Target’s series of 2009 holiday ads for the web are clever takes on the more humorous and very human aspects of gift giving. Emery Wells at Katabatic Digital NYC (www.katabatic.tv) enhances their cleverness with expert 4K post production for five spots recently shot with the RED ONE 4K digital camera.
Director Josh Miller notes, “It made sense to shoot with RED for high quality data acquisition since the deliverables would be digital. With Emery being at the forefront of digital media, he has a deep expertise that made the color grading and finishing in the <a href="www.assimilateinc.com.“>SCRATCH 4K workflow a straightforward, streamlined process. We did the conform and color grading in the same room, on the same system, and were able to enhance and tweak the imagery to make the brightly colored Christmas tones pop. Emery’s a pro and a great resource to me for the other RED-based projects I’m working on.”
“For color grading, the challenge was a balancing act of making the classic, bright, saturated colors of Christmas colors punchy yet ensuring skin tones weren’t unnatural. We also needed to keep the color hues consistent throughout the five ads,” says Emery Wells, digital colorist and founder of Katabatic. “Because the <a href="www.assimilateinc.com.“>SCRATCH software works directly with the native RED RAW files, there’s no transcoding and degradation of the data. We can see the RED material and begin color grading immediately. This means we can fully exploit the wide color gamut that the RED RAW images provide.”
The five Target spots were all graded and finished within two days and mastered at 1080p so that a variety of deliverables could be created from one source. Wells notes, “At Katabatic we’ve built a cutting edge infrastructure that handles 4K just as easily as SD. So, you might come in today to create a spot for the web, but because we always master in HD, that same spot can be repurposed tomorrow for broadcast or even cinema projection. Some clients have started taking advantage of the ultra high-rez imagery for companion print campaigns. We can pull print quality stills from the finished ads at no additional cost to the client, which tends to go over quite well with them.”
The five holiday spots for Target were spearheaded by Bill Melton of Schematic, an interactive agency in Los Angeles that creates branding experiences for digital platforms. The cut was made at Final Cut, New York City.
About Katabatic Digital
Katabatic Digital (NYC) is a boutique media company that blends creativity with technology to provide 2K and 4K digital post production services for high-quality visual projects such as ad campaigns, music videos, and TV episodes. Katabatic provides the RED ONE Digital 4K camera for the shoot and uses the <a href="www.assimilateinc.com.“>SCRATCH Digital Process Solution for full, real-time post production, including conform, color grading, dailies, client reviews, and finishing. Their client list for the high-end advertising market includes major household brands, including Target, Marriott, Snickers, CocaCola, Pillsbury, Pfizer, MillerCoors, Crisco, KFC, Citibank, CVS Pharmacy, Rocawear and more. www.katabatic.tv
About ASSIMILATE
ASSIMILATE™ is transforming post production of visually complex imagery projects with its <a href="www.assimilateinc.com.“>SCRATCH® Digital Process Solution, the essential mix for a real-time, resolution-independent data pipeline. Along with data management, the <a href="www.assimilateinc.com.“>SCRATCH software features a rich set of DI and post tools for working in RED 4K, stereoscopic 3D, HD, SD, film, of any combination there of. ASSIMILATE is committed to empowering the broad spectrum of creative and post professionals with state-of-the-art, easy-to-use, data-centric solutions that deliver optimal price/performance. To learn more about <a href="www.assimilateinc.com.“>SCRATCH and to access user case studies, see www.assimilateinc.com.
