Facility Gears Up for Commercial and Feature Projects
Aiming to garner more mastering work for feature films and commercials, Santa Monica, California-based Core Group has purchased a Baselight ONE colour grading system from FilmLight. The system will enable the facility to perform real-time DI colour grading at resolutions up to 2K.
The Baselight ONE complements Core Group’s existing compositing and audio mixing resources to form a complete finishing solution for independent films and studio releases, as well as commercials for all markets and delivery media. The company is slated to begin its first finishing projects via Baselight this month. They include Wasting Away, a comedy-horror film from writer/director Matthew Kohnen and writer/producer Shaun Kohnen; and This Is Not a Test, directed by Christopher Angel and starring Hill Harper and Tom Arnold. The company has four more films on its production slate.
Baselight will allow Core Group, which previously offered colour grading via desktop solutions, to offer a higher quality of service to its clients. “Baselight opens a whole new world to me and my clients,” said Bobby Maruvada, Core Group’s founder, and a highly experienced DI colourist, compositor and cinematographer. “It gives us the ability to work in real-time. It’s fast, fluid and dynamic.”
Maruvada, whose credits include Chasing 3000 (starring Ray Liotta) and Disfigured (from writer/director Glenn Gers), added that he considered a variety of colour grading systems before choosing Baselight due to its flexible toolset, speed and performance. A musician by training (he is a graduate of the prestigious Berklee School of Music), he used a musical analogy to explain his choice.
“I look at is as a musician looks at a musical instrument,” he said. “I felt Baselight was a well-crafted instrument that would feel good in my hands, and let me play.”
Baselight ONE is ideally suited to the workflow Maruvada has set up at Core Group. The system offers unlimited primary and secondary grades. It is resolution independent, allowing multiple formats to be mixed within a single scene or project, and facilitating the delivery of multiple elements from a single timeline. The system accommodates up to 9TB of native storage and it also incorporates FilmLight’s acclaimed Truelight colour management, ensuring accurate emulation of the deliverable on the grading display.
The system also offers a direct and relatively low cost upgrade path to Baselight FOUR and Baselight EIGHT. “It means we have no ceiling—and no minimum,” Maruvada said.
For Maruvada, Baselight allows him to compete on par with any facility in the world in terms of quality without sacrificing the personalised attention that has fuelled his company’s success for more than 15 years. “This is no factory—we like to get involved in the films we work on,” he said. “Core Group has the vibe of an artist’s studio. We view ourselves as artists who turn out a digital product. We ‘sculpt’ bits.”
Core Group Ltd. Is located at 1011 Pico Blvd, Studio 10, Santa Monica CA 90405. For more information, call 310.314.3671 or visit www.coregroupltd.com.
Contact – Deepa Parbhoo ([email protected]) +44 20 7292 0400
