When finishing colorist Matt Watson started in the industry in 2005 in London he was initially interested in sound editing. But as he spent time shadowing sound editors he never met one who said he wanted to be a sound editor: they all recited versions of the proverbial But what I really want to do is direct speech.
That made me think! he declares. Then someone offered me a job in a telecine house, and although I had no idea what telecine was I took a look and discovered it was like being in a darkroom. I had done photography in university, and it was great. So I decided to cast my fate to the wind and enjoy the ride! A ride which has taken Watson to Marvel Studios Finishing in LA and the recent HPA Award for Outstanding Color Grading for the penultimate episode of Marvel's limited series, WandaVision.
Watson was fortunate to launch his career in color at London's Midnight Transfer, which did 35mm and 16mm dailies, scanning, DI and restoration. It was a small enough place that I got to put my hands on everything and spend a lot of time with colorists learning the craft and developing a lot of skills and practices, especially film handling, which people don't get to do anymore, he says. I had a genuine interest in photography and the world of images, color and visual effects, so I decided to see where life as a colorist would take me.
Watson went on to work as a colorist at Deluxe Digital London, Technicolor Soho and Shed. He worked with Marvel on a number of their dailies setups. During his work on Guardians of the Galaxy 2, while working at Shed, he and his team had made a bespoke workflow to streamline the color pipeline and bridge a gap between camera, VFX, and finishing. He was in his second stint with Technicolor when the chance came to work for the same group (now Pictureshop) in the US and be loaned out to Marvel. It was March 2020 - another moment when fate intervened in his career.
The pandemic was just starting and flights were shutting down and borders closing, he notes. I had been wanting to experience life in the US, and here was an opportunity to work at Marvel. Do I hop on a plane with my wife and daughter and go, or do I hope there will be other opportunities in the future?
Watson and his family took the go' option, and Watson became a finishing colorist at the Marvel Studios in-house facility dedicated to its streaming shows.
Watson quickly discovered that finishing shows is done in a slightly different way here. Instead of the traditional way of shooting, editing, doing the VFX and then the DI at the end, the colorist becomes attached to a show and deals with every step in the pipeline to see where we can help. I love that! We worked in a similar way on smaller jobs when I was at Shed; we were small and nimble so we could come up with cool pipelines and do bespoke work that big shops weren't flexible enough to handle. Here, Marvel has stepped that up. We have the time, resources and freedom to figure out how to help the whole process and ultimately tell the story in the best possible way.
WandaVision finds Wanda Maximoff and Vision leading suburban lives in the alternate reality of Westview after Wanda suffered a mental breakdown and Vision died in the MCU. The limited series often integrates the looks of classic American TV shows - The Dick Van Dyke Show, Bewitched, The Brady Bunch - into scenarios, most of which Watson saw in reruns growing up in the UK.
As a colorist, to be able to have one season where you come up with so many looks and options was so much fun,' he says. For the period pieces we could either take the approach of faithfully emulating a show or creating what we remember it looked like. Those are two different things. Because we're dealing with Wanda's memories of those shows, we had the creative freedom to use our memories of the shows. The Brady Bunch look in episode three is my favorite of the period looks - it's so colorful but not in an overly saturated way. If you compare it to an actual episode of The Brady Bunch it doesn't really look the same: It evokes your memories of the show instead of copying it.
Watson worked closely with cinematographer Jess Hall, ASC, BSC, on the series as well as Marvel's Creative Finishing Supervisor Evan Jacobs and VFX Supervisor Tara DeMarco. The look development was so collaborative and flexible, which really helped the process develop in a nice organic way, he says. Jess had already done so much prep with the period lights and lenses. He and I then dialed in the tonality and color scheme of each period look in all the early camera tests so that the dailies and cutting copies were close to the final look. We treated the textural qualities and period degradation in finishing in conjunction with Evan and Tara.
When COVID 19 made in-person screenings with Watson difficult for Hall and DeMarco, they participated remotely from home via Sohonet's ClearView Pivot and Flex. I missed the client interaction but Jess and Tara could dial into DI for five minutes so I could show them something or they could sit in on a full session, Watson points out. What initially seemed like a restriction pushed us to a more flexible way of working.
Choosing an episode of WandaVision to submit to the HPA Awards was a struggle, Watson recalls. The episodes had such a rich array of different looks, emotions and feels. A lot of the shows were styled to reference the period pieces. But episode eight, Previously On,' didn't have much of that. Instead, it's an episode where Wanda takes a journey through her life, in flashbacks, to see how she arrived at this point. It reveals to us her emotional state. Everything was so beautifully shot, so moving and the different notes of color so appropriate. There were no epic fights or magic scenes; it was
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
06/09/2026
June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
15/06/2026
Detach from Direct-Attached: How Remote Editing with EVO Keeps Creative Teams Mo...
14/06/2026
Library captures 1960s R&B/pop drum sound
Following on from their recent wave of plug-in effects, Iconic Instruments have just launched an all-new virtual d...
14/06/2026
HBO Comedy Rooster Shot with URSA Cine 17K 65
Brie Clayton June 14, 2026
0 Comments
Large format brings viewers intimately close to characters.
Black...
13/06/2026
Latest expansion pack includes 252 presets
Devious Machines have recently introduced another expansion for their powerful multi-effects plug-in, Infiltrator...
13/06/2026
Create custom DAW/plug-in controllers using prompts
MetaGrid have recently introduced an all-new AI Builder function to their touchscreen-based control surf...
13/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
YES Network and The Gotham Sports App will air seven Athletes Unlimited Softball...
12/06/2026
The United Football League will host its FAST Innovation Suite at the 2026 United Bowl presented by Credit One Bank on Saturday, June 13 at 3:00 p.m. ET at Audi...
12/06/2026
PTZOptics and LayerJot will present live demonstrations at InfoComm 2026 showing how natural-language AI prompting, robotic camera control, and on-device comput...
12/06/2026
MultiDyne Video and Fiber Optic Systems will exhibit at InfoComm 2026, featuring...
12/06/2026
Ateme has announced that Eurovision Services is using Ateme's software-based frame-rate conversion technology for international live event workflows. The de...
12/06/2026
Bitmovin and Simplestream have announced a partnership with Xperi to simplify the launch of OTT streaming services on TiVo OS smart TVs and devices. The collabo...
12/06/2026
Net Insight has announced that a multinational technology company is deploying a...
12/06/2026
MLB Players Inc., the business arm of the MLB Players Association, has announced a partnership with Athletes First to develop and sell brand partnerships across...
12/06/2026
Guntermann and Drunck (G&D) and VuWall have announced the CommandKeyboard-Advanc...
12/06/2026
Comcast Smart Solutions announces a new smart technology deployment with Major L...
12/06/2026
Elevation Worship completed the initial leg of its Elevation Nights 2026 tour ...
12/06/2026
AJA Video Systems has announced KONA IP25 support for Colorfront Transkoder and ...
12/06/2026
Audinate Group Limited (ASX: AD8) will exhibit at InfoComm 2026 (Booth C7321, Ce...
12/06/2026
Pac-12 Commissioner Teresa Gould has announced the appointment of Scott Adametz as Chief Technology Officer. The Pac-12 describes the hire as the first CTO appo...
12/06/2026
Grass Valley has announced AMPP Edge Live, a production system combining Grass Valley hardware, NVIDIA Blackwell GPU acceleration, and AMPP OS in a single platf...
12/06/2026
At one time a trailblazer with the launch of the Longhorn Network, the Universit...
12/06/2026
Ratings Roundup is a rundown of recent rating news and is derived from press rel...
12/06/2026
Chyron has announced PAINT 10.4, an update to its illustrated replay and sports ...
12/06/2026
SVP, Production, Mark Gross: With the new schedule, with not having every Sunday night, it has given us an opportunity to take a step back and reimagine what o...
12/06/2026
For Televisa Technical Engineering Manager Roberto N nez Ibarra and the small team of 12 technicians and two production personnel at the IBC things are already ...
12/06/2026
Simple Steps to Better Acoustics - Taming The Small Room
Most of us mix in spare rooms and small spaces, where the acoustics fight us at every turn. At Gear...
12/06/2026
Latest addition expands vintage-inspired effects palette
Meris' Ottobit pedal range draws its inspiration from vintage gaming consoles, and the latest a...
12/06/2026
Soundbox-based chamber strings series expanded
Sonora Cinematic have just announced the launch of the second instalment in their Soundbox-based chamber stri...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
AJA Announces KONA IP25 Integration with Colorfront Software
Brie Clayton June 12, 2026
0 Comments
Collaboration enables uncompressed SMPTE ST 2110 I/O ...
12/06/2026
URSA Cine 12K LF Used to Create Visuals for STUTS' K-Arena Concert
Brie Clayton June 12, 2026
0 Comments
Organic visuals projected on a giant scre...
12/06/2026
MTI FILM Acquires Mango New Edit, Expanding its Global Post-Production Services ...
12/06/2026
AI Point Tracking Speeds Up Complex VFX Tracks in Mocha Pro
Jessie Electa Petrov June 12, 2026
0 Comments
The 2026.5 release adds automatic point trac...
12/06/2026
Bitmovin, a provider of video streaming solutions, has partnered with Simplestream, a provider of OTT and broadcast solutions, and technology provider Xperi, to...
12/06/2026
Leostream Corporation, creator of the world-leading Leostream Remote Desktop Access Platform, today announced Jigsaw24, a leading B2B IT solutions provider wit...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
How Aussie indie games and screen are levelling up with IP 11 June 2026
Ari Harrison, Pro Jank Footy
Head of Games Joey Egger and Ari Harrison of Umbrella sha...
12/06/2026
AgentPerf from Artificial Analysis, the industry's first agentic AI benchmark, gives developers, enterprises and infrastructure providers a clear way to com...
When finishing colorist Matt Watson started in the industry in 2005 in London he was initially interested in sound editing. But as he spent time shadowing sound editors he never met one who said he wanted to be a sound editor: they all recited versions of the proverbial But what I really want to do is direct speech. 
