self.jpg

I am a motion picture color finishing editor.

The craft is also called colorist, color grader, and color timer.
Filmmakers hire me to enhance their motion picture images in post-production editorial processes.

These enhancements include correcting cinematography problems like exposure, sharpness, steadiness, motion artifacts, removing noise or graininess, and scaling and framing.

Color editing includes technical and creative adjustment of brightness, contrast, saturation, and color temperature and balance. Matching the look of cuts across a sequence assists story telling. Color grading can also add styles or look treatments to direct audience attention to details or engagement with ideas and emotions.

I can also work as the conforming editor, preparing editing projects and assets for optimal use in the color grading and editorial finishing application DaVinci RESOLVE.

I can prepare deliverables for Digital Cinema Package (DCP)) for theatrical projection, broadcast safe color for television, and media rendered for web delivery and streaming content.

I have restored a number of 35mm and 16mm films after professional scanning.

I have worked continuously in the Northern California motion picture industry since 1975. Then, I apprenticed as a color timer in the laboratory of W.A.Palmer* and worked my way through undergraduate cinema studies at San Francisco State University. My clients included my heroes of the San Francisco avant-garde: Jordan Belson, Lawrence Jordan, Gunvor Nelson, James Broughton, Bruce Conner, and Bruce Baillie.

In 1984 Diner+Allied hired me into the telecine scanning and color grading practice.
Western Images hired me in 1991 as Telecine Technical Director and promoted me to Senior Colorist in 1993. My clients included Lucasfilm, Industrial Light and Magic, Colossal Pictures, PBS, PIXAR Animation, and San Francisco directors Lourdes Portillo, Ruby Yang, and Phil and Peter Kaufman. From 2001 I freelanced at San Francisco telecine houses including Varitel Modern, American Zoetrope, Retina, and SpyPost.

Since 2004 I have operated my own business in the age of digital cinema, with offices in San Francisco and Santa Barbara. However, since the Pandemic of COVID-19, I now operate by web exclusively and have completed work for Disney/PIXAR, PBS, and theatrical premieres for clients in Hong Kong, Paris, New York, Chicago, San Francisco and elsewhere.

Serving as my own producer, I keep my rates very competitive. I offer discounts for social issue filmmaking and am an enthusiastic advocate for Independent Cinema in Northern California and beyond.

I have trained others at their companies or at universities, among them UC Berkeley, Stanford University, San Francisco State University, City College of San Francisco, the San Francisco Art Institute, Syracuse University, and the University of Hong Kong.