
When finishing colorist Matt Watson started in the industry in 2005 in London he was initially interested in sound editing. But as he spent time shadowing sound editors he never met one who said he wanted to be a sound editor: they all recited versions of the proverbial But what I really want to do is direct speech.
That made me think! he declares. Then someone offered me a job in a telecine house, and although I had no idea what telecine was I took a look and discovered it was like being in a darkroom. I had done photography in university, and it was great. So I decided to cast my fate to the wind and enjoy the ride! A ride which has taken Watson to Marvel Studios Finishing in LA and the recent HPA Award for Outstanding Color Grading for the penultimate episode of Marvel's limited series, WandaVision.
Watson was fortunate to launch his career in color at London's Midnight Transfer, which did 35mm and 16mm dailies, scanning, DI and restoration. It was a small enough place that I got to put my hands on everything and spend a lot of time with colorists learning the craft and developing a lot of skills and practices, especially film handling, which people don't get to do anymore, he says. I had a genuine interest in photography and the world of images, color and visual effects, so I decided to see where life as a colorist would take me.
Watson went on to work as a colorist at Deluxe Digital London, Technicolor Soho and Shed. He worked with Marvel on a number of their dailies setups. During his work on Guardians of the Galaxy 2, while working at Shed, he and his team had made a bespoke workflow to streamline the color pipeline and bridge a gap between camera, VFX, and finishing. He was in his second stint with Technicolor when the chance came to work for the same group (now Pictureshop) in the US and be loaned out to Marvel. It was March 2020 - another moment when fate intervened in his career.
The pandemic was just starting and flights were shutting down and borders closing, he notes. I had been wanting to experience life in the US, and here was an opportunity to work at Marvel. Do I hop on a plane with my wife and daughter and go, or do I hope there will be other opportunities in the future?
Watson and his family took the go' option, and Watson became a finishing colorist at the Marvel Studios in-house facility dedicated to its streaming shows.
Watson quickly discovered that finishing shows is done in a slightly different way here. Instead of the traditional way of shooting, editing, doing the VFX and then the DI at the end, the colorist becomes attached to a show and deals with every step in the pipeline to see where we can help. I love that! We worked in a similar way on smaller jobs when I was at Shed; we were small and nimble so we could come up with cool pipelines and do bespoke work that big shops weren't flexible enough to handle. Here, Marvel has stepped that up. We have the time, resources and freedom to figure out how to help the whole process and ultimately tell the story in the best possible way.
WandaVision finds Wanda Maximoff and Vision leading suburban lives in the alternate reality of Westview after Wanda suffered a mental breakdown and Vision died in the MCU. The limited series often integrates the looks of classic American TV shows - The Dick Van Dyke Show, Bewitched, The Brady Bunch - into scenarios, most of which Watson saw in reruns growing up in the UK.
As a colorist, to be able to have one season where you come up with so many looks and options was so much fun,' he says. For the period pieces we could either take the approach of faithfully emulating a show or creating what we remember it looked like. Those are two different things. Because we're dealing with Wanda's memories of those shows, we had the creative freedom to use our memories of the shows. The Brady Bunch look in episode three is my favorite of the period looks - it's so colorful but not in an overly saturated way. If you compare it to an actual episode of The Brady Bunch it doesn't really look the same: It evokes your memories of the show instead of copying it.
Watson worked closely with cinematographer Jess Hall, ASC, BSC, on the series as well as Marvel's Creative Finishing Supervisor Evan Jacobs and VFX Supervisor Tara DeMarco. The look development was so collaborative and flexible, which really helped the process develop in a nice organic way, he says. Jess had already done so much prep with the period lights and lenses. He and I then dialed in the tonality and color scheme of each period look in all the early camera tests so that the dailies and cutting copies were close to the final look. We treated the textural qualities and period degradation in finishing in conjunction with Evan and Tara.
When COVID 19 made in-person screenings with Watson difficult for Hall and DeMarco, they participated remotely from home via Sohonet's ClearView Pivot and Flex. I missed the client interaction but Jess and Tara could dial into DI for five minutes so I could show them something or they could sit in on a full session, Watson points out. What initially seemed like a restriction pushed us to a more flexible way of working.
Choosing an episode of WandaVision to submit to the HPA Awards was a struggle, Watson recalls. The episodes had such a rich array of different looks, emotions and feels. A lot of the shows were styled to reference the period pieces. But episode eight, Previously On,' didn't have much of that. Instead, it's an episode where Wanda takes a journey through her life, in flashbacks, to see how she arrived at this point. It reveals to us her emotional state. Everything was so beautifully shot, so moving and the different notes of color so appropriate. There were no epic fights or magic scenes; it was
Most recent headlines
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
19/04/2025
SDVI, the leading platform provider for cloud-native media supply chains, today announced that the company earned multiple awards at the 2025 NAB Show, with two...
19/04/2025
Ateliere Creative Technologies, a leading GenAI media software solutions company, today announced that Dan Goman has stepped down as CEO and David Bortis, Ateli...
19/04/2025
As Director of Media and Aerial Production at Terrible Herbst Motorsports, Bryan Moore is setting new standards in off-road racing media coverage thanks to his ...
19/04/2025
A next-generation collaboration device that redefines connectivity for meeting environments
Lightware, an industry-leading manufacturer of signal management so...
19/04/2025
Calrec is today announcing that its True Control 2.0 is a Remote Production winner in the 2025 NAB Show Product of the Year Awards. This official awards program...
19/04/2025
Appear, a global leader in live production technology, proudly announces it has been recognised alongside NBCUniversal with the prestigious NAB Show Delivery Pr...
19/04/2025
Deity Microphones, a leader in innovative audio equipment, is proud to announce the expected release of our Ultra-Wide Band IFB to the market. The THEOS DIFB wi...
19/04/2025
A world renowned broadcaster and long-standing LiveU customer has successfully completed a series of live connectivity tests using LiveU's revolutionary, aw...
19/04/2025
BitFire (bitfire.tv), a longtime leader in live video transport, today announced dual NAB Show award wins at the 2025 NAB Show in Las Vegas. The company's M...
19/04/2025
BitFire (bitfire.tv), a longtime leader in live video transport, today announced three major award wins at the 2025 NAB Show, April 5-9, in Las Vegas. The compa...
19/04/2025
AI video discovery company Moments Lab and Satisfaction Group, a leading independent unscripted television production company, are proud to announce a unique st...
19/04/2025
As the media industry navigates the triple challenge of AI-driven production, distributed teams, and skyrocketing content demand, DigitalGlue s creative.space h...
19/04/2025
Network technology startup Miri Technologies Inc. capped off its tremendously successful NAB Show debut by winning two prestigious industry awards for its cutti...
19/04/2025
CINCINNATI Scripp's Nuvyyo USA has concluded a deal with Warner Bros. Discovery to bring 45 FAST channels to Nuvyyo's Tablo TV device....
19/04/2025
In a ruling that could have broader implications on the legality of regulatory agencies levying fines through administrative proceedings, the 5th U.S. Circuit C...
19/04/2025
WASHINGTON Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr has blasted Comcast over MSNBC's coverage of the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia in a so...
19/04/2025
Berklee NYC and NYC Media Launch Season 3 of Inside Power Station @BerkleeNYC This season features faculty member Arun Pandian as the new host and interviews ...
18/04/2025
Director Andrew Ahn, alongside actors Youn Yuh-jung and Joan Chen, takes a photo of the audience after the premiere of his film The Wedding Banquet at Eccles ...
18/04/2025
In a ruling that could have a major impact on the digital advertising market, a federal judge has ruled that Google has monopolized some types of advertising te...
18/04/2025
Broadcast and cable TV news outlets saw strong social media growth in March, according to new data from the social video analytics company Tubular Labs ....
18/04/2025
Berklee Student Yukai Yang Named 2025 Yamaha Young Performing Artist The drummer secured a spot among the elite winners in this years competition.
By
Maddie...
18/04/2025
Boston Conservatory Alums Bring Real Women Have Curves to Broadway The Latin American immigrant community takes center stage in a new musical featuring Tatian...
18/04/2025
WASHINGTON The FCC's call for public comments and suggestions on outdated regulations that it should be eliminated, has prompted a slew of fillings from bro...
18/04/2025
In a ruling that could have a major impact on the digital advertising market, a federal judge has ruled that Google has monopolized some types of advertising te...
18/04/2025
PEARL RIVER, N.Y. Global media solutions company Active Media Services (AMS) has formed a new relationship with VideoAmp, a measurement company for linear TV, c...
18/04/2025
Netflix reported generally positive results for first-quarter 2025, with revenue up 13% year-over-year to $10.543 billion and operating income growing by 27% to...
18/04/2025
NHL Playoffs 2025: TNT Sports Hits the Road for Onsite Productions With Mobile U...
18/04/2025
EVSs S bastien Verlaine on U.S. Expansion, Next-Generation Products Beyond replay, offerings also target asset management and media infrastructure By Ken Kersc...
18/04/2025
ESPN Unleashes 4DREPLAY as NCAA Women's Gymnastics Championships Hit ABC Men's championships to follow Saturday night on ESPN2 By Brandon Costa, Direct...
18/04/2025
Visualizing Victory: The Latest in AR, XR, and Virtual Production in Live Sports This panel discussion featured leaders from ESPN, CBS Sports, Warner Bros. Disc...
18/04/2025
NHL Playoffs 2025: With 16 Games in First Six Days, ESPN Deploys Variety of Remo...
17/04/2025
Emilie Blichfeldt attends the 2025 Sundance Film Festival premiere of The Ugly ...
17/04/2025
R-GPS gives warfighters a decisive battlefield advantage by punching through adv...
17/04/2025
This year's NAB Show in Las Vegas marked a noticeable shift in the priorities of media and broadcast organisations. Gone are the days of chasing flashy, or ...
17/04/2025
class=attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail f-align-center alt= decoding=async data-lazy-srcset=https://www.antonbauer.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Amy-Daniel-1...
17/04/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Roku and Adobe have announced that they are collaborating on a real time data platform made possible by a a new integration of the Roku Data C...
17/04/2025
NEW YORK Internet advertising revenues demonstrated strong growth in 2024, increasing 14.9% year-over-year to $258.6 billion, according to the IAB Internet Adv...
17/04/2025
SDVI Earns Both Product and Project of the Year Awards at 2025 NAB Show
Brie Clayton April 17, 2025
0 Comments
Left to right, Geoff Stedman, CMO, SDVI...
17/04/2025
Singapore Polytechnic Readies Aspiring AV Professionals for Live IP Productions ...
17/04/2025
Calrec Wins 2025 NAB Show Product of the Year Award for True Control 2.0
Brie Clayton April 17, 2025
0 Comments
Image: The Calrec True Control 2.o on ...
17/04/2025
In Return to Berklee, Lucius Looks Back and Moves Forward From mood boards to live demos, the alumni band gave students an exclusive look at the process behin...
17/04/2025
DirecTV's free streaming service MyFree DirecTV has just added another eight channels from NBCUniversal....
17/04/2025
LOS ANGELES The virtual production company GameChanger has announced that it is expanding its global footprint by bringing its virtual production technology to ...
17/04/2025
DENVER The International Broadcaster Coalition Against Piracy (IBCAP) has announced that it has developed a proprietary, automated software-based system to iden...
17/04/2025
Pixalate's new CTV Device Market Share report for Q1 2025 shows that Roku has the highest open programmatic CTV device market share in the United States, wi...
17/04/2025
Edward J. Lewis III Named Senior Vice President of Institutional Advancement Lewis has more than 20 years of industry experience, leading fundraising initiati...
17/04/2025
The Curling Group Puts On Inaugural Curling All-Star Game in Nashville The location in Music City is intended to broaden the sport's appeal By Dan Daley, ...
17/04/2025
April 17th, 2025 Press Materials Available Here
Tribeca Festival 2025 Announces TV & NOW Lineup
World Premieres and Exclusive Cast Panels with Apple TV '...
17/04/2025
SVG Sit-Down: Cisco's Bryan Bedford on Providing End-to-End Support for Clie...