Santiago-based Valvula Films has selected SAM’s Quantel Rio 4K finishing system to set it apart from the competition in Chile. The system provides strong all-round 4K edit, color and finishing services to Valvula Films as they take the lead in documentary and feature film post production in the region.
Surrounded by the snow-capped Andes mountain range and the picturesque Chilean Coast Range is the city of Santiago, the capital and largest city in Chile with a population of five million. This cultural, political and financial hub is home to one of the fastest growing film and  post-production markets in the industry. It hosts such prestigious events as SANFIC (Santiago International Film Festival), which is now in its 11th year.
Santiago-based Valvula Films is indeed helping to generate the buzz within the film market in Chile. This thriving post-production house specializes in editing, visual effects and color correction on feature-length films, short films and documentaries that are shot in SD, HD
and 4K. Since its launch in 2010, Valvula has worked on several high-profile films including ‘The Club,’ which was directed by Chile’s Pablo Larrain (who’s garnering attention for the 2016 Natalie Portman film ‘Jackie’) and shot in 4K using a RED camera. Applauded by critics, ‘The

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Club’ nabbed the Jury Grand Prix prize at the 65th Berlin International Film Festival.
This recognition was no accident, said Daniel Astorga, Pro VFX artist/colorist/editor at Valvula Films. “One of the things that sets us apart from the competition is that we’re the only post production house in Santiago that owns a Quantel Rio 4K system. This means we can offer
our clients unique advantages that they can’t get elsewhere: including a full non-compressed process; a permanent QC; the ability to work on a mixed resolution timeline; and the chance to deliver a 4K master and create a DCP directly from the Quantel Rio timeline using the DCP plug-in.”
Valvula also owns a Dolby Professional Reference Monitor PRM-4220. With this, they’re able to display the DCI P3 digital cinema color space standard, which has a 20 percent greater color grade. “This gives our clients the unique opportunity to see the final color as it would be

projected in a movie theater. They can see the Rec.709 color space too, which is an RGB color space that standardizes the format for HDTV and clearly shows clients how the master will be displayed when it’s broadcasted,” Astorga commented.
During the post process for ‘The Club,’ Astorga explained that the first step was color correction, followed by a 4K TIFF sequence that was delivered for all of the visual effects including English and German subtitles. “Rio gave us the option of looking at everything in realtime during each stage of the process, which meant we corrected things as we went along. This gave Pablo and the producers a unique opportunity to carefully follow the development of the film. Not only did it help us build a strong and trusting relationship with them, but we were able to save a lot of time and meet our one-month deadline easily,”he said.
Quantel Rio’s robust toolset makes it synonymous with innovation and excellence in the filmmaking industry. It supports wide color gamut, HDR and multiple transfer curves and is powerful enough to handle the whole job interactively. 32-bit float processing provides ultimate color precision, and primary color corrections can be combined with unlimited cascaded secondaries and unlimited shapes, all in-context across the multi-layer timeline. SAM recently upgraded Quantel Rio with additional features including a super accurate and fast cloud tracker, which

is ideal for long-form grading sessions as well as for both TV finishing and high-end post applications. Enhanced shapes with new spline tools and axes control complement the tracker.
Valvula Films also put its Quantel Rio to use on the documentary ‘White Darkness,’ which was directed by the company’s founder, Juan Elgueta Ortiz. Astorga explained, “This film was shot with a RED camera on large format. The final sequence was delivered in 2K, but the entire post-production process was done using the original size of each shoot with Rio. This gave us a multiple resolution timeline that simply wouldn’t be possible with any other platform. It also means that Juan had the chance to re-frame shots to give them a more personal look, and of course to be able to develop the highest quality master.”
Looking ahead, Astorga hopes to use Rio for many more high-end projects including the digital re-mastering of a 35-mm film, of which he couldn’t yet reveal the name.