Leading London boutique post house Fifty Fifty has added a second Baselight grading suite as part of its expansion programme. With the growing interest in top end content for broadcast and streaming, both suites are equipped for 4K and HDR Ultra HD, and certified for Dolby Vision grading and delivery.
Originally a short-form house, Fifty Fifty is now best known for its broadcast work. As well as an ambitious expansion into a fourth building next to its original Soho base, to drive future creative and commercial growth, Fifty Fifty has recruited experienced long-form colourist Joe Stabb to run both the department and the new suite.“Our boutique size enables us to offer agile, bespoke solutions,” said Cara Kotschy, managing director of Fifty Fifty. “The addition of beautifully styled and Dolby Vision accredited Baselight suites is a strategic move to put us at the forefront of technology and deliver our strategy within the high-end programming market. Baselight is a name that almost every single client will recognise and trust.”
Today, the majority of Fifty Fifty’s OTT deliverables are in HDR, so it is incredibly important that they have the confidence to deliver this new technology. The new suite matches the existing room technically, based on a Baselight TWO workstation with a Blackboard control surface. Fifty Fifty also use Baselight plug-ins in their editorial rooms and Flame VFX.
“We chose Baselight because we’re confident that it will deliver colour accurate content each and every time,” added Kotschy. “Baselight handles all the heavy-lifting and colour science so our artists can concentrate on making the programming look amazing. Plus, due to its interoperability and collaboration with on-set, offline and online, clients can appreciate how we use the technology to adapt to their changes upstream or downstream of the grade.”
“Being able to roundtrip between rooms means we can offer complete flexibility and agility to our clients. We are set up to move metadata between suites – Media Composer, Baselight and Flame – rather than huge amounts of media. It means the grade isn’t baked-in, so VFX can be dropped into the pipeline at any point. All effects, grades and online work is carried across in the plug-in, so it can be used both ways in a fully colour managed workflow.”
New senior colourist, Joe Stabb, arrives with a strong reputation for technical and creative thinking and in-depth experience in television and movies. He recognises the need to push the boundaries for 4K and HDR deliveries and larger acquisition formats.
“We also have to deal with complex, more bespoke deliverables for our clients,” Stabb said. “The role of the colourist is evolving to cater for finishing work which is broader and richer. Fifty Fifty is regularly commended by broadcasters and OTT platforms for the quality of our technical delivery, and Baselight helps us maintain that reputation.”
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