New Colour Grading Service Allows Post House Plans to Expand into Features
Mexico City post house Oxido has acquired a Baselight ONE from FilmLight enabling it to offer colour grading services for the first time. The company’s principal aim is to provide grading services for its existing advertising clients, but it also plans to use Baselight to expand into long form post production. Oxido, whose advertising credits include work for Banamex, Telcel, Nestlé’s and Kellogg’s, expects to grade its first feature film later this year.
“Oxido is a wonderful example of the growth of the post production industry in Latin America,” notes FilmLight US President Craig Risebury. “Baselight is an important contributor to that trend by providing companies with the tools they need to compete at the highest level in the global market at a price they can afford. It is truly helping to break down barriers.”
Oxido was formed in 2006 by managing director Marco Rodriguez, post production supervisor Santiago Torre and motion graphics designer Ricardo Villarreal, all long-time veterans of Mexico’s post production industry. Along with its new colour grading services, the company offers editorial, visual effects and graphics design. It has a staff of 15, including colourist Daniel Amado, newly-hired to operate Baselight.
“We evaluated several colour grading solutions before choosing Baselight and came to the firm conclusion that it is the most powerful tool for creating astonishing images,” says Villarreal. “It also offers us a path to expand into features while delivering the same, high-quality imagery.”
Oxido has integrated Baselight into a non-linear workflow that links it directly to a shared storage system and the company’s editorial and visual effects resources. This workflow allows commercials (and other projects) to be graded in cut order. It also permits the colourist to collaborate easily with the company’s team of editors, visual effects artists and designers.
“We felt that traditional telecine workflows are lacking in terms of creative and technical flexibility,” Villarreal observes. “It makes it hard to achieve certain looks. Baselight offers a superior toolset, and allows us to work with speed and ease in a manner that is most conducive to the creative process.”
Villarreal added that Baselight’s ability to grade in 4K and its support for RED and other digital cinema formats were also important factors in its buying decision. “The fact that playback is GPU-based was also a big plus for us,” he says.
“We want to change the way the advertising industry in Mexico thinks of colour grading,” Villarreal concludes. “We want to show how powerful compositing can be when it is supported by a world-class colour grading solution. We are raising the bar for quality post production in Mexico—and Baselight is a big part of how we are doing that.”
Contact – Mike Grieve ([email protected]) +44 20 7292 0400
