Yeah. That’s me. They always said you could find me watching TV. I love movies. And when I was a small kid, my family lived in a tiny suburb of Halifax, Nova Scotia, on Canada’s eastern coastline. There wasn’t a movie theater anywhere near us, so I grew up watching movies on television. All those hours watching TV must have paid off because I got a life long career out of it.
I have been working almost exclusively with classic motion pictures since 2011. The classic films from the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema are an art form like no other. Back in the day, the proximity of Mexico City to Los Angeles meant there was a lot of cross-border and cross-cultural pollination – a kindred sharing of creative ideas.
American filmmakers would take trips to Mexico City and Mexican filmmakers would do the same to Los Angeles. The impact was staggering, culturally. The inspiration both groups had on each other produced a creative synergy not seen before or since. The by-product of this is seen in the movies filmmakers from both countries produced.
To date I have color restored hundreds of classic films from the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema. The experience has changed the way I color grade, inspiring me in a way that cannot put into words. It has been a privilege to work alongside some of the world’s great directors, now deceased. And they have a lot to teach you.
So who inspires you? Steven Spielberg makes a very good point. Don’t just study “the movie brats of the 1970s…” go back to the master filmmakers of the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. Because directors like Spielberg, Scorsese, Lucas, Tarantino did and look at the body of work they created.
