Award winning drama, “The Exploding Girl” (2010), starring Zoe Kazan of “Revolutionary Road,” makes its theatrical premiere on March 12 at New York City’s Landmark Sunshine Theater. Working on a typically tight indie budget and schedule, the filmmaker’s challenge was to get the highest quality feature at the lowest possible cost. Robust digital cinema tools fit the requirements for shooting and post production: a combination of the RED ONE™ 4K Digital Camera and ASSIMILATE’s SCRATCH® 4K Post Workflow at Katabatic Digital in New York City.
The Why Behind RED-SCRATCH 4K
Jason Diamond, co-founder of MBS Productions and executive producer for “The Exploding Girl” notes, “By shooting in a 4K digital format with the RED camera, we were able to take a documentary approach keeping the camera rolling rather than limiting actors to one or two takes as we would have with film. This gave us film-quality imagery within a lot of footage we could work with, including impromptu moments among the actors that we were able to work into different scenes.”
DP Eric Lin shot the drama with the RED camera (build 16 in August of 2008) using only available, natural light to achieve a melancholic, restrained and meditative look, befitting the story of a young woman looking for love to fill the void of loneliness.
“When working with RED, it’s best to plan your post workflow at the onset of the project to avoid any work-arounds with the 4K material. We knew we wanted to grade and finish the project in SCRATCH because it offers a real-time workflow that works directly with the native RED RAW files without any transcoding,” says Diamond. “We knew Katabatic Digital’s track record and had confidence in their team. They have the professional post-production talent and skills, as well as the SCRATCH system, to bring out the best in the 4K material.”
Emery Wells, digital color artist and founder of Katabatic, notes, “The RED camera and SCRATCH make for a very straightforward 4K workflow. We transferred the RED RAW R3D files to SCRATCH, and then did the conform, color grading, client reviews, and finishing without a hitch – and, all in three days. Dan Devine did the color grade to subtly enhance the emotions and moods of the characters and give it an elegant finish.”
Wells adds, “This was a low-budget film with big intentions. It’s a beautifully understated film with a natural quality that wouldn’t be attainable any other way given the budget. The feature had a complete 4K workflow, from the shoot, to the ingest, grade, and finish, including a 4K master. We never had to leave the RED RAW world to add effects or other media, which is fairly uncommon. By keeping the project lean and mean we actually got the best results possible.”
4K: Smart Choice for Indies
Jason Diamond and his brother Josh Diamond are first and foremost filmmakers, editors, and then producers. They founded MBS Productions in New York over twelve years ago out of a love and fascination for what was considered geek/bleeding-edge technology and how it could give them and other artists creative freedom and useful tools.
“We’ve worked on numerous indie projects – a fantastic market full of powerful storytelling – and they need robust, yet affordable filmmaking solutions. For indie filmmakers, who are always working under tight budget constraints, the combined digital workflow of RED and SCRATCH is the best way to go for shooting and post production,” says Diamond. “As with this film, the RED camera provides an abundance of footage, and together with SCRATCH, you have a very flexible, efficient and streamlined workflow as compared to film; and the high quality results are comparable to 35mm yet at a fraction of the cost.”
Wells notes, “Another time and money saving aspect of the RED-SCRATCH workflow is the creation of one master from which several formats for deliverables can be made. For this feature, the first deliverable was a tape in HDcam for the Berlin Festival. We also provided a DPX master so that film out or a DCI package and other deliverables can be created when needed.”
Written, directed, and edited by Bradley Rust Gray, The Exploding Girl debuted at the 2009 Berlin International Film Festival, and had its U.S. premiere at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival, where Zoe Kazan took home the Best Actress award. Producer Karin Chien won the Piaget Producers Award at the 2009 Independent Spirit Awards for this film. Oscilloscope Laboratories has picked up the distribution for all media (2010) in the U.S. and Canada.
