To those in the know, colorists and conformists are the unsung heroes of modern spot work. Originally seen as technicians, they are increasingly being recognized as something far more, adding crucial creative input to award-winning commercials. In early November, the Association of Independent Creative Editors (AICE) held its first-ever awards show honoring the craft of editing, with 250 entries judged by editors from AICE member companies, agency creatives, and commercial directors. Ten winners were chosen from among 30 finalists. And, although it was editors who took home the awards, the colorists and conformists played key roles. Here is a look at a selection of artists who saw their names on more than one winning entry. Also included is a conversation with Billy Gabor, a colorist with Company 3, Santa Monica, who recently relocated to New York as part of the boutique’s effort to establish a Big Apple presence.
STEFAN SONNENFELD
"Most people have no concept of what a colorist does," observes Stefan Sonnenfeld, president/managing director at Company 3. Sonnenfeld was the colorist on three of the award-winning AICE ads: EDS’ "Cat Herders," edited by Gordon Carey of FilmCore, Santa Monica, out of Fallon Minneapolis, and directed by John O’Hagan of bicoastal/ international hungry man; Hallmark Hall of Fame’s "Hooper," edited by Marty Bernstein of Machete Edit & Design, Chicago, via Leo Burnett USA, Chicago, and helmed by Joe Pytka, of Venice-based PYTKA; and Nike’s "Freestyle," edited by Adam Pertofsky of Rock Paper Scissors, Los Angeles, and directed by Paul Hunter of bicoastal HSI Productions, through Wieden+ Kennedy (W+K), Portland, Ore.
Sonnenfeld got into his business by accident: In college in the mid-1980s, he took on a summer job at a Los Angeles post facility called AME, driving film dailies from one location to another. "It was mostly footage from Miami Vice," he recalls. "They would color them and I soon became interested in what [the colorists] were doing."
Sonnenfeld graduated from driver to colorist’s assistant, jumping from company to company and position to position as he worked his way up to being a full-fledged colorist. As a colorist, he worked from’92 to ’97 at POP (now a part of R!OT Santa Monica). Sonnenfeld left in ’97 to start up Company 3 with fellow colorist Mike Pethel—now co-president of Company 3—and Robert Walston—now CEO of Liberty Livewire Pictures Group, Santa Monica, the parent firm of Company 3. Over the last few years, Sonnenfeld and his colleagues have worked on 30 commercials that have appeared in various Super Bowls.
Company 3 has also worked on music videos, feature film trailers, and sections of such recent features as Spy Game. "When I started, I gravitated towards advertising," explains Sonnenfeld. "Back then [in features and episodic TV], you would end up doing dailies every night, and all you would be doing was replicating [the colors] you see in everyday life. There’s a skill to doing that, but it’s not as exciting to me as making a Nike spot look different and cool. So that’s why I got into videos at first; they were more experimental. Then commercials became so different as directors from videos got into them. You’d do these crazy color things. It was more challenging. You would not make a tree look exactly as it did in real life."
Now, as more music video and spot directors turn their sensibilities to the big screen, Sonnenfeld’s company is increasingly finding itself called on to handle features. "I worked on spots with Brett Ratner [of bicoastal Villains], Michael Bay [of Bay Films, Santa Monica] and Spike Jonze, and now they’re doing features." For the latter, Sonnenfeld did color correction on Being John Malkovich, and also worked on The Cell, directed by Tarsem of bicoastal/international @radical.media.
It’s not just the look, either. Sonnenfeld sees the colorist as a collaborator, even a savior of last resort. "The colorist can help a great deal," he notes. "If they don’t like it, DPs are not stuck with what they shoot on the set. We can use technology to help change things for the better."
BILLY GABOR
"Tag," a fascinating, funky commercial for Nike, is an unsurprising winner—because it is so well done—of an AICE award. It starts with a POV-shot of an unseen person whose hand reaches out and "tags" a young man. The man turns and begins chasing after people on the streets, in the subways, through lobbies and revolving doors, as he desperately tries to catch someone else to tag. Part of Nike’s "Summer Play Initiative" campaign out of W+K, "Tag" posits the idea that an entire city habitually breaks into the children’s game.
The music is electronic, the colors are green tinged, metallic, almost black-and-white: It is a cold, Orwellian landscape. The spot was edited by Russell Icke of The Whitehouse—which has offices in Santa Monica, Chicago and London, and will be opening one soon in New York—out of W+K, and directed by Frank Budgen of bicoastal Anonymous Content and Gorgeous Enterprises, London. The colorist was Billy Gabor of Company 3.
"It was done in a verité style, shot in 16-millimeter," observes Gabor. "I sat down with Frank and the creatives at Wieden and worked out a look that was nice and gritty, with an urban feel, not too affected, not too gimmicky. We tried different things. We experimented with over-the-loop color, then we tried a slightly de-saturated, slightly cool look, and played up the grittiness of the city without being too affected."
Gabor says he worked most closely with Budgen because, "ultimately it’s the director’s spot. The good thing is to collaborate with the director and the editor. The colorist relationship is sandwiched in between. Everyone brings a special skill to the table."
Gabor’s skills were developed first at film school in Atlanta. He had aspirations to direct, but he got involved in postproduction when he took his student film work to a local post facility, Editworks (now Todd-AO/Editworks, a part of the Liberty Livewire family of companies, Atlanta). "I thought the post work was very interesting," he recalls. "When I started, I had no idea of the power of colors in manipulating the image. I didn’t know you could control the attitude of the images. That intrigued me. So I started spending a lot of time there."
He ended up interning and then working at Editworks: "Before I graduated, I was doing telecine dailies for them." From Atlanta, he went to Arlington, Va., where he worked at Roland House. He left Roland House for SMA (now SMA Realtime), New York. Through a commercial job, he met Stefan Sonnenfeld, who eventually hired him to work as a colorist at Company 3.
Gabor spent three years at the Company 3 office in Santa Monica, and recently relocated to New York, where he is now a colorist for the firm—working out of R!OT Manhattan, which is a sister shop to Company 3 under the Liberty Livewire umbrella. "We’re working here at R!OT until we can lock up some space," Gabor explains. "We took my room from Company 3 in L.A. and shipped it here."
He is excited about the move and about the state of his profession. "When I first started, colorists were expected to do less," notes Gabor. "It was about being safe and not making waves. Now there are so many options. There are so many things technology lets you do. You can put down five different looks for a spot. The trick is finding the right one."
CHRIS RYAN
Chris Ryan, a colorist at Nice Shoes, New York, has witnessed a great deal of change over the past decade. "In the last ten years, with the way technology has advanced, you’ve seen the colorist become more a part of the production process, especially [when employed] by the more knowledgeable DPs and directors. It may be hard to light a spot properly, so they will come in here and do in a couple of minutes what it would take them a couple of hours to do on the set. That’s why directors come back to the same colorists. More and more, colorists are not perceived as technicians, but as participants who are integral to the process."
Three of the spots that Ryan colored were AICE winners—all out of Ogilvy & Mather (O&M), New York, and all edited by Adam Liebowitz of Go Robot!, New York: American Express’ "Manhattan," directed by Pytka; IBM’s "Harlem Fencer," directed by Lenard Dorfman of @radical media; and "Supermarket," directed by Pytka.
"Supermarket" tells the story of a young, unshaven, long-haired man who appears to be shoplifting. As various people and security cameras watch him, he picks items off the shelves, quickly, almost surreptitiously. The image is letterboxed, with a slightly green hue, and the soundtrack is the driving electronic beat of drum machines and synthesizers. The punch line comes when the apparent thief goes through an electronic device at the exit. There is the sound of a beep; a guard approaches menacingly, and says, "Excuse me, sir." The man pauses. Is he caught? "You forgot your receipt," continues the guard, with a smile. Then the voice-over explains: "Check out lines. Who needs them? This is the future of e-business. IBM."
"There was this really ugly lighting in the supermarket," Ryan recalls. "The store had overhead fluorescents. We tried to do something a little interesting. I let the whites blow out and it became really ‘hot,’ which masked the dinginess of the store. There was very little color in the spot. We played around a little with the agency creatives and Adam."
"Manhattan" presented its own challenges. In the spot, golf champion Tiger Woods is seen using Manhattan as a golf course. David Apicella, the creative director at O&M on the spot, wanted the color of the American Express card—green—to turn up in the reflection of a car seen in the spot. "We used a very subtle, light green to represent the tone of the Amex card," explains Ryan. "We didn’t want to overdo it."
Such subtlety is part of the colorist’s art. Ryan notes that he "fell into" the profession. "I was a writer in college, but I needed a job at school, so I got a job at Manhattan Transfer [now R!OT Manhattan] , in the mail room, in 1989."
He soon became an assistant to top colorist Howie Burch, and when Burch retired, Ryan was promoted. "Howie taught me a lot," he recalls. "I found it fun and interesting."
Ryan, too, sees the colorist’s job as an art of collaboration. "Usually, you sit down after the shoot and talk about what you want to do. Then you go through variations. I end up working very closely with the editor. There’s a lot you can do. With multiple windows, keys and color masks, you’ve opened up a lot of creative possibilities. These days, people are very comfortable with that."
RICH SCHRECK
Like a colorist, the conformist is almost unknown to the general public, but is just as crucial. Rich Schreck, a Henry online editor at Nice Shoes, is unfazed by the lack of recognition. "I do my job," he says, matter-of-factly. "My first goal is to match the rough cut; once I put that together, and [the creatives and editors] see it finished, they may want to make changes. Sometimes they do a lot of revisions in the finish cut; sometimes it’s fairly quick."
Schreck is happy, however, to have worked on a handful of AICE Award-winning spots: the aforementioned American Express and IBM ads cut by Liebowitz, as well as IBM’s "Senegal Women’s Basketball," cut by J.J. Lask of Go Robot!, and directed by Dorfman of @radical.media, out of O&M. "It’s very satisfying seeing the material I work on get that kind of attention," relates Schreck. "We run a good operation here at Nice Shoes, and we’re able to attract a lot of talented clients, which is a good reflection of Nice Shoes. I’m not surprised that the stuff won awards. The editors are very skilled and I’m happy to work with them."
"Harlem Fencer" and "Senegal Women’s Basketball" were tied to the Summer Olympics, and both showcase underdog competitors in inspiring vignettes. For instance, "Harlem Fencer" is "a nice, naturalistic spot," according to Ryan, who was the colorist on the ad. It tells the story of a man from Harlem who was on the U.S. Olympic fencing team, and it shows him in the local barber shop, on the streets, and in the subway. "It was a ‘skip bleach’ print which leaves the image very high contrast, but has soft whites and very desaturated colors, with extra silver in the print," Ryan notes. "It has an interesting look."
Schreck says that, from his standpoint, the winning commercials were not very difficult to handle. "These spots were very high quality from the start—very well produced. There were not a lot of curve balls," he explains. "I just had to make them look their best. With the guidance of the art director, I am trying to interpret what the film editor and art directors want."
Schreck began his career working in dub houses in Boston and says he "wanted to get more into the editing end." He worked his way up in Manhattan Transfer, learning his craft on sophisticated equipment, like the Henry Infinity, and he’s pleased about working at Nice Shoes. "What I like about it is you get to do real high-quality work around here," he notes. "The editors are really talented, and I get a lot of satisfaction working on high-quality projects."
