“Early communication is key to a successful data workflow,” affirmed Gretchen Praeger, executive producer/managing director at Optimus, Chicago. “Production companies should know not only who’s editing the project but also where it is finishing. Workable files for an offline editor aren’t necessarily workable files for finish. If post is included in the decisions made early on–before production; we love to be included in the pre-pro when shooting data–it can help facilitate a more streamlined finish. Because we’re a full service post facility, we typically like to get the raw data and then create ‘dailies’ for our editors. At the same time, we convert the data to log dpx files to use for final color correction and online.”
For Praeger, a recent McDonald’s job “stood out because they shot 35mm, RED, and Phantom footage. The director was Alex Fernbach of Arf & Co. Optimus and Arf talked extensively before the shoot, and Arf was very accommodating. They even rearranged their shooting schedule to shoot the RED and Phantom earlier, because of a quick turnaround on the back end. We requested HD CAM SR 1080p 4:4:4 tapes of the Phantom footage, so as not to have to convert the raw data once it landed in Chicago, again because of the quick turnaround. We created the RED dailies in house. We converted the R3D files to dpx and color corrected those and, in this case, did a tape to tape from the HD Cam SR of the Phantom footage. We mastered in HD.
“In my opinion,” continued Praeger, “data workflow is getting better. Our agency clients are learning…They get us involved and ask questions during the bidding process.”
Proactive approach Michael A. Jackman, VP/general manager of Deluxe New York, also sees progress being made. “RED for example is getting easier. More and more companies are able to handle RED data. And it’s also becoming faster to handle. Early on it took a lot of time. But new hardware and software are helping to make the process easier across the board.”
Still, clients need to be vigilant and work closely with their post collaborators. “You have some people shooting and going the file-based route to save money. But if you don’t do it right the first time, if you take the image and don’t properly process it for post, you have to come back and spend money to reprocess, wasting the budgetary benefit you sought in the first place.”
Deluxe, said Jackman, has thus taken a proactive approach to try to make sure that DPs and directors are getting what they want. “We’re accessible to help with decisions of what camera to shoot,” he related. “We’re very much in the ‘let’s test it business.’ If they’re not sure they want to shoot RED, Sony/Panavision Genesis, 35, 16, we’re happy to work out those tests. We’ll process negative, images, compare and contrast.”
Jackman cited Nolan Murdock, Deluxe’s VP of front-end services, as a key player in dealing with cinematographers, helping to assure that they get what they want. “Nolan was at Panavision for 17 years. If any issues come up during shooting, he’s our go-to person. If there’s a problem, he can help determine if it’s a stock issue, a camera issue, if something happened in processing the transfer and so on. Clients need that kind of diagnostician–a person who understands their craft and speaks their language–to assure quality control in images.”
It’s also essential to define the project’s goals, continued Jackman. “Some projects come in here with three or four different formats. It’s important to know if the director, DP and agency want these formats to match and appear as one on screen. Or perhaps they used different formats because each conveys a different feeling and they want to take advantage of the differences in looks. This drives our approach to processing the images so that the colors, the look, the feel are true to the project.”
Raw perspective Noted colorist Chris Ryan, a partner in Nice Shoes, New York, recently worked on a package of Fisher Price spots for Draftfcb, New York. Fisher Price jobs have been shot digitally for about the past three years, and now RED is the client’s prime means of image acquisition. Nice Shoes has worked regularly with Fisher Price and Draftfcb, and Ryan has developed a personal workflow preference, facilitated by his shop’s Baselight color grading system from manufacturer FilmLight.
“Baselight has software that allows us to actually put raw RED files into the system, and to access tools like different color balance setups and specialized software to make the image the best it can be,” said Ryan. Having the raw files at the color correct, he observed, enables the colorist to know how the DP intended the images to look–as opposed to relying on transcoded files done by a third party.
While a self-described “film snob…I texturally prefer the look of film,” Ryan still appreciates digital cinematography (“Genesis images are gorgeous”) and sees workflows starting to take shape for the industry at large.
Some workflows are simple and streamlined. Ryan cited the Time Warner spots starring comedian Mike O’Malley. “That client brings to us large spot packages shot on the Sony F35,” said Ryan. “The workflow is great with the Sony. The editor loves it. The turnaround is incredibly fast. Time Warner settled in on Sony for the last couple of projects–the work is beautiful looking and of really nice quality. The Sony will shoot in HD Cam SR 4:4:4 and that’s how the tape comes over to us. They send over an EDL, load it in, and Baselight ingests it as 4:4:4 RGB. That’s the fastest workflow. You don’t deal with a scanner, there’s no conversion of files, you’re loading in tapes real time. Two hours of footage takes two-and-a-half hours to get loaded and prepped.”
Digigog Over a year ago, Chicago post house Filmworkers began a R&D effort aimed at determining the optimal workflow and best practices when working with data image files. From that sprung Digigog, Filmworkers’ digital image processing lab created to service commercial productions shot with the RED One and other digital cinema cameras. Digigog–available in Filmworkers’ Chicago, Nashville and Dallas offices–offers overnight dailies processing for digitally acquired media with delivery in virtually any format required by the project’s editorial team, including Avid DNX-HD and Apple ProRes 422. It also offers final assembly and real-time, non-linear final color grading in resolutions up to 2K.
Since its opening earlier this year, Digigog has serviced dozens of projects shot with the RED One, Phantom HD and other digital cinema cameras, primarily for Chicago- and Dallas-based advertising agencies and production companies. Among them is a series of short promotional films produced by Leo Burnett as part of Chicago’s bid to win the 2016 Olympics. More than a dozen films were produced over the course of several months, some shot digitally, some shot on film, by such directors as Janusz Kaminski of Independent Media, Paul Cameron via RSA, Steve James of Nonfiction Unlimited, and Brett Morgen from Anonymous Content.
Editorial work was split among a number of Chicago shops. Projects that were shot on film had their dailies processed via Filmworkers’ traditional film lab, Astro Lab. Those that were shot with the RED One, were processed through Digigog.
Part of the challenge to processing RED dailies is the size of the files. In order to be able to turn around projects overnight, Digigog has set up a managed render farm large enough to process files quickly and handle all of the necessary conversions without compromising image quality.
“The Olympics project involved a ton of work,” recalled Todd Freese, Filmworkers’ technical director. “Some of the spots we finished start to finish, some we just processed the dailies for delivery to the editorial house–each of whom had its own delivery requirements. It’s exactly the kind of project we had in mind for Digigog.
“We’ve built a hardware and software system that can handle all of the resolution, color space and output requirements–and still deliver the overnight service commercial clients expect. You bring in your hard drive, we output what everybody needs.”
A bigger issue, said Freese, is managing the digital color space. The RED One camera is capable of capturing 4K images.
But RED sees images differently than a film camera and accounting for that difference is crucial or color information can be lost during processing.
“We did a lot of color science research so that we could convert log-based RED files while getting every bit of color information out of them,” Freese explained. “We did the same thing with Phantom and other HD cameras. Our aim was to be able to get anything, regardless of the source, into a universal color space while preserving all of the subtleties so that when the project reaches final color correction, the colorist can get the most out of the imagery.”
Through its research efforts, Filmworkers created a series of LUTs designed specifically for various types of digitally acquired media. “At first creating a LUT for RED files seemed simple, but you have to factor in all the things that can happen during a shoot,” Freese related. “No matter how good the DP, the exposure is never 100 percent correct. The sun may move behind a cloud or something else may happen that is beyond his control. And so, a shot may be one stop over-exposed or under-exposed. When that happens, it throws a wrench into getting the media into log space.”
To deal with that issue, Filmworkers has developed LUTs to address various production factors. “We have a ‘normal’ RED LUT, a RED ‘plus one’ LUT, a RED ‘plus two’ LUT, a RED ‘minus one’ LUT and so on. That level of care is not commonplace,” Freese contended. “Some facilities treat the processing for RED files like a one pass. They think it’s like producing a dub, but it’s anything but that.”
Filmworkers’ research paid off in the Olympics work. “The Olympics footage was some of the best RED cinematography that we have seen,” Freese said. “It was incredibly well shot and had a filmic quality. Through the Digigog process we were able to preserve all the subtleties of those images and as a result, the colorist was able to grade the files as if they were film.”
Freese added that Filmworkers’ RED research effort is far from over. “Cameras are constantly getting better, the technology is changing, and filmmakers are using digital cameras in a wider range of scenarios,” he said. “We are seeing night shoots with RED, and so we have had to create a new LUT for that. It’s not a situation where you set it up and you are done. It is more of a commitment to do whatever needs to be done to deliver the quality the client expects.”
DMS Tom Fletcher of Fletcher Camera & Lenses, Chicago and Farmington Hills, Mich., runs a mainstay camera rental house encompassing film and digital cameras. The digital biz, though, has diversified the company into the workflow arena under the moniker of “data mobile solutions” (DMS),
The service grew out of Fletcher delving deeply into digital to figure out how to best serve its clientele.
“We can do transcoding and archiving right there on the set. Think of DMS as your lab coming to the shoot,” said Fletcher who noted that DMS has been deployed mostly on RED shoots, with Phantom jobs also figuring into the mix. “The material can go right from the shoot to the editorial company. You don’t have to have a P.A., for example, driving two hours from a shoot in Orange County to Hollywood or Santa Monica where a post house does the transcoding before it can be sent to the editorial house. DMS saves time and money.”
