Editor/Color Artist Stephen Hens has launched KiddKolor; a new “micro company,” providing crafted edit, color and finishing services to the entertainment industry. Hens and KiddKolor have collaborated with Writer/Actor Rob Benedict and director Michael Weithorn on their new featurette “THE SIDEKICK,” which made its world premiere at Comic-Con 2013.nn
nTo view a trailer from the new film, with color by KiddKolor, GO HERE. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mvoZsCw3v4nn”THE SIDEKICK” (www.thesidekickproject.com) is a 30-minute featurette, directed by Michael J. Weithorn (“The King of Queens,” “A Little Help”) and Writer/Actor Rob Benedict (“Supernatural,” “Waiting…”), featuring a powerhouse cast including Ron Livingston (“Office Space,” “Swingers”), Lizzy Caplan (“Mean Girls,” “Cloverfield”), Jordan Peele (“Key and Peele”), Martin Starr (“Knocked Up,” “Superbad”) and Jason Ritter (“Happy Endings,” “Parenthood”). “THE SIDEKICK” is both an offbeat take on the super-hero genre and an allegory about the struggle to find your purpose in life even as you are being…re-purposed. nn”When we set out to make this featurette, one of our primary mission statements was that it not look like an independent short,” comments Filmmaker Rob Benedict. “We wanted this to appear to be like any big-budget, super hero feature that could morph into a banal world where people just happened to be super heros. This put an enormous amount of responsibility on our Colorist Stephen Hens, who was the hero of our postproduction journey. He was able to elevate our project into this amazing realm where you could shift between a show down on a rooftop to four guys talking in a Laundromat; from an evil lair to a boring lunch at a sushi restaurant. He brought character to the vision of the movie, which we honestly thought could not be done. Without Stephen this would just be another short. He helped to make it more than that.”nnKiddKolor was hired for “THE SIDEKICK” by Nathan Adams of Cinematomic, a company providing full-service post-production for web, television and theatrical projects. Cinematomic leverages relationships with freelance artists working from micro-companies or home studios, a concept that Adams calls “in-sourcing.” “By decentralizing post-production, we’ve created a ‘facility-free’ solution for clients on more sensible budgets to achieve high-quality results.” Adams believes that “micro-companies” like KiddKolor and Cinematomic represent the evolution of post-production.nn”I was thrilled when Nathan called me to do finishing work on ‘THE SIDEKICK,'” says KiddKolor‘s Hens. “I found Rob and Michael to be incredibly open and collaborative. They had shot the film with two very different looks, and after an initial pass, it was clear that it wasn’t working. We did a second pass that got us closer. Then it was time to throw the playbook out the window. The filmmakers let me do my own pass, and we decided together to just focus on making this a beautiful film, which I believe we did.”nnWith KiddKolor being a “micro company,” Hens was able to take on the project and work within the filmmakers’ budget. “The economic structure of KiddKolor has give
