Meet The Team | Jean-Paul Vial
Welcome to the latest instalment of our meet the team series, which, as the title implies will dive into the background of the amazing people that make up The Finish Line. Meet Jean-Paul Vial who joined us in April 2014.
Born to a Japanese mother and a French father, Jean-Paul grew up on a healthy diet of Takeshi’s Castle and Gérard Depardieu, not to mention an appetising side dish of David Attenborough. Needless to say he was getting his ‘five a day’. Originally moving to London to pursue a career in audio engineering, JP spent a good year or two recording bands at an entry level recording studio whilst bedroom producing on a budget, before coming to the ultimate conclusion that he did not quite possess the musical talent to make it to the very top of the ladder (which was a hard pill to swallow). Nonetheless, JP still held a solid interest in the technology involved as well as the accompanying editing. A light bulb moment ensued and JP believed that there were some transferrable skills into the glamorous world of post production. Phew.
So once again our Franco-Japanese talent found himself starting at the very bottom rung, but this time in the delights of a post house. Beavering away to attain the role of assistant editor, which was briskly followed by a step up to in-house offline and online editor. JP was rather fortuitous to be working in a small company where you had no other choice but to have a firm grasp of how everything worked. Hereafter it served as fantastic grounding for his technical prowess and it was in fact one of the first post houses to embrace an HD workflow as well as HD standards conversion (he said smugly).
A string of stints at a number of post houses emanated, where Jean-Paul embraced the role working as an online editor and colourist. These stints provided numerous opportunities to meet a plethora of talented people along the way as well as solidifying the skill to work in very distinctive environments. It has been a long road to take but JP genuinely feels that he has reached The Finish Line (no pun intended).
We asked Jean-Paul what advice he would give to his younger self to which he replied:
Skills gained in any profession along the way will help in the future, so worth doing a good job whatever it is.
You can find Jean-Paul’s credit list here and for bookings drop us an email on bookings@nullthefinishline.pro