Leading Toronto VFX house adds FilmLight colour suite to complete its creative capabilities

The Vanity, one of the top post houses in Toronto and a specialist in VFX, has added a Baselight TWO colour grading system and Blackboard 2 control surface from FilmLight. The FilmLight grading tools allow The Vanity to offer an end-to-end boutique finishing service for its clients, along with its Autodesk graphics, effects and editing systems.

The Vanity

“In the past we have worked with a separate colour grading facility, sometimes getting the final grade on the elements, sometimes on the finished spot,” said Naveen Srivastava, one of the founders of The Vanity. “We wanted grading to be a more collaborative, more intimate experience for us and for our clients, so we made the decision to add our own suite.”

“We started by finding a great colourist, Loren White,” Srivastava continued. “He has experience with Baselight, and was adamant that it was the best tool on the market. This was soon backed-up with our own research as we visited and talked to a number of post-houses and colourists in the US – Baselight was hands down the most highly recommended system we came across.”

White has worked on most available systems and in numerous locations across the world, including Istanbul, China, India, Canada and the US, and he was always impressed by the sophisticated functionality that Baselight encompasses, and how intuitive the system is to use.

“Baselight has such an impressive toolset and there are a number of key features I love,” he explained.  “I like the way the cursors are utilised and how there are so many routes to the same outcome, adding to the overall efficiency. The strip/layer approach allows me to apply one layer to multiple shots, making groups of changes very quick and simple to complete.

“When clients come into the grading suite and see Baselight TWO and Blackboard 2 they are blown away,” concluded White.

As a boutique shop, The Vanity attracts a great deal of premium work, including advertising for major Canadian and US brands. The small team means a great deal of continuity throughout a project with all the work completed by just one or two artists. Loren White is just the ninth member of the creative team.

The boutique scale, together with increasingly higher expectations of the colourists’ role, also means that staff are encouraged to be flexible and inventive. “I do much more than just creating a look,” White said. “It is not uncommon for me to do sky replacements, logo removal, adding flares and other processes that are typically left to the Flame suite. Baselight has all the tools I need to do these things – as well as the best grading capabilities in the business, of course.”

After…
Client: Nissan Canada, Agency: TBWA\Toronto

Before…
Client: Nissan Canada, Agency: TBWA\Toronto

Wolfgang Lempp of FilmLight added, “Our goal is to provide the best functionality, but also to take away the complexities of the workflow. Professional facilities should be free to use the best tools for the job, so in a place like The Vanity they have to be able to choose a Baselight grading system and have it integrate seamlessly with Autodesk VFX tools so they can grade elements to achieve the perfect composite.

“Everyone appreciates that creative demands are escalating at the same time that budgets are getting tighter,” he added. “The solution is to take out the technical obstacles so that everyone’s time is devoted to getting the perfect picture. That is why people are increasingly turning to FilmLight.”