Colorflow, a full-service postproduction company specializing in color grading for independent films, documentaries, long-form television and similar projects, has opened a new, state-of-the-art facility in the historic Saul Zaentz Media Center in Berkeley, Calif. The 7,500 square-foot facility features three color grading and finishing suites, and a DCI-compliant DI grading theater. Colorflow has recently provided color grading and finishing services for a number of films, including Heatstroke, a suspense thriller from Bold Films, and A River Changes Course, a documentary set to premiere at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.
“We needed a larger facility with a more robust infrastructure and a theater environment in order to properly service the type and number of projects we are attracting,” said Alexander Black, the company’s managing director.
“We have done a careful job in balancing the creative and the technical in the new facility,” added DI supervisor Alexander MacLean. “Every infrastructure decision was made in service of the creative process for our artists and clients.”
The centerpiece of the new facility is its DI grading theater. Originally built as the Jacobs Theatre by Saul Zaentz, it includes theater-style seating for 20, a Christie 2K digital cinema projector, a 20-foot screen and a new Autodesk Lustre color grading system. Three HD color and finishing suites feature Assimilate SCRATCH, Autodesk Smoke and DaVinci Resolve. All of the company’s resources are linked via a high-speed fiber optic network that allows seamless access to HD, 2K and 4K media in any suite. Its infrastructure is fully file-based and can directly accommodate raw media from all digital cinema cameras, including RED Epic and Scarlet, ARRI Alexa, Canon C300/500 and Vision Research Phantom.
“Our theater mixes the best of all I’ve seen over the years at post facilities around the globe,” said lead colorist Kent Pritchett. “I can’t imagine a better working environment, and I am thrilled to offer this environment to clients.”
Colorflow’s creative staff includes lead colorist Pritchett, and senior colorists David Lortsher and Gary Coates. In addition to color grading and finishing, the company also operates a full-service digital lab providing dailies, visual effects pulls, standards conversion, film restoration, digital cinema packages (DCP), data back-up and archiving and tape deliverables. Its past credits include the Academy Award-nominated short The Barber of Birmingham and several PBS documentaries. It also recently provided restoration services for director Carroll Ballard‘s 1969 documentary short Rodeo prior to its screening at the 38th Telluride Film Festival.
Colorflow’s location at the Saul Zaentz Media Center positions it just a short distance from Skywalker Sound and Lucasfilm and near the heart of the growing Northern California film community.
