Bicoastal/international multimedia services provider Gun for Hire (GFH) Post has opened a telecine complex at the company’s facility in Manhattan’s West Village.
Senior colorist Emery Anderson will occupy the primary color room, which opened this month for dailies, finals and tape-to-tape correction.
GFH Post also maintains offices in Los Angeles, Miami, Toronto and Vancouver. The company creates integrated media centers for the Internet, film, television, music video and commercial industries.
The New York telecine complex will be equipped with a Sony Vialta and daVinci 2K, the Pandora Platinum Color Correction or "Pogle" system and a Philip’s Shadow system.
GFH Post executive VP David Novack said that the decision to go with the Vialta was driven by its high picture quality and the desire to make the facility multi-standard—a move, which is expected to increase the client base among film, television and commercials clients.
Since April, the complex had been running dailies and film finishing out of a temporary space, while waiting for construction on the new complex to be completed.
Anderson was hired specifically to head the telecine division in September, after freelancing for the shop since March. GFH Post’s other colorist is Lou Copeland. Long-term plans for additional staff have not yet been determined.
Anderson first came to the attention of GFH Post through Randy Starnes, whom he had met several years ago through mutual friends. Starnes, formerly director of telecine at GFH Post, was instrumental in building, designing and staffing the telecine department from an operational and aesthetic standpoint, working with engineer Thoma Thurau. Starnes left the company in August to take a position at Westwind Media, Burbank, Calif., as director of telecine—but continued on as a consultant.
Prior to GFH Post, Anderson was a colorist/producer at The Filmworkers Club, Chicago (which also maintains offices in Nashville and Dallas), for just over a year, on commercials for clients such as Gatorade, Nintendo and Budweiser. Since joining GFH Post, Anderson has worked on several feature films, including Paramount Pictures’ Pootie Tang, directed by Louis C.K.; Zoolander, directed by Ben Stiller; and Once in the Life, directed by Lawrence Fishburne. "I’ve been working on a wide variety of projects since my move to GFH Post, and I love it," said Anderson. "The difference between spot work and features is that film DPs don’t want you to go out of your way to create something that isn’t there. Instead they want you to focus on achieving an overall balance. In telecine, we act as liaisons between the filmmakers and the final product. The key is to communicate closely with the filmmakers, so that you can tackle the subjective task of finalizing their vision," he added.
Emery broke into the business as a telecine operator/engineering assistant at Crawford Communications in 1995. Within six months he was promoted to colorist, over the course of the next four years working on television shows, regional and national television commercials and telefilms for companies such as Disney and ABC.
GFH Post is repped in the U.S. by Novack, head of sales Dave Tuttle, VP/postproduction Pete Conlin and director of telecine operations Chris Alberts.
GFH Post is the post division of Gun For Hire, an integrated production services company which offers stage facilities as well as production support through its studios in New York, Vancouver, Toronto, Miami and Los Angeles. Gun for Hire is part of New York-based Shooting Gallery Inc.—which itemus, a Toronto-based Internet operating company, is set to acquire an 80 percent stake in (see separate story, p. 1). Apart from Gun For Hire, Shooting Gallery Inc. also includes the commercial and music video production company Shooting Gallery Productions and Shooting Gallery Interactive. Not part of the pending itemus deal are Shooting Gallery’s film, TV and music development and distribution businesses. The plan is to spin them off into a separate company called Shooting Gallery Entertainment.
