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April 2013

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The Alexa-shot Revolution gets its on-set/near-set solution from Bling Digital. Mango is "equipment agnostic" and configures its rack-mounted near-set solution, in consultation with a show's DP, with Colorfront's On-Set Dailies system or Assimilate's Scratch. "We're also looking at MTI Film's Cortex Control Dailies," Cassio says. "Our system looks like a permanent environment, not a collection of road cases. It's like what the client is accustomed to seeing in a facility." Cassio intends to get the word out to more DPs that Mango's near-set dailies and color solution offers "the same comfort level of a four-wall facility with engineering support 24/7. Once people try it, they love the efficiency and logic of it." REVOLUTION "On a show like Revolution, with multiple units and massive amounts of stunts and action, the amount of footage through the pipeline is pretty huge," declares associate producer Geoff Garrett, who works with co-executive producer Phil Sgriccia on the NBC series. "We use both on-set and near-set dailies solutions with Bling Digital (a division of Sim Digital; www.simdigital.com). On-set we get the color looks they want quickly and focus on backing up material for protection, then Bling does the heavy lifting near-set, focusing on dailies outside the crazy environment of production." Revolution shoots on location in Wilmington, NC, using Arri Alexa as its primary camera with Canon 7D and GoPro cameras supplementing. In North Carolina, Bling maintains a colorist, sync technician, Avid technician and screening techs who prep and distribute the dailies for each day's work. The on-set solution finds the show's DP setting color values with the DIT using FilmLight's Truelight color management system.Truelight is connected directly to the Alexa, enabling the DIT to see what the camera sees in realtime and apply the desired looks. The CDL values are carried across to Avid editorial and ultimately to online finishing at Level 3. With this method, the intent of the DP and director is maintained from on the set to final color and nothing gets "lost in translation," according to Bling's dailies producer, Jesse Korosi. Because the show is so big, it isn't possible to deploy the Truelight system on extra units shooting on location or on vehicles and boats. In that case, "Bling works with the DP and DIT at night to apply the color looks," Garrett points out. To prep dailies, Bling ingests Apple ProRes 444 QuickTimes in Log C color space and applies the CDL values to each take; the files are read by Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve, which marries the two together to produce Avid DNx36 files for editorial. "Bling's North Carolina office utilizes the high-speed fiber pipeline on the Wilmington Screen Gems lot and Aspera point-to-point software to give them a direct high-speed link to the writers and editorial office in Burbank," Garrett explains. "Bling organizes the Avid files, syncing all the audio tracks, embedding CDL information in the files and producing bins for circle takes. Every night, Bling uploads files to our computer in Burbank, which is connected to an Avid ISIS. Even late-night shoots are ready for the editors when they come into work in the morning." In several instances, Bling has even dispatched same-day dailies for a pick-up shot or to meet some last-minute requirement when the show needs to lock. Garrett had previously worked with Bling on the defunct Fox series, Alcatraz, which shot in Vancouver. "We did a fair amount of R&D for those dailies," he recalls. "We're using a lot of the same workflow we established on that show, but now our Avids are connected to an ISIS storage system, which is Ethernet-based, unlike the older Unity, which is fiber-based. So www.postmagazine.com Post0413_022-24,26-27-On setRAV4FINALREAD.indd 23 Post • April 2013 23 3/27/13 2:04 PM

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