My DIT Cart: Fabiola Seguel

In this series, we regularly spotlight inspiring professionals in the film industry – highlighting their career journeys, projects, and the gear that powers their work.

This time, we caught up with Fabiola Seguel, a Digital Imaging Technician and on-set colorist based in Santiago, Chile. With over a decade of experience in the film industry, she’s carved her path through roles ranging from camera assistant to post-production, data wrangler, and DIT. Today, she works across commercials and occasional feature films and is the co-founder of Merken Pro, a company offering VTR, streaming, and DIT services for international productions. We sat down with Fabiola to hear about her journey, the evolution of the DIT role in Chile, and her current setup.

To start, could you please tell us a bit about yourself and how you got started in the industry? 

Fabiola: „My name is Fabiola Seguel, and I’m based in Santiago, Chile. I started out in the film industry over 10 years ago, first working at a film camera rental house. My initial goal was to become a director of photography, so I began working as a camera assistant to gain hands-on experience and went to film school, where I only worked with 16mm film. By the time I got my first job, the first RED cameras had just arrived in Chile, so it was a time of transition.“ 

How did you make the transition to working on set as a DIT?

Fabiola: „After working in camera rental, I started working on commercial sets as 2nd AC, data manager, or both at the same time, depending on the project. Since I was little, I’ve always been drawn to technology, like computers, editing, and all that. I started editing with Movie Maker on Windows and later moved to Final Cut Pro on Mac. So when I moved from my hometown of Concepción to Santiago to look for better opportunities, I already had some editing knowledge (although basic), which helped me get started with media on set. 

At the same time, I connected with a post-production house to better understand the overall workflows. That’s where I had the opportunity to get trained to use Silverstack. The person who taught me was Chilean-German and had a lot of knowledge of how things worked in Europe, as the role of the DIT was already more established there. He had built a very advanced cart but only managed to work on a few international service jobs. In Chile, the DIT role was still emerging and often assigned to whoever knew how to copy and paste files – until enough media loss and errors forced productions to take it more seriously. 

Seeing the opportunity, I dove deeper into camera technology. I read manuals, learned on the job, and slowly started earning the respect of my (mostly male) colleagues. I was subjected to a lot of sexism and mansplaining (something that still happens sometimes), so many other female colleagues left because of the treatment they faced. Some went to other countries and did very well; a couple of us stayed in the camera department, and other colleagues transitioned into lighting. I’m happy to see more gender parity on set these days.

Eventually, I landed my first film as a data manager with Fabula Producciones, the biggest production company for film and streaming in Chile. It was actually quite precarious, working without any cart or station. I was assembling and disassembling the entire workflow on folding tables. That experience pushed me to build my own mobile DIT station based on what I had learned so far.“

What types of projects are you currently working on? 

Fabiola: „Nowadays, I mostly work in production services because there are no Chilean DPs who want to do live color on set. Thanks to Netflix and Amazon, the DIT role is better recognized and separated from that of a data manager. So conditions have improved somewhat, especially in narrative projects, but budgets are still often too tight. That’s one of the main reasons I haven’t worked on more fiction projects, even though I’d love to.

One of my last fiction projects as a DIT (and one I’m really proud of) was a film for Disney+ with Chilean DP Manuel García, produced by Fabula Producciones. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been released yet. We worked on a lot of dynamic exposure adjustments and matched color across multiple cameras, which was both challenging and rewarding. I also collaborated with him on a series called The Thousand Days of Allende, which was set in the 1970s.”

We’re aware that every DIT’s setup varies. Overall, how would you describe yours? 

Fabiola: „First and foremost, I would describe my DIT station as very mobile and logistically efficient. Over the years, I’ve downsized quite a bit. For the budgets and setups we work with in Chile, less is more – especially when it comes to transportation and limited space on set.“ 

What gear do you usually bring with you? 

Fabiola: „The exact configuration always depends on the requirements of the project. However, generally, I bring my MacBook M2 Pro, a Voyager Eco 30 cart, two UltraStudio Mini HD cards, a 1U rack with a UPS, and my Flanders Scientific DM241 monitor. I prefer using one monitor for two cameras because even calibrated monitors can show slight inconsistencies. If I need to be mobile and get out of the car, I remove the rack and set it up wherever, using either a generator or a lithium battery. 

Silverstack has been with me on my projects since I started working in data. Now I use Silverstack Lab for the entire dailies workflow unless the DP wants a specific plugin like Filmbox or so, in which case I’ll switch to DaVinci Resolve. I used Livegrade on a couple of projects, but I can’t always get a full cart with LUT boxes and multiple monitors to set, so it isn’t always convenient for me. I understand the romanticism of doing color and keeping everything flowing from one cart and with several monitors, especially when handling multiple cameras. However, such a big setup is perhaps more feasible in fiction than for commercial work, at least here in Chile. So now, I’m exploring how to reduce my setup to the minimum for using Livegrade.”

What has been the latest addition to your setup?

Fabiola: „The BitBox. Being able to do in-camera grading with Livegrade is amazing, but stable connections can sometimes be an issue. I discovered BitBox on Instagram and was curious, though I was concerned the connections might not work as well in Chile as in the U.S. I read some great feedback from colleagues on the Pomfort blog, actually, and decided to give it a try. That was quite recently, but I already used them in a couple of projects with Livegrade. They indeed don’t have the same range they offer in the USA, but at least provide an acceptable range to control the metadata perfectly!“

What’s the most challenging aspect of being a DIT? 

Fabiola: „The most challenging aspect of being a DIT is getting people to trust you. I have a bit of an extroverted personality (Capricorn!), and sometimes it can come across as childish, so maybe that works against me when a DP first gets to know me [laughs]. On a more technical note, another challenge is dealing with DPs who don’t understand the concept of color spaces and don’t understand that a Rec.709 monitor calibration is not the same as a computer or phone screen. I think communication is really key here, so at the start, I always like to ask the DP: ‘Do you want to work on the dailies for Rec. 709? Or for a graphic screen?’. I think that gives them confidence in your expertise and makes them understand that what you are doing is actually very important.”

– and what’s the most rewarding? 

Fabiola: „For me, the most gratifying thing about being a DIT is being part of the creative decision-making when it comes to exposure and color. Or that a DP likes what I propose, and seeing how happy they are when I can assure them that the entire scene is correctly exposed and color balanced.“ 

Thanks so much for sharing these insights with us!