I started grading in 1996. We had real film and piles of cans and vinegary smells and the sound of the telecine whirring when you rewound the reels at the end of a session. Back then Soho was all fields and a coffee was called ‘Coffee’. I started by transferring archive newsreels. Then Super 8mm films for the art school graduates at MTV up the road in Camden. After that, I progressed to long form documentary strands like Equinox and Horizon and remastering classic movies including Mean Streets and Citizen Kane. I even pulled a night shift grading dailies for Hollywood features. I started grading commercials when I moved to VTR in 2005 and often troubled the Televisual top ten VFX artists list. I was head of grading at Prime Focus, Glassworks and Freefolk. More recently I was senior colourist at MPC and at Halo Post where I have been returning to my long form roots, grading episodic TV and feature docs for all the big streamers and feature films. In 2024 I was nominated for a craft award by The Royal Television Society for my work on The Jetty, which was BBC One’s highest rating drama series of the year.

All this has taught me one vital fact: pictures of kittens are popular.