Blackmagic Design has announced that picture post on BBC One drama “Broken,” including the conform, grade and VFX compositing, has been completed using an editorial pipeline featuring DaVinci Resolve Studio and Fusion Studio.
From acclaimed screenwriter Jimmy McGovern, Sean Bean plays Father Michael, a Catholic priest presiding over a parish in the North of England. He serves as a confidante, counselor and confessor to a congregation struggling to reconcile its beliefs with the challenges of modern day life.
Overseeing postproduction on the six-part drama was LA Productions' post supervisor, Patrick Hall. “Having completed the offline, we moved the project across to DaVinci Resolve. Relinking the ProRes 4444 media, we were able to work natively in 4K during the conform and grade.”
The references for “Broken” were pretty bold from the start, according to Hall. “The director and DoP drew inspiration from American reportage photography in the 1960s and 70s, guys like William Eggleston and Steven Shore,” he said. “These photographers spent a lot of time exploring communities in the deep South of America, communities that had very little money, but who had very strong beliefs. It was a fascinating mirror of the characters in Broken, and the story we wanted to tell.”
The starting point for the entire grade was a series of five look up tables (LUTs) which allowed Hall and his team to emulate the different styles reflected in the various photographic references.
“As with any drama series, one of our greatest challenges was consistency. The emulation LUTs alongside Resolve’s ColorTrace proved particularly useful when it came to delivering multiple versions for international distribution. Copying grades across took seconds, rendering a complicated, time-consuming process relatively straight forward.”
VFX for the prime time drama was composited and rendered using Blackmagic Design’s Fusion Studio.
“We had around 90 VFX shots across the series and then many more flares and OFX plugins which we introduced directly through Resolve,” said Hall. “In fact, we even relied on Fusion Connect during the offline assembly edit which afforded us the ability to send VFX shots into Fusion during the offline process as a rough cut. That was incredibly useful once we came to the conform as we were able to simply tweak those early Fusion files based on the online material.”
LA Productions carried out a range of VFX work including the generation of 3D rain particles and sky replacements. “Our production crew shot all of the train footage used on the series in one go. That presented continuity issues when using it across the series. It was our job to make it fit,” Hall explained. “In several instances we needed to add rain to the train window. We did that using Fusion’s particle generator and then applied motion blur to soften those effects and match with the original footage.”
Hall concluded, “DaVinci Resolve and Fusion is an incredibly powerful, node-based workflow that is incredibly quick and very simple to use once you know how. I don’t know of any workflow that’s quicker and more efficient for the conform, grade and VFX on a prime time television drama.”
A Closer Look At Proposed Measures Designed To Curb Google’s Search Monopoly
U.S. regulators are proposing aggressive measures to restore competition to the online search market after a federal judge ruled Google maintained an illegal monopoly for the last decade.
The sweeping set of recommendations filed late Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Justice could radically alter Google's business, including possibly spinning off the Chrome web browser and syndicating its search data to competitors. Even if the courts adopt the blueprint, Google isn't likely to make any significant changes until 2026 at the earliest, because of the legal system's slow-moving wheels.
Here's what it all means:
What is the Justice Department's goal?
Federal prosecutors are cracking down on Google in a case originally filed during near the end of then-President Donald Trump's first term. Officials say the main goal of these proposals is to get Google to stop leveraging its dominant search engine to illegally squelch competition and stifle innovation.
"The playing field is not level because of Google's conduct, and Google's quality reflects the ill-gotten gains of an advantage illegally acquired," the Justice Department asserted in its recommendations. "The remedy must close this gap and deprive Google of these advantages."
Not surprisingly, Google sees things much differently. The Justice Department's "wildly overbroad proposal goes miles beyond the Court's decision," Kent Walker, Google's chief legal officer, asserted in a blog post. "It would break a range of Google products — even beyond search — that people love and find helpful in their everyday lives."
It's still possible that the Justice Department could ease off on its attempts to break up Google, especially if President-elect Donald Trump... Read More