Colorfront appoints Bill Feightner as its new chief technology officer.
Budapest, Hungary -- Colorfront announced the appointment of multi-award-winning, image-science expert, Bill Feightner, as its new chief technology officer.
Feightner’s appointment at Colorfront coincides with him being awarded the prestigious 2013 Technicolor/Herbert T. Kalmus Medal, by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), for his extensive contribution to the art and science of digital motion picture film image science.
Based in Los Angeles, California, Feightner will lead Colorfront’s services and consulting business. He will also drive the development of Colorfront’s market-leading tools into new areas color and image-science, calibration, as well as remote, collaborative production and post-production operations.
Feightner is well-known across Hollywood’s digital cinema community for developing countless innovations that have advanced the state of the industry. He brings over 35 years of experience to Colorfront, and arrives with an intimate knowledge of Colorfront technology having worked closely with the company on file-based workflows and pioneering the Digital Intermediate (DI) process.
Feightner began his career as technical director of Compact Video, before moving on to similar roles at Laser Edit and Composite Image Systems (CIS). He was co-founder and, most recently, CTO and executive vice-president of technology at EFILM Digital Laboratories (part of Deluxe Entertainment Services Group Inc.).
At Laser Edit, Feightner created a live, realtime, multilayer VFX compositing system, and continued this pioneering approach at CIS, where he helped to develop the 2K pin-registered telecine system that revolutionized the process of interactive image compositing for feature films.
At EFILM his innovations included: new software for digital laboratory calibration; image processing and image management software; end-to-end, multi-site, collaborative workflow procedures and software; the world’s first fully-digitally timed DI pipeline on We Were Soldiers (2002); andthe world's first 4K DI finish on Spiderman 2 (2004). He was also responsible for the workflow on Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2011), the first US feature to shoot and post using the ARRIRAW format. During his time at EFILM, Feightner worked closely with Colorfront, harnessing the company’s technology on many projects.
Recent digitally-originated movies to have used Colorfront systems include Prisoners, Gravity, Rush, Oblivion, Elysium, The Fifth Estate, Iron Man 3, Riddick, The Avengers and Thor: The Dark World.
Feightner has earned multiple awards. In 2007, he received a technical achievement award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) for the creation of a Digital Color Separation process for the archival of motion pictures. He also received an Emmy Award for special effects work on the TV series Moonlighting, plus a Monitor Award for the opening segment of The Magical World Of Disney. Now, Feightner is an honoree at the SMPTE annual awards ceremony, and on October 24, will receive the 2013 Technicolor/Herbert T. Kalmus Medal, which recognizes outstanding contributions to the highest standards of quality and innovation in motion picture post-production and distribution services.
Speaking about Feightner’s appointment, Aron Jaszberenyi, managing director of Colorfront, said, “Bill is an icon, recognized industry-wide as one of the top image science experts in the field. We worked closely with him at EFILM for over a decade, and have been continually impressed by how his cutting-edge vision as a champion of file-based workflows has gone on to be accepted as the mainstream. His expertise will be invaluable as Colorfront further expands into high-end image processing, custom development, consulting and other workflow services.”
Speaking about his appointment, Bill Feightner said, “Colorfront has built its enviable market-leading repuation on solid technology born out of collaboration with customers in cinema and broadcast production. We will build on those strong foundations and harness the phenomenal capabilities of Colofront technology for new services to be announced very soon.”
Colorfront will reveal details about the 2014 versions of its Express Dailies, On-Set Dailies, Transkoder, plus future products and services, during a Colorfront User Group meeting on Saturday, October 19, at Sony’s Digital Motion Picture Centre, Culver City, prior to exhibiting at the SMPTE 2013 Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition, 21-24 October, in Hollywood.
Source: Colorfront
Formerly Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network, Jennifer Wolfe has worked in the Media & Entertainment industry as a writer and PR professional since 2003.
