Warren Eagles' Color Tour Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

Post NAB 2024 I was invited to the latest Colorist Society Hollywood meet up. Held on the rooftop at the Godfrey Hotel in Hollywood I chatted to a number of top colorists in attendance about how and why they joined the Chapter and what they are currently working on.

Topics discussed

• Mad Max ‘Furiosa’ with Eric Whipp
• How the Chapter was formed with Lynette Duensing and Troy Smith
• MTO’s favourite bar and tipple.
• Kevin Shaw’s Telecine trick from the 90s
• Did JZ really create the LUT still used by Roger Deakins?

Website https://coloristsociety.com/Chapter-Hollywood

Instagram @coloristsociety

Contact iColorist. for all your Color training needs

 

Rooftop at the Godfrey Rooftop Lynette and Vincent MTO, Warren & Jason

During my recent trip to the US I caught up with Christopher Young owner and Colorist at See Why Color in Brooklyn.

Chris really encouraged me to start the CT Podcast and in 2016 we went to a Brooklyn bar and made some very rough recordings.

I said then “When I make the Brooklyn edition, you are my colorist” 7 years later I finally delivered.

We chatted in his facility, before moving to a local bar then onto Brooklyn Tattoo.

Topics discussed

• Be an owner, freelance or staff? Chris has done it all
• Specialising in high end documentaries.
• His Dolby Vision HDR process
• Nucoda v Resolve
• Living and working in Brooklyn
• It’s all about managing the clients
• Are tattoos painful!

Website www.seewhycolor.com

Instagram

@seewhycolor Contact iColorist. for all your Color training needs

 

At the local

Season 3 of the Color Tour Podcast has been renamed ‘Not on Tour.’ I cannot travel so the CT Podcast is being conducted on ZOOM. I talked to Maxine in her DI theatre at Picture Shop during a break in sessions.

Maxine is a Hollywood A list Colorist. Her credits include big tent pole titles amongst a list of over 60 films. She now works at Picture Shop, previously known as Technicolor. We start our conversation with Maxine turning on her Christie 4K projector so I can see her on the ZOOM call. Maxine has an infectious personality that compliments her technical knowledge and creativity.

Topics discussed

• How did she manage to get on a Harry Potter film for her very first DI grade?
• What is it like to work at a big Hollywood Post House?
• Working with Clint Eastwood
• Creating the amazing look of ‘The Book of Eli’
• What are Marvel like to work for?
• Maxine’s thoughts on women in film
• How did the Harry Potter collaboration with Peter Doyle come about?

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1923595/ Picture Shop: https://pictureshop.com/team/ Book of Eli Trailer: https://youtu.be/kAMUv22y1og Mixer 2018

Season 3 of the Color Tour Podcast has been renamed ‘Not on Tour.’ I cannot travel so the CT Podcast is being conducted on ZOOM.

Setyo is as he says laughing, “I’m one of three gun colorists in Malaysia” He was born in Indonesian before moving to KL. He scored a job at the Blackmagic Design Post House as a VT op and worked his way up to being a senior colorist. Setyo now runs his own Color grading shop in KL.

Topics discussed

• How did he get started?
• What are the challenges of owning and operating your own shop?
• Coloring both TVCs and movies
• Educating his clients to understand the value of color correction
• Losing a feature project to another colorist
• Working at the Blackmagic Design post house and on the ‘Bait’ movie.

Link to the Mitsubishi TVC and the ‘Bait’ movie we chat about
Bait Movie Trailer Mitsubishi Expander Reel: https://vimeo.com/setyocolorist https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlvYBhzVsde2SNdbljId5Tnk9XzmI6SX9 Instagram  E-Mail setyo@visualfidelity.com

Chatting to Bob was the ultimate ‘going down memory lane Podcast’ for me. Having said that he also has some fantastic advice for up and coming color graders. Bob Festa has been coloring for nearly 40 years. As he says in the podcast “There is nothing I haven’t seen in front or behind me in a session, the only difference now during the Pandemic there is nothing going on behind me! Bob has worked at most of LAs top Post Houses and was also a partner in a start up company New Hat in 2008 We discuss his life in Color and why he still loves the job.

• What was the colorist scene like in the 80s?
• What are the challenges of owning and operating your own shop?
• Getting 35% of the room rate in the boom time in the mid 2000s
• What is it like at CO3?
• Grading the Kevin Costner show Yellowstone
• Why he is member of the CSI

Company 3 Bio https://www.company3.com/artists/bob-festa/ Post Perspective article with Bob on grading Yellowstone https://postperspective.com/colorist-bob-festa-yellowstones-modern-western-look/

 

Season 3 of the Color Tour Podcast has been renamed ‘Not on Tour.’

Gino is one of the leading color graders in Peru. I first met Gino when he came to my iColorist NYC class in 2012. We have stayed in contact ever since. He has really embraced HDR and is already on his 2nd HDR monitor. We chatted about working in Peru and how he started Gamma Post in Lima

Topics discussed

• How did Gamma Post come about?
• What are the challenges of owning and operating your own shop?
• Grading HDR, how hard is it?
• Editing a Cocaine doco in the early days on FCP5
• Why he went for the Postium OBM X310 HDR monitor
• What are his plans for working overseas.

Linkedin Gino Amadori Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/ginoamadori/ Gamma Post House LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/3829770/admin/ Facebook Page Gino Amadori https://www.facebook.com/ginoamadori Gamma Post House https://www.facebook.com/GammaPostHouse Instagram Gino Amadori https://www.instagram.com/ginoamadori/ Gamma Post House https://www.instagram.com/gammapost/ Reels in Frame.io https://f.io/yvbSHTWh Postium HDR monitor https://www.postium.com/product/obm-x310/

Season 3 of the Color Tour Podcast has been renamed ‘Not on Tour.’

I chatted to Juan Cabrera 3 days before the 2020 HPA Awards where he was nominated coloring the TNT show Alienist ‘Angel of Darkness’

Juan started his first company aged 17 in Madrid, Spain. He prepped for his first color grade by reading the Mistika manual on a 5 hour car drive from Madrid to Malaga. Once in Malaga he graded his first short film and his career as a colorist was launched.

Working as a Stereographer on some of Hollywood’s biggest feature films was Juan’s stepping stone to starting his own Post Production shop in Santa Monica called Lightbender Post. He is a Mistika user and works on longform feature films and series.

Topics discussed

• How did Lightbender come about?
• What are the challenges of owning and operating your own shop?
• Coloring with Mistika what are the advantages?
• His first color session in Malaga.
• The HPA Awards nomination for coloring the TNT show Alienist ‘Angel of Darkness’
• Working with JJ Abrahams on Star Trek into Darkness,
• His kit at Lightbender and how he competes with the big competition in Los Angeles.

Link to TNTs ‘Alienist’ https://youtu.be/QOjMCfDMbic
Lightbender Reel & site: https://www.lightbenderpost.com
IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3043942 Instagram @lightbender_post

Season 3 of the Color Tour Podcast has been renamed ‘Not on Tour.’

I visited Toby at CHEAT in 2018. It is a fantastic facility situated in Hackney East London, very close to where I went to school. We checked out his facility and then went to his local pub for a pie and a pint. I didn’t have my recording kit that day, but I made the desision to include Toby on the CT Podcast.

Topics discussed

• How did CHEAT come about?
• What are the challenges of owning and operating your own shop?
• Coloring The ‘End of the F***ing World’ Emmy winning show.
• Doing color research when not grading
• Add grain or not, if so how?
• Battling through COVID 19 lockdown
• Fine tuning the CHEAT Streambox workflow with iPad Pros

Link to Netflix’s ”The end of the F***ing World’ https://youtu.be/8XvFO83LXBE
CHEAT Reel & site: https://www.cheatit.co
IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2164371/ Instagram https://www.instagram.com/cheat_it/ Social media: Facebook and Instagram as Walter Volpatto

Season 3 of the Color Tour Podcast has been renamed ‘Not on Tour.’ I had planned to visit Walter in his new grading suite at Company 3 just after NAB 2020 but COVID 19 meant I never made it to LA. I decided to make the CT Podcast a Virtual Pod and I’m glad I did as this is a great listen.

Walter is one of the world’s leading Color graders. He has coloured over 100 features including Green Book, Star Wars The Last Jedi, and Dunkirk. Walter started his US career at FotoKem before moving to EFilm then to Company 3. He is a great asset to our industry and is always willing to share information and give advice.

Topics discussed

• The Company 3 colorist structure and why you shouldn’t be afraid to get a quote from them.
• How Walter moved from being a factory worker in Italy to being a top Colorist in Hollywood.
• The importance of supporting smaller projects and looking after your DP.
• Dolby Vision on the new Netflix movie ‘The Old Guard’
• The Color workflow for Dunkirk and working with Christopher Nolan.
• The HDR of Star Wars ‘The Last Jedi’ Why people said it wasn’t HDR enough!
• The YouTubers who are spreading the wrong training message.
• How you can transfer from a different country or position.

Link to Netflix’s ‘The Old Guard’ movie https://youtu.be/aK-X2d0lJ_s
Company 3 Reel & site: https://www.company3.com/artists/walter-volpatto/
IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2164371/ Star Wars interview https://youtu.be/GCfvDuQ-IWU Social media: Facebook and Instagram as Walter Volpatto

Junbin Chen is one of the top colorists in South East Asia. This is our pre COVID-19 chat that took place at a post house called Iceberg in Singapore. The chat then relocated to Bar Larong 13 in near by Geylang. Junbin has graded over 25 feature films, 20 TV series and 100s of TV Commercials. She was finishing a McDonalds commercial when we met at Iceberg, she discuses the TVC workflow for the project. Other random info: JB is usually 75% liquid coffee and loves cats.

 

Topics discussed

• The McDonalds TVC she is colouring shot with the Phantom camera
• Working at Blackmagic, how that helped her get connected
• The transition from TVCs to Longform, what does she prefer?
• How is the Singapore Post Scene?
• What does JB say to clients who say “What will it look like at home?”
• What she is doing to try and secure a grading position overseas.

Link to Macca’s spot: https://youtu.be/8jCf0b6L-wI
Reel & site: http://colorjb.com/
IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm4541444/ Iceberg Design https://icebergdesign.com Social media: @colorjb on Instagram or @chen.junbin on Facebook