Tone Visuals takes color grading into the field
Issue: February 1, 2011

Tone Visuals takes color grading into the field

AUSTIN, TX — Tone Visuals’ (www.tonevisuals.com) Brian Buongiorno is a veteran colorist who’s worked on everything from feature films to television commercials. Parlaying a highly-successful career as a Flame operator, he decided to take these skills, tap into the newest innovations the production industry had to offer, and deliver an entirely new approach — a new workflow — for color grading. He also made it portable!

“I’d always done color grading, but always in a Flame suite and never on a dedicated color grading panel,” he notes. “After I left E-Film, Hollywood, I made it my mission to create a business model around project-based color grading, with a specialty in digital dailies, final color grading and a unique workflow that could handle RAW formats all the way through the process. It was then that I discovered SpeedGrade DI, which became the hub of my newest, portable color pipeline system.”

Today, Tone Visuals allows Buongiorno to bring his pipeline with him, be it on-set or to a client’s studio. The portable system is based on an Apple Mac Pro with a Flanders Scientific monitor, Tangent Wave panel and SpeedGrade DI. 

“I can be set up on site and ready to go in under 45 minutes,” he explains. “And because of the flexibility built into SpeedGrade DI, I can integrate seamlessly into a client’s existing environment and handle any format they’re working in.”

SpeedGrade allow Buongiorno to work interactively with raw footage, without any workarounds. “I work directly with raw files and integrate them directly into my workflow,” he says. “I can work on specific shots and, in realtime, add whatever looks the client requires and simply send them back to post, where they literally drop the files back into their timeline. SpeedGrade allows me to trim, move, add or take away handles, all in realtime. And once I find a specific look that I know the client likes, I can easily apply that look — instantly — to other shots. I can also give the offline editor time-coded dailies at any resolution they need.”

Beyond the performance, Buongiorno says the SpeedGrade solution has allowed him to design a business model that is highly competitive in price and creative flow. “I’m no longer hindered or distracted by clunky workflows, or slow systems. SpeedGrade is so fast, and so flexible, that it allows me unbridled creativity. No idea for a shot or sequence is out of the question because I know I can try just about anything my imagination comes up with, and deliver it instantly.”