By Robert Goldrich

LOS ANGELES --

Gravity, which garnered seven Oscars, continued to be a force on the awards show circuit and Company 3 kept its run of consecutive wins alive at tonight’s 9th Annual Hollywood Post Alliance (HPA) Awards honoring excellence in postproduction. The gala awards ceremony was held at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles.

Steven J. Scott of Technicolor won the Outstanding Color Grading–Feature Film honor for his work on Gravity, which also earned distinction for Outstanding Sound-Feature Film, an honor bestowed upon Glenn Freemantle of Sound 24, Skip Lievsay of Warner Bros. Sound, and Christopher Benstead and Niv Adiri of Warner Bros.' De Lane Lea Studios.

As for Company 3’s continued excellence, this marked the sixth straight year that a colorist from that shop topped the Outstanding Color Grading-Commercial category, this time for Doosan’s “Heavy Industries” for which Siggy Ferstl served as colorist.

Joining Ferstl and Scott in the Color Grading HPA Award winners’ circle was colorist David Cole of Modern Videofilm in the TV category for the pilot of the series Reign.

Besides Gravity, rounding out the Outstanding Sound winners were Toy Story of TERROR! in the TV category and Honda Europe’s “Inner Beauty” for the Commercials mantle. The audio artisans on the latter were Anthony Moore and Tom Joyce of Factory. The sound ensemble on Toy Story of TERROR! consisted of Axel Geddes of Pixar Animation Studios, and Tom Myers, Gary Summers, Michael Silvers and Dustin Cawood of Skywalker Sound.

Editing, VFX
Outstanding Editing-Feature film distinction was earned by Christopher Rouse, ACE for Captain Phillips.

Taking the top Editing honor in TV was Skip Macdonald, ACE for the “Felina” episode of Breaking Bad.

And Doobie White of Therapy Studios won the HPA Award for Outstanding Editing-Commercial on the strength of Nissan Juke’s “Trigger.”

On the VFX front, a WETA Digital contingent–consisting of Joe Letteri, Dan Lemmon, Erik Winquist, Keith Miller and Paul Story–won the HPA Award in the Feature Film category for Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.

The TV counterpart in the VFX winners’ circle was “The Children” episode of Game of Thrones, the individual honorees being Joe Bauer of Fire and Blood Productions, Sven Martin of Pixomondo, Jorn Grosshans of Mackevision, Thomas Schelesny of Scanline VFX and Matthew Rouleau of Rodeo FX.

And Benjamin Walsh, Dominik Bauch and Brian Burke of Method Studios won the HPA Award for Outstanding Visual Effects-Commercial on the basis of GE’s “Childlike Imagination.”

Lifetime Achievement Awards

Alan Heim, ACE and Randy Roberts, ACE were individually honored for their outstanding careers in editing with HPA Lifetime Achievement Awards.

Heim, ACE is a native New Yorker whose credits and awards span feature films and television. Early in his career, he worked on many television shows as a sound editor, eventually working with Sidney Lumet on a number of films including The Pawnbroker and The Group, and with Mel Brooks on the original version of The Producers. He also worked as a music editor on Paul Newman’s Rachel, Rachel. Heim then became a picture editor and edited The Sea Gull for Lumet, The Twelve Chairs with Brooks, and many other projects, including Godspell, She’s Having a Baby and Funny Farm. Heim was nominated for an Emmy for Liza With a Z, directed by Bob Fosse. That was the beginning of a collaboration that spanned three films: Lenny, All That Jazz and Star 80. Heim won an Oscar, BAFTA, and ACE Eddie Award for All That Jazz. He also edited Network for Lumet, for which he was again nominated for an Oscar. Heim moved to Los Angles in 1994, where he worked on American History X, The Notebook and Alpha Dog. In addition, Heim won an Emmy for editing the miniseries Holocaust, and was nominated for Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, and Grey Gardens. He is currently president of both ACE and the Motion Picture Editors Guild.

Roberts, ACE, has served the American Cinema Editors tirelessly for nearly two decades; as a member of the board of directors since 1996, as vice president from 2005-2008, as president from 2008-2012, and currently as the organization’s director of marketing. Roberts is one of the originators of EditFest, a global series of editing festivals that highlight the art and business of film editing. He helped to implement ACE Tech Day to help ensure that the organization’s membership remain at the top of their field in technology. Born into the entertainment industry in Burbank, California, Roberts began his career in front of the camera with a number of roles in movies, TV shows and commercials during his youth. Eventually, he worked his way into the Film Editing Department at Warner Bros. and an apprenticeship with the union.  His first feature film editing credit was on Richard Pryor’s Greased Lightning, followed by projects with Francis Ford Coppola (One from the Heart), Robert Evans (Players), David E. Kelley and Dick Wolf, to name just a few. In addition to his motion picture and television editing credits, which include Chicago Hope, LA Law, The Agency and Tour of Duty, Roberts has seen his career also include directing a number of episodes of network television, but his first love remained the cutting room. He spent the last decade working as supervising producer on the long-running hit series Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. He is an ACE Eddie Award winner and nominee, a Primetime Emmy Award nominee, and the recipient of the American Cinema Editors’ Heritage Award.

2014 HPA Engineering Excellence Awards
HPA Engineering Excellence Awards were bestowed upon:

–MACOM: 12G-SDI Chipset
12G-SDI is the next data rate in the evolution of SDI, and MACOM has introduced the industry’s first complete chipset to enable next-generation 4K video production applications.  Our newest family of SDI equalizers, reclockers and cable drivers supports 4K video resolutions at 60 frames per second over a single link and complements our industry-leading crosspoint switch portfolio.

–NVIDIA: NVIDIA VCA
Accelerate design and VFX workflows with NVIDIA Visual Computing Appliance (VCA), the fastest way to interactive photorealistic digital 3D models and scenes. This network-attached appliance easily integrates into the design workflow and scales to multiple VCAs, each decreasing the time to noiseless, physically based global illumination.

–Wohler/Cinnafilm Joint Venture: Tachyon Wormhole
Tachyon Wormhole is a file-based Retiming and Standards Transcoding solution which leverages commodity enterprise hardware to deliver content based on time or standards requirements. Fully automated with audio pitch correction and caption retiming, Tachyon Wormhole processes two files faster than real time, simultaneously, on a single small footprint server.

Creativity & Innovation
The 2014 winners of the HPA Judges Award for Creativity and Innovation in Post Production were:

–American Society of Cinematographers: Color Decision List (ASC CDL)
The ASC CDL helps maintain and communicate creative intent, from production, dailies, post, VFX, editorial, in a multi-facility, multi-vendor environment. The ASC CDL enables creatives to set the look of a shot via system-independent primary color corrections communicated as metadata from on-set through dailies and post. Developed by the ASC Technology Committee – a broad group of industry members working to benefit the industry – the ASC CDL is freely available, saving time and money, improving the artistic result and audience experience in the vast majority of motion pictures, TV shows, and VFX.

–DigitalFilm Tree: Cloud Post Workflow Initiative  (ProStack)
ProStack enables instantly accessible, widely deployable post production. ProStack packs the capacity and bandwidth needed to manage the entire post process- high-end color correction, VFX and DI workflows- into a scalable solution. Flexible design and implementation incorporates the best tools for every job, connecting all users via cloud storage. ProStack, in conjunction with Critique, integrates the entire spectrum of file-based workflows into one hub, while simultaneously embracing the evolving role of production and the post facility.

Rundown
Here’s a category-by-category rundown of 2014 HPA Award winners spanning features, TV and commercials:

Outstanding Color Grading – Feature Film
“Gravity”
Steven J. Scott // Technicolor

Outstanding Color Grading – Television
“Reign – Pilot”
David Cole // Modern VideoFilm
  
Outstanding Color Grading – Commercial 
Doosan “Heavy Industries”
Siggy Ferstl // Company 3

Outstanding Editing – Feature Film
“Captain Phillips”
Christopher Rouse, ACE
 
Outstanding Editing – Television
“Breaking Bad – Felina”
Skip Macdonald, ACE 

Outstanding Editing – Commercial
Nissan Juke “Trigger”     
Doobie White // Therapy Studios                  

Outstanding Sound – Feature Film
“Gravity”
Glenn Freemantle// Sound 24
Skip Lievsay // Warner Bros. Sound               
Christopher Benstead and Niv Adiri // Warner Bros. De Lane Lea

Outstanding Sound – Television
“Toy Story OF TERROR!”
Axel Geddes // Pixar Animation Studios               
Tom Myers, Gary Summers, Michael Silvers and Dustin Cawood // Skywalker Sound         

Outstanding Sound – Commercial 
Honda Europe “Inner Beauty”
Anthony Moore and Tom Joyce // Factory

Outstanding Visual Effects – Feature Film
“Dawn of the Planet of the Apes”
Joe Letteri, Dan Lemmon, Erik Winquist,          
Keith Miller and Paul Story // Weta Digital

Outstanding Visual Effects – Television
“Game of Thrones – The Children”
Joe Bauer // Fire and Blood Productions
Sven Martin // Pixomondo
Jörn Grosshans // Mackevision                 
Thomas Schelesny // Scanline VFX          
Matthew Rouleau // Rodeo FX                  

Outstanding Visual Effects – Commercial
GE “Childlike Imagination”
Benjamin Walsh, Dominik Bauch and Brian Burke // Method Studio

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