Lightmill attacks ‘Warship’ with Pablo

Fast-growing London post house chooses Quantel to ride longform colour correction wave

Newbury, UK, 12 June 2008: London post production house Lightmill has recently purchased a Quantel Pablo HD non-linear colour correction system and immediately completed a highly successful engagement finishing and grading UK national broadcaster Five’s flagship TV series ‘Warship’.

Dan Constantinou, Lightmill Managing Director, knew that ‘Warship’ would present particular challenges in colour correction because of the conditions in which it was shot. ‘Warship’ is a prime-time documentary series chronicling life on board the British Navy aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious during a four month deployment at sea. “Because the cameras are constantly following the crew as they move between the dark interior of the ship and life on the deck outside, we knew it would need a full grade,” Constantinou said. “The nature of the programme also means it has a lot of edits, but with the Pablo we were able to deliver a spectacular visual result on time and on budget – it’s very fast.”


Lightmill evaluated all the systems on the market before deciding on the Pablo. “We didn’t have a complete finishing solution in-house, and although we’re a smaller company than many of our competitors, we work on a lot of high profile projects for some very technically-savvy clients,” said Constantinou. “The Pablo allows us to handle the whole job in front of the client right through to lay-off without having to ping-pong from online to grade – editing, text, grading, clocks, straps, credits, image repair, extra graphics, legal blurs, even offline – we can do the whole lot entirely within the Pablo suite, which is great for clients – and very efficient for us too.”


Lightmill was set up in 2000 by Constantinou and his partners Darian Weir and Roger Cray as a graphics-led business. It quickly grew into a full service post house with multiple offline, online and audio suites. Around 80% of Lightmill’s business is broadcast work, with credits such as Channel 4’s ‘Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares’, ‘Dispatches’ and a mammoth 70 episodes of ’60 Minute Makeover’, for ITV1. Lightmill is also active in the commercials and sponsorship businesses, completing projects for its sister production company, Fin. Recent credits include Dior Fahrenheit, South African Airways, Goldenlay Eggs and a variety of commercials for household goods giant Reckitt Benkiser.

Created on: 11/06/2008