One of the advantages of HD mastering and digital intermediate-style processing is having a high-resolution master, which can be used to efficiently create all deliverables—including SD and HD for the U.S., international standards, and film for theatrical distribution. McCann Erickson Tag Ideation, New York, recently tapped into all of those options when it decided on an HD finish for "Evil," one ad in a two-spot campaign launching new Xbox game "Fable."
"Evil" (:30) opens with a live-action sequence of a young man riding the subway. Playing off the concept of the "Fable" game—in which players get to choose if they want the main character to be a good guy or a bad guy—the man spots a woman with an open shoulder bag and decides to go the evil route. A voiceover intones, "What if every choice you made changed the way you look and how people see you?" as the subway lights flicker and the man’s once clean-cut facial features grow more menacing.
"Would you forgo virtue and choose a wicked path?" the voiceover asks. "Become the very picture of evil?" The young man stealthily removes the woman’s wallet from her bag and starts to walk toward the train door, but comes face to face with a patrolling policeman. Again the lights on the train dim and brighten to reveal that the thief now has a prominent scar on his face and a five o’clock shadow. To defend himself, he grabs a nearby passenger and puts him into a headlock, using him as a shield. Then the sequence shifts to animated clips from the game, with the main character also holding an innocent bystander in front of him for protection.
The spot finishes with the Xbox end tag, as the voiceover states: "Decide your destiny. ‘Fable’: for every choice, a consequence." The other spot in the package, "Noble," starts off the same way, but shows the man choosing to be good instead. His goal becomes to foil an armed thief.
THE RIGHT CHOICE
This was the first U.S. job for directors The Guard Brothers—Tom and Charlie—of bicoastal Villains, who enjoyed the "cleverness of the premise … that you can choose your own destiny," said Tom.
The spot was lensed in 35mm by director of photography Max Malkin, with the character transition occurring in-camera through the use of makeup and tracer lights to change the mood, shared Charlie. "We also steamed the windows and added smoke."
Editor Pete Fritz of New York-based Ohio Edit created tension with pacing. "We let certain shots linger," he said, "and it created a sort of tension. Others we shortened. [For the take where the character] grabs a woman’s purse, it’s very short so you are not even sure what you saw."
The spot went through a digital intermediate-style process that is most widely used in feature work, but is also being pioneered in the commercial world by a few companies, including New York-based Nice Shoes, which handled the postproduction on "Evil."
The dailies were transferred in data mode and stored in the Grass Valley Specter Virtual Datacine without the clients being present; an EDL was loaded so that the work could be viewed in cut order. Then the clients arrived, and Nice Shoes colorist Lez Rudge did the color correction using a da Vinci 2k and the data so that everything was done in a nonlinear, random access environment, and clips were viewed in cut order for consistency of look. "That made it very easy to see how the transitions were working, and to determine if it was too much or not enough," said Rudge.
In this environment, Rudge was able to focus on being creative, using light and color to accentuate the man’s character transformation and the environment, which goes from being flat and cleanly lit to dark and foreboding. "A gradual transition in the look of the spot occurs as it moves from the normal world to the fantasy world of evil," Rudge explained. "The color becomes crunchier, more contrast-y. The shadows become more pronounced. It’s a harsher look. It’s not something that jumps out at you. It’s subtle, subliminal."
For the clients, the process is invisible—all they saw was a faster turnaround and more creative options. "I thought it was fantastic; I don’t think it would have come out nearly as well if we didn’t use the Specter," said editor Fritz. This was his first experience with the process. "The transition scenes were in camera, so [part of the] transition had to come from color correction," he related. "The ability to go back and forth between shots without changing reels makes it really easy. You can actually watch the cut in order. We colored both [‘Evil’ and ‘Noble’] in just four hours. It might have taken two days to get them looking as good as they do if we had had to change reels every time we wanted to go back and review a scene."
Nice Shoes’ Aron Baxter and John Shea, visual effects supervisors/compositors, used Discreet’s HD capable Inferno to composite, conform and add titles to the spots. As well, the duo treated and added the "Fable" footage, which the client supplied in HD. An HD master was output to HD D5, then titles were altered for the 4:3 aspect ratio of the SD version.
THE HD ADVANTAGE
In the end, the agency walked away with a HD D5 master that was effectively used to create all deliverables in multiple formats. That included NTSC and HD deliverables for U.S. television broadcasting, PAL versions for broadcast in Europe, and film versions for theatrical advertising. London’s The Moving Picture Company performed a film-out process to create the film prints; the company used its proprietary Filmtel system of going from digital to film, coupled with an Arrilaser film recorder.
McCann producer Alexis Mead said that the post process "made it easier to create all the formats and versions." She estimated that the costs were about the same as traditional methods, noting that "the color correction session went faster, but there were the costs for the transfer." Mead said that she would definitely use the process again, but added, "I think if it’s a one-day shoot [where you don’t have to change reels], you won’t need it. … [However] longer jobs and jobs where you want to go back and forth [to view takes], such as dialogue spots, would go a lot faster [with the Specter-based process]."
Rudge, however, believes that spots with one reel and/or a smaller number of cuts could also benefit. "The Specter makes it easier to see how far we are pushing things—it means peace of mind," he said, noting that other benefits would be, for instance, that if a client wanted to make a last-minute change in look across an entire spot, it’s quick and simple.
"I think this process will have as much impact [on commercialmaking] as nonlinear editing did," Rudge remarked. "That’s the kind of impact we are seeing in the industry."
Added Fritz, "I think [the commercial industry] will shift to working this way—I did."
