Mick Vincent, among the U.K.’s premiere commercial colorists, is wrapping up his tenure at London-based VTR, a company that he has called home for the past 19 years. He joins London-based Clear on July 4, where he will launch the visual effects company’s telecine unit as its director of telecine.
In Vincent, Clear gains a leading colorist, and a strong technical background. Vincent was heavily involved in implementing a Digital Intermediate (DI) workflow for features and commercials at VTR, where he was also the director of telecine, and he will do the same at Clear. The addition of telecine services also gives Clear the ability to handle full commercial post in house, where previously outside services would have been required.
“I am delighted that from July, I can offer my clients a full one-stop shop service,” said Simon Gosling, Clear’s senior producer/head of commercials. “Not only is it more convenient for a client to stay in one place, most importantly dealing with one post producer can help to ensure that a client’s budget is stuck to and that nasty surprises do not arise.
“However, naturally it is not as simple as just being able to offer telecine to clients,” he continued. “As always it all boils down to the talent driving it. [Vincent] is the perfect complement to Clear’s highly creative team of visual effects artists.” Vincent’s recent work has included commercials for clients such as Fosters, Lynx, and the BBC; as well as DI work for films such as the Mike Binder-directed feature The Upside of Anger.
Clear also intends to refine the post process, including presenting the DI workflow to commercial clients, what Vincent calls “in-context grading”–the process of conforming a spot in the telecine session and then doing the final color correction when the spot is in shot order. This, Vincent explained, eliminates the need to color a lot of film that will not be used in the commercial. Also, it means that the color correction session can focus on creative decisions, rather than spending time changing reels and shuttling through film. This is a process that is only used by a few commercial houses around the world at this point in time.
Vincent reported that Clear will offer a Grass Valley Spirit 4k, enabling the team to work with 2k and 4k data for commercial and long-form work. It will also include Filmlight’s Baselight 8 color correction software system with the new Baselight Blackboard controller, as well as Pandora’s Revolution color correction system.
