Cluster Studio post-production facility in Mexico has upgraded its pair of FilmLight Baselight TWO colour grading systems. The new investment supports its evolving capabilities within the entertainment market as they cater to the growing amount of content being produced in the region.
Cluster Studio has been serving the Latin American market for more than 18 years, working across film, documentary and TV. The company recently re-located to a new office in Mexico and has also re-focused their services with the launch of an end-to-end package of post-production services for the entertainment market. The launch encompasses DI, colour grading, audio, VFX and editing. The studio is also now a fully certified Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision facility.
“A primary goal for our facility is making sure that we have the most up to date equipment and systems on hand, enabling us to perform as efficiently as possible,” said Mariana Martinez, DOP and Partner at Cluster Studio. “We aim to make the post-production process easy and fast while delivering the best possible visual results.”
Baselight Relationship
Cluster Studio has been a Baselight customer for over 15 years, choosing the system for its speed and efficiency as well as the company’s strong support. They currently have a Baselight ONE system, as well as the two Baselight TWO systems that they use to conform, grade, integrate VFX and render out projects – and a FLUX Store.
L - R Juan Magaña, Mariana Martinez, Samuel Rosete at Cluster Studio.
“We choose Baselight because it is our colourists’ favourite system,” Samuel Rosete, Cluster Studio’s Managing Director and Partner, said. “It is intuitive and user friendly and they love how clean and simple it is. They get great results without having to deal with render complications.”
As the company prepares to consolidate and strengthen its services to the entertainment market, Cluster Studio felt it was the right time to upgrade its Baselight systems, ensuring they can continue to operate as efficiently as possible for clients.
“We are handling more and more content each month with multiple raw materials being captured across a variety of camera formats and colour spaces, including 4K and HDR,” said Juan Magaña, CTO and head colourist at Cluster Studio. “Baselight is a way to make sure we have maximum efficiency regarding render times.”
Efficiency was also the purpose of another part of the upgrade – tripling their storage capacity. For extra speed and security, Cluster Studio has installed the FLUX Store at the centre of its operations to serve as the company’s main storage system. FLUX Store is networked storage specialised for streaming high-resolution media.
Speciality Storage
Purpose-built for post-production, FLUX Store can be deployed in a facility in the same way as general storage but uses the high-bandwidth internal disk system and cloud network infrastructure developed for Baselight. The new workflow offloads conform tasks onto the FLUX Store system before being passed to the Baselight suite for grading from there.
“We consider the FilmLight support team to be part of our team and we truly value their support,” said Mariana. “They have supported us since our launch and continue to do so as we grow – both with equipment and guidance as we invest and diversify as a company.”
Cluster Studio recently completed work on Murder City (2023), a movie that was shot and post-produced entirely in Mexico. They are currently working on projects for Tubi, Sony International, Netflix, Amazon, Vix, Paramount + and others. www.filmlight.ltd.uk
