Mexico City-based Oxido, one of the largest providers of post production services for commercials in Latin America, has purchased a Baselight HD colour grading system from FilmLight. The new Baselight HD complements a Baselight One system that the company acquired last year, while providing faster processing speed and no resolution restrictions. Oxido has also acquired a FilmLight Northlight scanner, the industry standard for quality in film mastering, and plans to use it to scan film elements for commercial and feature film projects.

Oxido has pioneered the concept of non-linear colour grading for commercials in its market and this new purchase is a testament to the success of that effort. The second Baselight will help Oxido keep pace with demand from agencies and production companies in Central and South America and provide the resources for the company’s planned move into Digital Intermediate style grading and finishing for feature films.

“Working with advertising customers every day, we have continually discovered new enhancements and tools provided by Baselight,” says Oxido managing director Marco Rodriguez. “In less than a year, our customers have become big fans of this new way of colour correction. It has been a great success without a doubt.”

In planning its move, Oxido evaluated several low cost desktop-style colour grading options that have recently been introduced to the market, but found that they lacked the performance provided by Baselight. “We learned that it is not as easy as it looks to set up a colour grading suite that meets professional standards,” explained Rodriguez. “There are compatibility issues and driver updates…and then there are the systems’ limitations. They are not able to work in 2K, which is our standard for media originating as 35mm and 16mm film. Working at lower resolution would be a problem for us, especially for sophisticated composites and visual effects.”

Rodriguez added that these new systems are also not necessarily “low cost.” Upgrading basic systems to handle high resolution media, deliver acceptable processing speed and deliver adequate storage could push their cost beyond that of Baselight, while still lagging behind in features and performance. “It turns out, they are only cheap on paper. In reality, they can’t compete with Baselight. The cost is too high and there are too many holes.”

Oxido was formed in 2006 by 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.

Contact – Deepa Parbhoo ([email protected]) +44 20 7292 0400

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