Founder · TP Studio
Member, Colourist Society International (C.S.I.)
Thanassi Panagiotaras C.S.I. is a Melbourne-based editor, colourist and finishing specialist, and founder of TP Studio. He brings 25 years of editing experience and 14 years in colour grading, online finishing, mastering and delivery. His work spans feature film, documentary, broadcast television, streaming platforms, branded content and campaign production, with archival restoration and AI and synthetic production also part of the studio’s capabilities.
He came into the industry at the exact moment it flipped from analog to digital. His first tools were Adobe Premiere 5.1, Apple Final Cut Pro 1.0, Adobe After Effects 4.0, and miniDV. He didn't inherit a career. He built one from the ground up, learning compositing, motion graphics, and offline editing through sheer obsession with the craft.
After completing a video production course and co-founding a production company through the early 2000s, he joined La Trobe University in 2004 as part of a full studio production team. For ten years the work was daily and relentless: multi-camera shoots, live switching, location sound, camera work, post production across every format the era could produce. It built a technical foundation most practitioners never get.
It was at La Trobe that colour grading became an obsession. Apple's Final Cut Studio introduced Color, a node-based grading application, and Thanassi was immediately drawn in. When Apple killed Final Cut Studio and Color along with it, he found DaVinci Resolve 9 and started putting himself through training on his own time and at his own expense. Master class after master class, working colourists at the top of the industry. By the time he left La Trobe in 2014, with a redundancy package that gave him the runway to go independent, he was ready.
His first freelance job was a feature film as colourist. He hasn't looked back.
Since 2014, operating as TP Studio, he has finished longform projects for Stan, ABC, and Amazon Prime Video, graded campaigns for major Australian and international brands, delivered finished work to every major Australian broadcast network, mastered feature documentaries for theatrical release through Label Distribution, and feature film work delivered through US distributor VMI Releasing. His credits span the full post pipeline: offline editing, colour grading, online finishing, archival restoration, mastering, and deliverables, often carrying a project from first assembly through colour and finishing to final delivery. On the feature film Darklands, he served as post-production supervisor alongside colour grading, online editing, mastering and deliverables.
The archival restoration work deserves particular mention. On Suzi Q, Love in Bright Landscapes and Abebe Butterfly Song, he spent hundreds of hours processing decades-old documentary footage: Betacam, standard definition and interlaced material from the 80s, 90s and early 2000s, processed frame by frame and brought up to a standard that held up on cinema screens and streaming platforms. TP Studio brings older, damaged or mixed-format footage into modern finishing pipelines through restoration, colour correction, clean-up, online finishing and delivery. It is painstaking, technically demanding work that requires both technical care and visual sensitivity. Most finishing houses won't take it on.
The AI integration came in late 2025, not from curiosity about the technology but from a client brief that demanded it. An Ocean Spray campaign for Spencer Street Station in Melbourne required animated product reveals across three physically separate screens treated as a single continuous display. There was no footage, only stills. He identified, evaluated and deployed AI generation tools under live production conditions and delivered on deadline. That first job opened the door to a discipline that has since become a core part of the studio offering.
Post Production
DaVinci Resolve Studio · Premiere Pro · After Effects · Photoshop
AI Pipeline
Higgsfield · Seedance · Kling · GPT Image 2 · Nano Banana Pro · ElevenLabs · Suno · Topaz Video AI
TP Studio is a fully calibrated boutique post-production studio operating from Melbourne, with 25 years of craft behind it. Projects can move from first cut through colour, finishing and final delivery within one studio, or come in for an individual stage. AI and synthetic production extend that capability from concept to finished image.
Career Arc
The industry was mid-flip from analog to digital. First tools: Adobe Premiere 5.1, Apple Final Cut Pro 1.0, Adobe After Effects 4.0, miniDV. Compositing, motion graphics, and offline editing became the foundation. Live directing and multi-camera switching experience developed early.
Co-founded a production company with five collaborators. Corporate production, live event coverage, and VJ work, creating real-time video content for major festivals. The full production workflow, worn all at once.
Ten years as part of a full studio production team. Multi-camera shoots, live switching, location sound, camera work, post production across every format the era could produce. Thousands of hours at volume. Colour grading interest developed here, through Apple Color and then DaVinci Resolve 9, pursued independently, on personal time, at personal expense.
A university restructure and redundancy package provided the runway. First freelance job: a feature film as colourist. TP Studio established.
Boutique post production. Offline editing, colour grading, online finishing, mastering and deliverables, taken end to end or booked stage by stage. Credits include Stan, ABC, Amazon Prime Video, and every major Australian broadcast network. Archival restoration on multiple feature documentaries. Tropfest finalist x2, St Kilda Film Festival, international festival credits. Member, Colourist Society International.
Adopted AI image and video generation under live production conditions, on a client brief with a hard deadline. Developed hybrid AI and traditional pipelines for results finished to spec. AI production now operates as a core studio discipline, from fully synthetic campaign content through to feature documentary reenactment pipelines, graded and finished to theatrical delivery standard.
