Julien Biard Excels at Finish

Julien Biard joined Finish when the company’s Head of Grading Paul Harrison launched their Grading Department last year. Since joining the team as an assistant to Harrison he has become a colourist in his own right.  Most recently Julien has worked on Hudson Tay-lor’s latest promo for Lucy Tcherniak at Asylum films, applying a muted palette to echo the stark reality of a life in prison.   He has also graded projects for Capital Radio, created by WCRS’ Ross Neill, Issey Miyake and artists like Basement Jaxx and Ella Eyre.

Julien collaborated with Ryan Hopkinson to grade his latest projects, including the visual feast ‘Demon Chef’.  He comments ‘I always enjoy working with Julien, not only does he have a bike that I want to steal and a license to shoot guns he also has a great eye for creating depth and colour range within an image. Having worked with him on various pro-jects for Chivas, Issey Miyake and Sony he continually helps me progress the film and challenge whats possible through the grade’.

Julien comments on working with Ryan, ‘the projects are always so challenging and the end result is always stunning. I also like working with Olivier Groulx at Partizan, he’s al-ways ready to try out things, shake things up.  He has a great film knowledge and knows how the picture should look.  Kinga Burza is another Partizan director I really  enjoy work-ing with.  She shoots really well and it feels more like a collaboration when it comes to the grade but I could say this of all Finish clients, we’re very lucky in that respect’.

Julien Biard first met Paul Harrison, when he was an assistant at MPC. ‘Paul being very technical, had taught me a lot about Baselight and grading techniques, how to look at a picture and what to aim for. I thought I was learning everything again from scratch, but he had showed me a side of grading I had never seen before.  It was more creative, more ex-travagant, more everything!  But Paul is also very intuitive and he always tells me to follow my instincts, ''do something that you feel is right''. All this, combined with having spent hours in the suite with him seeing how he deals with clients, tricky jobs etc, made me be-lieve in my abilities.  I felt that there was somebody there to exchange and learn from.’ 

Julien graduated as a Textile Engineer, specialising in colour and it’s science before work-ing in Madagascar and finally London.  He cut his teeth as a runner at a post house called Blue. There he entered into a dark and intimidating room and asked the Colourist what he was doing. Going back to those early days he adds ‘I knew from the moment I entered the suite that I had found the career for me, without even knowing that it existed.’

As far as ambitions outside of work, Julien comments that ‘next on the list is to climb Mont Blanc’, professionally he adds ‘I want to keep working with great directors and also pick up a few awards!’