She worked in Peruvian cinema, went to Europe and now won a BAFTA: the story of Vanessa Aparicio

There is a job in cinema that is not as obvious as that of the actors, the scriptwriters or the director. Cinema involves color, which has to adjust to the filmmaker’s proposal, to what he wants to tell. This is where the work of experts comes in who, with the help of the director of photography, gives the film the style it needs. One of the specialists in this work, the so-called color grading, is Vanessa Aparicio, a Peruvian living in the Netherlands. She reached a milestone in her life last Sunday, when the short film she worked on, “Jellyfish and Lobster,” took home the British Academy of Film and Television Arts award (BAFTAfor its acronym in English).

“It was a surreal night, really. She didn’t have it in her head that there was a chance for us to win, she hadn’t thought about it that consciously. The truth is that after so much work I felt that I deserved to be there,” Aparicio told El Comercio via Zoom. “We walked the red carpet, we took a lot of photos, I was surprised to see so many celebrities so close. I thought it was amazing to see Robert Downey Jr. pass by me, by chance I bumped into Christopher Nolan and I said ‘sorry’, and he told me ‘don’t worry’. At that moment I didn’t understand what was happening.”also said about his meeting with the filmmaker who won the ceremony’s top prize for the film “Oppenheimer.”

Directed by Yasmin Afifi, “Jellyfish and Lobster” follows Grace (Flo Wilson), a cancer patient who enters a nursing home. There she meets Mido (Sayed Badreya), a man with Alzheimer’s with whom she establishes a special relationship, which is marked by an element of fantasy. With his work in this short, Aparicio highlights color in an environment that would otherwise be aseptic, but which the warm tones turn into a home. The Peruvian says that, ideally, her work begins in pre-production. That’s how it was with this film, a collaborative work that she considered the costumes, lighting and set design.

This is how you build a career

Graduated in Audiovisual Communication from the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru (PUCP), she worked for a time in the Peruvian industry. Her first film was “Margarita” (2016), as a production assistant, a job that she repeated in “The Passion of Javier” (2019). How did she start working with color? She attributes this choice to the fact that her faculty led her to try everything, and that is where she found her calling. She then traveled to the UK [es británica por parte de madre], where he worked for three years to raise money and study. Eventually, she applied for a master’s degree at the competitive National Film and Television School, two years of study that she calls “very hard,” which involved not only paying for tuition, but also for accommodation. Precisely, “Jellyfish and Lobster” was her graduation project.

“I thought it was amazing to see Robert Downey Jr. pass by me, by chance I bumped into Christopher Nolan and I said ‘excuse me’, and he said ‘don’t worry’. At that moment I didn’t understand what was happening.”

Vanessa Aparicio color artist

Already graduated and with several projects done on her resume [ella trabajó como ‘freelance’ a la par de sus estudios], Aparicio was contacted by an audiovisual production company that offered her a job. So, she moved from London to Amsterdam, where she works full time.

What have you achieved abroad that you could not have done in Peru? “I felt very limited in finding a place to study what I wanted. I was soaking up a lot of information on the internet and doing it as my intuition told me, but it is a very technical career and I was afraid that I was learning in the wrong way. In the end that sets you back, because you have to unlearn later to learn again.”says Aparicio, who hopes to one day share her knowledge with Peru as a teacher.

Regarding the future of her career, she commented that for the moment she wants to continue growing as a colorist. “I am working in a company that is giving me many opportunities, I am working on very interesting projects; one is potentially going to be on Netflix. “I would love to make big films and work with directors and creatives that I admire.”