George Miller, Mandy Walker to Lead FilmLight Color Awards Jury (EXCLUSIVE)
The FilmLight Color Awards have named “Mad Max” saga director, writer and producer George Miller as jury guest of honor and Oscar-nominated cinematographer Mandy Walker (“Elvis”) as jury president.
The awards honor feature and TV colorists and are handed out annually at international cinematography film festival EnergaCamerimage, which this year takes place Nov. 16-23 in Torun, Poland.
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“Just as slow-drying oil-based paint allowed renaissance art practice to become more iterative, so have the digital tools of the colorist expanded the plasticity of each frame of moving image,” said Miller.
Walker added that colorists help the cinematographer “enhance the storytelling with color, contrast, light and darkness — creating atmosphere and focusing the audiences’ gaze to what’s important in the frame.”
Noted cinematographers on this year’s jury also include three-time Academy Award winner Robert Richardson (“Hugo,” “The Aviator,” “JFK”) Oscar winner Erik Messerschmidt (“Mank”), Catherine Goldschmidt, Birgit Gudjonsdottir, Tim Kuhn, Michael Liu, Avik Mukhopadhayay and Hou Yong.
The jury includes an international roster of colorists including Natasha Leonnet, Tim Masick, Kaitlyn Battistelli, Greg Fisher, Jose Francisco Neto, Mahak Gupta, Jax Harney, Elodie Ichter, Dirk Meier, Yov Moor, Marina Starke, Damien Vandercruyssen and Jason Zukowski. Cinema tech vet Ben Gervais rounds out the jury.
The competition is presented by FilmLight, maker of the Baselight color grading system, and will honor colorists in six categories: theatrical feature, television series/episodic, commercial, music video, spotlight (for lower budget features or TV movies) and emerging talent. Nominees will be announced in the fall, in advance of the winners presentation at Camerimage.
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