Recently opened Cape Town facility Searle Street Post Production (SSPP) is bursting at
the seams with new and ultra sophisticated post-production equipment, accompanied by
the talent to drive it and the business.
MD and colourist David Grant elaborates: “We chose to install a Baselight HD with
Kompressor as this is the best file based colour grading system with a great reputation
in the market. The Kompressor is an interface that allows the Baselight to work with all
the different codecs.
“Searle Street also has a Scanity scanner made by DFT. This is the latest and best film
scanner on the market. We are able to scan 2k at 15fps, and do SD rushes at a rate
faster than real time.’
A Flame with the latest software as well as Quantel IQ offers an all in one online and
grading system. Bones Dailies Solution, also by DFT, integrates seamlessly with the
Scanity for film based projects and handles all the digital file based formats. Bones
manages the entire dailies process, from ingest, syncing and logging to the creation of a
colour-graded dailies master.
“We are designed from the ground up as a fully digital and HD environment,’ says
Grant, “and while having a scanner is not new to the market, the Scanity is unique not
only in its speed and gentle handling of the negative, but in its superb scan quality
which is the latest on the market.’
Searle Street’s creative director is Heino Henning and Jo van Zyl the producer. Van Zyl
has immense experience starting at Sixth Street and has recently returned to Cape
Town from Johannesburg, where she worked as the head of production at Bladeworks.
“I think we are unique in that we are young, small and sleek and can adjust to a
changing marketplace,’ concludes Grant.
