The Refinery Group Johannesburg is now the hub for the industry’s top colourists and gear and will prove the first port of call for the grading of commercials and features.

Says Tracey Williams, Director of Post-Production at the Refinery: “We are proud to be the only facility in SA currently running Lustre, which perfectly complements our existing offerings of Spirit, and Final Cut Pro Colour. We now offer a complete range of grading options and our multi-faceted and highly regarded team of expert colourists collectively represent years of solid, creative experience at the disposal of our clients.”

Top talent on tap…

Michele Wilson is an industry gem who started her career at Film Lab as a colour timer before joining Video Lab as a colourist. Having trained in the USA and garnering international experience at Condor Amsterdam, her showreel includes work with prime directors on top commercial brands, including KFC, Coca-Cola, Old Mutual, MTN, Nokia, Vodacom, the IDC and Ford.

Alex May has worked on telecines at the Worx, the Refinery, Pudding and Video Lab and having mastered Lustre, he recently graded three feature films: ‘Mr. Bones II’, ‘White Lion’ and ‘White Wedding’, as well as the much lauded documentary ‘Behind the Rainbow’. His impressive showreel also includes commercials and music vid work.

Wiggie Ellenberger, with an amazing eye for detail and understanding of front-end Telecine, has earned an impressive reputation on features in both SA and beyond, and is now requested by name by top international DOP’s. His recent projects include ‘Mrs. Mandela’ and ‘Angel’ for BBC and ‘Generation Kill’ for HBO. He has also completed a number of Telecine tape-to-tape grades over the years, such as the recent ‘Viva Madiba’ birthday special produced by Videovision Entertainment. Wiggie’s natural instinct for colour has gained him prime positioning in the local and international film industry.

Geared up…

Lustre, a resolution-independent, disc-based grading system that caters for PAL, NTSC, HD and 2K and even 4K work, boasts advanced grading, editing, tracking and keying tools in both film and video colour space. It’s the ideal tool when grading data related shoot formats (Red-1), P2 footage, XDcam and also 2K scans from telecine, all of which are very easily integrated back into Flame, Flint or Smoke via DPX files, with no timecode problems and allowance for XML support from any offline system. Lustre also offers grading in context (a conformed picture as per the sequential timeline of the cut), as well as multiple grading layers, organic trackable windows, applied plug-ins (such as bleach bypass), selective blur and de-focus, and easily integrated visual effects via the Discreet platform. Due to the fact that Lustre facilitates greater artist/cinematographer interaction and is proving to be both highly time- and cost-effective, the system is experiencing massive worldwide growth as the gear of choice for the commercial environment.

Spirit telecine, with a 2k plus da Vinci grading system enabling us grade and transfer 35mm and 16mm, as well as scan images at 2k and HD-resolution for grading in Lustre or FCP. The 2k plus da Vinci grading system addresses grading in the SD, HD and 2k worlds with sound syncing and logging.

Final Cut Pro’s expanded toolset “including Color” enables a 4k file import and up to 2K file output whilst simultaneously maintaining all DPX timecode for Flame, Flint or Smoke finishing, and all metadata when finishing with the RED camera footage in FCP itself. For lower end commercials and doccies it’s the ideal workflow to go from the FCP timeline directly into color and grade and final finish directly there after

Lustre and Final Cut Pro have been installed on the Refinery site and the Spirit will be operational on the Refinery site from mid-June.

The Refinery Group’s colourist collective is set to add even more value to their post-production solutions to the entertainment industry within the advertising, television, documentary and feature film arena.

For more info visit http://www.refinery.co.za