SANTA MONICA — ArsenalFX Color (www.arsenalfxcolor.tv), the sister company to ArsenalFX, has added Randy Starnes to its team. He was most recently a colorist with Sony Pictures Studios’ Colorworks Division, where he worked in their 4K television facility on dozens of 4K finishing projects.
During his long career, Starnes has performed television mastering services for The Black List, Masters of Sex, The Big C, The Client List, Private Practice, Grey’s Anatomy and Desperate Housewives. He’s also worked on TV movies that include Five More, Sunset Bar, Blue Lagoon and Steel Magnolias.
Starnes has been in the post industry since 1981, and has worked as a colorist since 1983. He began his career working on regional and national commercials, as well as on TV movies, documentaries, short films, and the PBS series Nova, before moving to Los Angeles in 1991, where he began specializing as a colorist for television. An early user of the Spirit Data Cine, Starnes was invited, along with five other American colorists, to visit the factory in Germany, where he was asked to provide feedback on a new film-to-data system. This was the advent of file-based, film-originated, post production.
Starnes has held several managerial positions with various post companies in LA, including Digital Magic, The Post Group, Encore Video and Hollywood Digital. He moved to New York in 1999 and consulted in building a new telecine department for Shooting Gallery/Gun for Hire. Working with engineer Thoma Thurau, Starnes oversaw the design and implementation of a three-telecine post facility in Manhattan. Today, that site is known as Technicolor’s Leroy Street facility.
Starnes returned to California in 2000 as VP/director of telecine at Westwind Media. That year, NYPD Blue became ABC’s first high-definition primetime series. It was followed the next season by another ABC HD series, The Practice.
In 2003, Starnes formed a business servicing clients with a Da Vinci 2K color corrector placed inside West Post Digital, a boutique post facility. And in 2005, Starnes was hired back at Westwind Media as GM and supervising colorist.
A native of Decatur, GA, Starnes served in the Marine Corps before beginning his career with a Georgia television station. He got his start in post with VTA Atlanta, developer of the Da Vinci color correction system.