The producers of the A&E drama Longmire have selected MTI Film’s new CORTEX CarryOn as their onset media management tool for season three. The CarryOn provides on-set color, camera file offload and backup, and serves as the starting point for tracing media and metadata from the set through dailies and into post.
Longmire became the first production to implement CORTEX CarryOn in February. MTI Film is debuting the CarryOn at NAB 2014 (Booth SL15510), but provided the production with early access to the system and to CORTEX Dailies v 1.5, its all-in-one dailies software, to help improve the distributed, remote dailies workflow., “On Day 1 of using the new software, our workflow was already more stable and efficient than in previous seasons,” notes Bryan Raber, the show’s producer.
Longmire’s workflow begins on-set where DIT Timothy Gregoire, over the course of the day, offloads morning and evening drops using CORTEX CarryOn to process multiple camera cards simultaneously and back them up to a shuttle drive. He then applies primary color to one take for each scene and adds timecode-based comments about the overall look and any special circumstances, such as light changes during outdoor shots. The drives are then sent to a CORTEX Dailies system in the nearby production office, along with an export of the session’s CORTEX Manifest file. The Manifest includes the onset color metadata, as well as information about the offload and backup, including MD5 checksums.
In the production office, dailies assistant Aaron Natewa imports the media and relinks it to the Manifest file, noting any discrepancies such as missing or corrupt files. “It’s nice for the software to tell you when something has gone wrong,” enthuses Raber.
Natewa then syncs and transcodes the dailies while dailies colorist Mauricio Tassara logs in remotely from Los Angeles to color every take based on looks and notes provided by the DIT on set through the metadata in the Manifest file.
“That’s the greatest benefit,” notes Raber. “The CORTEX Manifest has made the conversation between the DIT and dailies colorist so much easier. Longmire is an extremely difficult show to color because it’s shot in the high desert where the weather is always changing. Using the CORTEX Manifest has resulted in extremely accurate color. The ability to add comments instead of having to adjust color and add dissolves every time the weather changes saves the DIT a lot of time.”
Dailies are passed to the show’s editor while the original camera files, Manifest and daily reports are shipped to the post facility in Los Angeles for assembly and finish. “With the CORTEX Manifests, I no longer have to worry if I received a file or not,” observes Raber, “or be concerned that it might be corrupt. We enjoy one-to-one consistency of color from set through post.”
About MTI Film LLC
Since 1997 MTI Film has provided award winning software applications to the post-production industry with a focus on technology for digital film restoration and digital dailies. MTI Film has fostered strong ties with our customers and an in-house services arm to provide real-world, real-time development experience. Newly added to the product line is CORTEX::Dailies and CORTEX::Convey, the next generation solution for a complete dailies workflow from set to delivery that includes tools to Play, Color, Sync, and Transcode to all popular media formats. With Correct DRS™ and Control Dailies Enterprise rounding out the product line, MTI Film offers the most advanced, efficient and user-friendly applications on the market. For more information visit www.mtifilm.com.
