7/28/2023 0 Comments Raafi the color machineI’m trying now to work explicitly in concepts. “I always admired friends or collaborators who start with the idea. “For a long time I was too focused on technique: how something looked, how to make the highest-quality image,” Raafi says. Leaving your comfort zone, Raafi says, is also key. You’re always dying a thousand tiny deaths trying to get the footage to live up to the picture in your head.” In film you watch your work a million times-you have to find the right cut, the right moment. No one wants to fail, but it’s a critical part of the process. Ultimately, I pushed a piece that wasn’t good. “Some of my biggest failures came when I didn’t admit that something wasn’t working. You have to be flexible to solve those problems. You’re always planning, scheduling, coordinating, but something inevitably goes wrong. “When adapting becomes your zone, you begin to break apart every idea, and you often find something truly original,” Raafi says. Depending on limited resources and materials, he was forced to rely on what was abundant. Raafi recalls his early film work, when he was a college student with no money. “You ultimately have to go back to your cave and tune everything out and say, ‘What do I believe? What ideas resonate?’ You need that spine, or strength of vision, but when you find moments of true collaboration you can be pleasantly surprised by your own work.” Inspiration and ideas develop from those connections. He purposefully consumes as much as possible each day-from culture, news, photography, technology, architecture, music, and the people in his life. However, he also depends upon his voracious appetite for information outside his own world. Some of the creative process is instinctual, Raafi says: following an impulse that’s stronger than any other. From that collaboration-of talented people who trust their abilities-greatness bubbles up.” The second model, and the one to which Raafi subscribes, he calls the Miles Davis model: “These people are still extremely talented, but the magic comes from putting Miles in the same room with John Coltrane, Bill Evans and Cannonball Adderley, and together they come up with Kind of Blue. Raafi believes in two models of creativity: One he calls the Mozart model, where the boy genius writes the notes in his head because he innately knows how. “You might think a sequence or a cut works well, and someone else will watch it and say, ‘What does that mean?’ Having people you trust-who have a different perspective but great taste-look over your shoulder and share their opinions is essential.” “As a filmmaker, you need sounding boards,” Raafi says. Together, they develop scripts, provide constant feedback, and ensure that the videos they release meet the same high-quality standards. The company’s site describes the trio as “a gang of makers.” While directors are assigned to projects according to client need and vision, collaboration is at the heart of their work. Each production, regardless of client or product, gets at the heart of a human tale. The Color Machine’s collective client list now includes global brands like Coca-Cola, Dior, Skype, McDonald’s and Quicksilver, as well as entertainment powerhouses like HBO, Sony and Discovery. Partner Liz Regan, a producer herself, came on to fill that gap. Both directors have well-honed filmmaking abilities and have produced their own work, but they were missing the necessary business acumen. Two years ago, Raafi and Jordan Alport-filmmaker, friend and business partner-put their reels together and shared the collection with potential clients, showing that they were two people bigger than one. Prior to that, he studied film at Brown, and he’s been in New York City since. Raafi has worked in film and advertising since graduating from film school at Howard University. The space is a comfortable blend of well worn and cutting edge-a perfect place from which filmmaker Raafi Rivero ’95 and his business partners to craft visual stories. The Color Machine’s office is a Brooklyn artist’s loft: all open concept, complete with floor-to-ceiling windows, polished concrete surfaces and jangling elevator cage.
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