Kevin Shaw

Kevin Shaw has been color grading for nearly 30 years, lives in England, and works all over the world. Most of his recent work is DI finishing of feature films using Nucoda Film Master for stereoscopic, digital cinema and film print masters. Kevin is equally at home however, working on TV episodic programming. Prior to the software revolution he was a renowned telecine colorist, and worked with every model of the hardware da Vinci color correction systems up to and including the 2kPlus with Toolbox. In those days he concentrated on high-end commercials. His colorist career started in 1985 in London at Telecine Ltd, where he quickly gained a reputation for his creativity working on music videos. He moved to SVC and then Rushes where he designed his own telecine suite and expanded his commercials work. In 1992 he moved to Milan, Italy to open a new grading facility for the Interactive Group, and a year later he moved to Zurich, Switzerland as Head of Telecine at Online Video. Kevin’s activities as both colorist and instructor led him to go freelance in 1995.

In the early 1990s da Vinci began using Kevin as their preferred instructor, and he ran their training program on a freelance basis. In 1998 the training became a full time task and Kevin joined da Vinci Systems in Florida, fulltime, to open the da Vinci Academy. He ran the da Vinci Academy and contributed to product design until 2004. By 2004 Kevin felt the need to get back in the colorist chair and work with clients again, so he left the company and turned freelance. He immediately focused on software grading and DI workflows. In 2009, he co-founded the International Colorist Academy to share his knowledge and experiences with the growing new generation of software colorists.

In addition to the training and grading work, Kevin has written many useful articles and presentations about color grading and some of these are available from his web site www.FinalColor.com. BBC Digital Media Services, Kodak labs, CBS Broadcast, and National Film Board of Canada are amongst the clients that he has consulted for.

He gained a BA (Hons) degree in Photography Film and Television in 1984, and worked as a stills photographer for a year, before finding his way into post-production. He is a member of the BKSTS and the NAPP. When he is not grading, teaching or writing, Kevin continues to pursue his interests in stills photography and naturally he is a competent Photoshop user!

DI Film credits: 180 (2011), Monsters (2010), Streetdance 3D (2010), Transfer (2010), The Wake Wood (2009), How To Change In 9 Weeks (2008), Acolytes (2007)
TV credits: The Omid Djalili Show (S. 2), Coming of Age, 2 Pints of lager and a packet of crisps (2009 Christmas specials)
Commercials credits: Tikves, Jaguar, Nivea, ICA, Volvo, Danica, IKEA, Levis, Wrangler
Music video credits: George Michael, Seal, Tina Turner, Kylie Minogue

Kevin teaches Nucoda Film Master, da Vinci 2kPlus and THX cineSpace. His class outlines are: