Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1030364
www.postmagazine.com 15 POST SEPTEMBER 2018 INDIE FILM Peter. "I took key scenes from throughout the movie and tried to find the overall look and quickly realized there wasn't one due to the use of so many different cameras during the shoot. "After the first grading session, we decided to just make every scene in itself look as good as it gets, while trying to be as consistent as possible overall. I had to face the reality that the challenges for color grading were numerous." According to Peter, the film has around 2,000 edits. "Often when I started with one scene, and then moved on to a sec- ond scene, I would try to match the mate- rial from the different cameras; however, each shot may have been in a different city or country, or maybe shot even two years apart. So, lighting and backgrounds would have changed a lot. I wished we could have gone the route of XML from Premiere, but that wasn't possible for sev- eral reasons. The biggest factor was that with all the different cameras and codecs, Steffen was working with a lot of sub-se- quences in Adobe Premiere, which back then didn't easily translate into Scratch. Furthermore, he used numerous re-times and time-warps." Fortunately, Assimilate was willing to help the brothers out by adding some new functions. For instance, to copy grades based on the slot number/ position in the CONstruct (timeline). "We didn't need to take the scenic route," says Peter. "The end result is very satisfying from having overcome all the challenges. Our biggest concern was, 'Will the movie flow?'" During the next few months, Steffen re-rendered the movie output as 10-bit DPX several times. For example, when- ever a batch of new VFX shots was ready or when he made small changes in the edit. Peter then took a reference H.264 and also made the edit changes in Scratch by hand. By the end of 2017, Peter was over- booked with jobs so he brought in color grader, Gavin Haughey, who jumped on board with Ingenium as his first huge task. "We then split-up two reels to work on, one reel each, which at the end of the day can easily be saved and loaded back into Scratch even if we worked on two differ- ent workstations." Instead of uploading large ProRes files for preview with 85-minute run times, they copied the CONstructs via Teamviewer onto the workstation at Steffen's suite so he could watch the movie without dealing with downloads. They just had to ensure everybody was working on the same fold- er hierarchy and drive letter. "With Scratch's powerful media brows- er, remapping a DPX sequence is not a big deal, especially if you only do it once or twice a week for approval screenings," says Peter. In January 2018, Peter moved into a new office and they had to lay down the work on Ingenium for a while. "Luckily, the VFX also needed more time," he adds. "So, we postponed the last finishing touches of the film, with all VFX included, to the end of April and had a better, larger projector-screening capability there. "Gavin and I continued to work on the reels together, saving CONstructs, import- ing CONstructs and getting new DPX files from Steffen once he rendered them out from Premiere. We transferred the whole movie about seven times from Steffen's computer to our workstations." They worked completely in Rec. 709 and rendered ProRes 444 out of Scratch, which was then loaded in Premiere to render as DCP with sound and subtitles (for festivals). After a DCP test screening in a movie theater, they had one last grad- ing and finishing session and then, finally, Ingenium was graded! "While it was a monumental col- or-grading project, with a cumbersome workflow, we were always able to keep track of everything," says Peter. "We were confident the Scratch tools were up to the task, and with our many years of post production experience, we knew it would all come together. This film just needed some time, some screenings, some itera- tions and patience to make it work. But in the end, that's what filmmaking and post production is all about: finding solutions to challenges and always striving to get to the 100 percent result." As of today, Peter says he has worked on about 500 projects with Scratch and every job brings something new to the table. "I still discover new functions in Scratch, which usually are easy to transfer into daily workflow. Technical support is always there from Assimilate and they re- ally listen and act quickly on the problems or feature requests from users. I've been able to send a request via email and the next day a new release of the software is downloadable. Pretty awesome!" Steffen adds, "The resulting graded im- ages turned out to be cinematic, moody and dark, exactly what I love for a genre like this. Not only were all the different camera looks ironed out, but also Peter and Gavin managed to add a consistent charismatic mood and style to every scene, exceeding my hopes and expecta- tions by far. "I also came away from this project very impressed with the realtime feed- back and powerful features of Scratch. We had all the features I could hope for and the ability to easily share projects across multiple machines by copying CONstructs (timelines). It has secured my trust as our main grading software for professional use in commercials and feature films." The final edit has 2,000 cuts. Production was split between two DPs. Shooting VFX sequences.