Racoon kits new in-house colour suite with Baselight TWO and Blackboard
New senior colourist, Enge Gray, selects Baselight to support role
Racoon, one of London’s leading creative studios, has hired well-known senior colourist, Enge Gray, to join its in-house team. To support the move, Racoon has also invested in a new Baselight TWO grading system along with a Blackboard control panel. The system was installed into Racoon’s new colour suite at the Margaret Street office in January 2023 and is now in use.
Racoon has been harnessing the freelance community to provide colour grading services for the two years since its inception, working on a fantastic portfolio including, Clarkson’s Farm, The Grand Tour and The King’s Christmas Broadcast. With a name like Gray now on their team list, they are confident they will continue to attract further high-profile work.
“We have tracked Enge’s career with interest for a number of years – his breadth of experience across multiple genres is fantastic,” says David Klafkowski, founder and CEO at Racoon. “The quality of his work speaks for itself, and we love his passion. As importantly, his ethos mirrors our own, particularly in supporting next generation talent and giving opportunities to those who may not always easily find them.”
For Racoon, the choice of colourist was paramount, and they were keen to collaborate with Gray on the best system for the role, as well as in relation to the wider workflow pipeline across their range of genres.
“Grading systems were talked about and Baselight was definitely at the top of my shopping list. In fact, it was the only system on my list,” comments Gray. “Having worked with it for a number of years, I know how precisely – and quickly – I can get the results I and my clients like and need.”
With multiple UHD/HDR projects coming through their doors, Racoon opted for the powerful Baselight TWO system with a Blackboard control panel, as they knew they would need to call on the additional processing power.
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“I’ve used Baselight every working day for a decade now,” adds Gray. “At a former post house, I was using three different systems, sometimes in one day, and Baselight always felt like home. As well as speed and precision, since the introduction of features like Base Grade and the HDR fine tuning tools, it just makes sense – for me and for the images I’m helping to develop and craft.”
The technical team at Racoon, headed up by CTO Adam Peat, is continually striving to streamline and speedup workflow – keeping up to-date with the latest technologies is in their DNA.
“Baselight fits right in with our current workflow at Racoon as we are able to utilise the AAF for renderless workflows to and from Avid,” comments Klafkowski. “Our capability for remote viewing and signoff is being incorporated into our Tanooki platform, which will enable our clients to view grades at leisure or in real-time viewing sessions with Enge if needed. With a mix of FilmLight and our networked storage, we are already working on large format resolutions for UHD/HDR and multi-delivery to our clients.”
“We are thrilled that Enge Gray has joined our staff team and already have some fantastic work for him and his Baselight system to get their teeth into,” concludes Klafkowski.
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