Meet the Team: Colorist Roy Sun
Building the business from scratch - A business journey
As an enthusiastic fan of Hollywood movies, a seed of building a career in the film industry had been taking root from the bottom of Roy’s heart since his childhood.
Under the influence of his father, a professor of television and filmmaking in the local university, Roy went to Beijing Film Academy learning Photography for his bachelor’s degree. The experience in college has laid the solid foundation for him to understand how the tone of the image works, as well as other knowledge in photoshop, light painting, picture stitching, the HDR, etc.
After completing the undergraduate study, Roy moved to LA to study filmmaking. Then he found a way to combine his photography skill with filmmaking - to be a colorist.
Roy accumulated the industry expertise and grew his client base from his first internship with a color grading house in Los Angeles. Then he embarked on a 5-year freelance career.
In 2018, Roy teamed up with three of his friends, Xi, a former cinematographer now also a colorist; Mengle and Jeff, two AFI editing alumni who were responsible for editing and sound design. They started a full post house in Burbank and began working on diverse video production projects.
These make up the journey of Roy and Reason Studio.
Job as a colorist - A career of passion
“Color grading is a very complicated balance between Art/Technology and communication,” said Roy.
As a colorist, Roy’s work covers a wide variety of videos, including short films, music videos, commercials, motion pictures, TV shows, etc. Specifically, the job is about balancing all the shots to make the visual flow smoothly and setting the unified tone for the whole picture.
Roy believes that the essence of color grading is the manipulation of the mood of the picture. Same as high-end filters, adjusting the color of the picture can bring different feelings and resonances to the audience, tension, excitement, sadness. A good colorist is capable of building a connection between the image and audience’s emotions.
Color grading also needs a communication process with the clients. It’s always pleasing to have a director and DP with similar tastes to yours, or to give the colorist more freedom to explore. Our mission is to find the best solutions to make pictures vivid and meet or even exceed client’s expectations.
“For me, color grading is the meaning of my life. After all these years, I am still passionate about my work, and the best moments are always the client’s reaction when they see beautiful pictures.”
