flame, but recently color corrected my first feature documentary, Men of Brutus, in Lustre. The other DI operators at The Room have been the best co-workers and instructors I could wish for. I am extremely grateful to Ben Murray, Jack Lewars, Allie Ames, Jeff Cornell, Ryan McMahon, Keith Jenson, Joey Handy and Christina Delerme for welcoming me into the post production family.”