AJA Video Systems’ Io 4K device for professional video and audio I/O was used to facilitate 4K playback for VFX review on director David Fincher’s “Gone Girl,” from 20th Century Fox and New Regency. Based on the bestselling novel of the same name by Gillian Flynn, “Gone Girl” stars Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, Neil Patrick Harris, and Tyler Perry and was released by 20th Century Fox on October 3.
The “Gone Girl” production workflow was very ambitious from the get go, captured in 6K using RED Dragon cameras. The film’s postproduction engineer, and CTO of Open Drives, Jeff Brue oversaw the systems integration supporting the complex workflows required of working in such high frame rates.
“AJA’s Io 4K was used as a reference grade device as it allowed us to playback DPX frames without any tearing or artifacts when reviewing VFX shots,” explained Brue. “The Io 4K was ultimately chosen for the quality level, absolute sync and also for the fact that it can operate in 10-bit.”
AJA Io 4K connects to any Thunderbolt 2-enabled device, and offers a broad range of professional video and audio connectivity, supporting the latest 4K and UltraHD workflows. For “Gone Girl,” Io 4K was connected to the Thunderbolt 2 output from an HP Z820 workstation running Adobe After Effects CC and Adobe Premiere Pro CC, which was used to edit the entire film . This was the hero VFX workstation driven in-house at David Fincher’s production company to complete subtle visual effects that mostly included performance retiming and recombination, split screen comps and opticals.
“When you’re working on a feature film project with this high of a data rate, you have to have a cohesive system to manage all of the 6K, from storage to the playback device. You have to know that everything works together and that the peformance is reliable. AJA Io 4K provided that reliability along with absolute frame accuracy which was a necessity,” concluded Brue.
Review: Writer-Director Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance”
In its first two hours, "The Substance" is a well-made, entertaining movie. Writer-director Coralie Fargeat treats audiences to a heavy dose of biting social commentary on ageism and sexism in Hollywood, with a spoonful of sugar- and sparkle-doused body horror.
But the film's deliciously unhinged, blood-soaked and inevitably polarizing third act is what makes it unforgettable.
What begins as a dread-inducing but still relatively palatable sci-fi flick spirals deeper into absurdism and violence, eventually erupting — quite literally — into a full-blown monster movie. Let the viewer decide who the monster is.
Fargeat — who won best screenplay at this year's Cannes Film Festival — has been vocal about her reverence for "The Fly" director David Cronenberg, and fans of the godfather of body horror will see his unmistakable influence. But "The Substance" is also wholly unique and benefits from Fargeat's perspective, which, according to the French filmmaker, has involved extensive grappling with her own relationship to her body and society's scrutiny.
"The Substance" tells the story of Elisabeth Sparkle, a famed aerobics instructor with a televised show, played by a powerfully vulnerable Demi Moore. Sparkle is fired on her 50th birthday by a ruthless executive — a perfectly cast Dennis Quaid, who nails sleazy and gross.
Feeling rejected by a town that once loved her and despairing over her bygone star power, Sparkle learns from a handsome young nurse about a black-market drug that promises to create a "younger, more beautiful, more perfect" version of its user. Though she initially tosses the phone number in the trash, she soon fishes it out in a desperate panic and places an order.
The one rule to follow is that... Read More