Avid and FilmLight have announced a strategic partnership to bring a new Baselight-powered colour experience natively into Avid Media Composer, marking a major step towards a more connected colour pipeline for post production.
For decades, Media Composer has been where many of the world’s most demanding film and television stories are shaped, while Baselight has set the standard for high-end colour finishing. By bringing these creative environments closer together, Avid and FilmLight are moving beyond traditional plug-in workflows towards a more integrated approach to colour both inside Media Composer and beyond it, one designed to help teams preserve intent, reduce handoffs and keep colour connected from dailies through finishing and delivery.
“This partnership reflects how our products are actually used – by specialists collaborating to create some of the world’s most compelling film and television content,” said Rich Camp, Media Composer Product Manager, Avid. “By bringing FilmLight’s expertise deeper into the Media Composer workflow, we’re giving editors a native colour experience with powerful tools directly in the timeline. That means editors can cut and craft their timeline while working more seamlessly with colourists, so more time and focus stays where it matters most: the story.”
FilmLight Co-founder Steve Chapman added: “FilmLight has always focused on creating colour tools that fit seamlessly into post production workflows. Our collaboration with Avid allows us to combine strengths and deliver new levels of colour creativity and accuracy to the editorial experience.”
A New Approach to Editorial Colour
Avid and FilmLight are focusing on four key areas:
- Native colour inside Media Composer: Bringing Baselight-powered colour capabilities deeper into the Media Composer experience, so colour feels like part of the edit, not a separate step bolted on at the end.
- A connected path from dailies to delivery: Keeping colour decisions open and connected throughout production, helping teams move more fluidly between editorial, review, grading and finishing.
- Specialist colour science at editorial scale: Extending FilmLight’s colour technology to a broader community of Media Composer users, while preserving the depth, precision and control required by professional colourists and finishing teams inside the traditional Baselight environment.
- Expanded online and delivery capabilities: Scaling with the needs of each production, from being able to complete delivery entirely within Media Composer to a renderless roundtrip with full Baselight for teams working at the highest levels of finishing and delivery.
From Dailies to Delivery, with Colour Connected
The partnership is designed to help creative teams carry colour decisions through production more seamlessly. Instead of treating editorial and colour as separate stages connected by exports, renders and conforms, Avid and FilmLight are working towards a more continuous workflow where the edit can better reflect the intended look of the finished project.
For editors, that means greater confidence in the timeline. For colourists, it means creative decisions can be reflected instantly between Media Composer editorial and Baselight finishing environments. For facilities and studios, it creates a workflow that can scale from editorial colour through online and delivery, including a renderless roundtrip with full Baselight for the highest-end finishing needs.
Building on the proven Baselight Editions workflow available today, the partnership points to a broader native colour direction for Media Composer: specialist FilmLight colour science and tools embedded more deeply into the editorial experience, with capabilities designed to scale across different production needs.
“Media Composer and Baselight have been at the centre of our post production workflow at ENVY for over 20 years, so it’s exciting to see these two companies working more closely together and continuing to play such an important role in our industry,” said Jai Cave, Technical Operation Director at ENVY Post Production, which has produced The Traitors, At Home with the Furys and The Grand Tour. “Production workflows continue to evolve, with demand for the colour journey on-set to flow right through editorial, VFX and finishing post whilst projects combine an increasingly complex array of formats. Closer alignment between editorial and grade has the potential to bring real workflow benefits to creative teams. We look forward to seeing the vision Avid and FilmLight are building.”
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Visit https://www.filmlight.ltd.uk
