ABOUT
Color Grading is widely considered to be one of the most important processes in post production, and often referred as a sort of ‘dark art’. Second only to shot composition in importance, Color Grading defines the look and feel of the video and is largely responsible for driving the emotional mood and reaction the viewer feels. Across all genres, whether it’s an action, comedy, horror or drama, and across all delivery methods as feature film, or episodic series, Color Grading video defines the aesthetic or stylized look to achieve the Director’s vision. In order to match the style and aesthetic to the mood the DP and Director were trying to cause the viewer to feel, the Colorist must have extensive knowledge of ‘color theory’ and hands-on experience crafting and manipulating the video colors to reach a certain palette that delivers the desired result when consumed.
Ahmed Elsheshtawy, is a graduate of the prestigious Academy of Arts in Cairo, coupled with a distinguished career over 15 years of hands-on experience as an accomplished Art Director, Set Designer, and Digital Colorist, his experience has afforded him to obtain a vast knowledge of Color Mixing and Color Theory making him an expert in the art of Color Grading, he is able to achieve the Director’s vision leveraging variations of color palettes needed, in every video to reach the desired style, across different types of camera material, ranging from simple DSLR to the pinnacle of modern professional Digital Cinema cameras from Arri, RED, and Sony to name a few. Delivering his final product to every delivery format on the market, ranging from online video to TV to the most state-of-the-art digital cinema projection packages.
As a result of his decade+ of hands-on experience, Mr. Elsheshtawy has devised new workflows over the years, making his working time very efficient, resulting in saving his clients time and money, whilst ensuring a premium result. Certainly, he can take care of common issues such as color matching scenes shot with different camera models to more complicated video problems that arise occasionally. However, one of Ahmed’s prevalent niche talents is in his ability and eye for very realistic facial and body retouching and sculpting in post, when needed. A talent, which by its very nature, often is overlooked and unnoticed by the untrained eyes and is counter-intuitive. Ahmed’s results are so good that seldom one notices that they have been done, which is exactly what you want - for the fix not to be seen or stand out as a fake, calling attention to them. It took years of experience to develop his methods to achieving such a perfect result. Mr. Elsheshtawy has also been at the fore of innovative tools and methods: he was the first Colorist in Egypt to master Blackmagic Design’s Davinci Resolve Studio software, a suite of tools which make it easy to collaborate with the Editor, D.O.P. and Director to reach the desired color style in a very short time.