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September 2013

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If entertainment content for the Web was once regarded as a lesser entity — inferior in creative, execution or quality of the end-product — that's certainly no longer the case. Web series are drawing big audiences eager for a new outlet for drama, comedy, action and animation. And they expect the same quality they see on bigger screens. "It's amazing how much streaming or downloading content on the Web has improved," says Sean Donnelly, senior colorist at Long Island City's East Light Digital. "In the beginning, people would say, 'That's just for the Web. It doesn't really matter [how it looks].' Now, if you're hosting through Vimeo Pro, the quality is comparable to what goes out for your cable system. With a 1080 stream and a decently high bit-rate, things really do matter." THE PROJECTIONISTS The UK-made The Projectionists is a comedy Web series set in Cinema Obscura, the last of the analog movie theaters, whose quirky employees are switching over from sprockets to digital projection. The show is the first Web series for director/producer Ross McClure and writer James Vincent (www.cinemaobscura.org), and its debut season comprises six episodes, each about 10 minutes long. "Knowing the film culture," McClure and Vincent figured making a fulllength indie feature and getting it distributed was beyond their reach. They toyed with the idea of doing The Projectionists as a play or short film, then opted for a Web series. "I was following other independent filmmakers and they were doing Web series," says McClure. "It gives you an international audience without the corporate rigmarole of marketing and sales. And TV is booming at the minute, so maybe someone will see our Web series and like it and want to turn it into a TV series — there's a lot more we wanted to put into it that we didn't have the time or money to do." The Projectionists was three months in prepro before its eight-day shoot in April 2011. McClure and Vincent had worked at the British Film Institute (BFI) and were able to gain access to their projection booths for the shoot, so viewers get a real taste of the old-world technology in use. The movie theater exterior was lensed at North London's Phoenix Cinema. A freelance director and editor who's worked across music videos, shorts, editorial features and branded content, McClure calls The Projectionists "a labor of love. It was completely self-funded; we each kicked in about a £1,500." Two Canon 550D cameras shot simultaneously for maximum coverage. Working in the BFI's projection booths proved especially challenging with its tight, technology-filled spaces. "We had to tiptoe around and a lot of angles were restricted, so a lot of the shots were quite static, almost sitcom-ish," says McClure. "I just didn't have many options when it came to the cut." Despite an efficient shoot that knocked one day off the original schedule, post production for the series stretched over a two-year period. McClure admits that he was still "learning as a filmmaker" during that time, and he went back and tweaked episodes as his post skill set improved. McClure converted the Canon H.264 footage to Apple ProRes with a simple free conversion program. Since the two cameras recorded sound separately, McClure had to manually sync everything before he began to edit. He did a rough cut of the entire series by the end of 2011, spending "any day off on my Mac running Final Cut Pro to get another scene under my belt." McClure employed two sound mixers, Mark Durham in London and Neale Ross in Scotland. Capturing clean sound at the BFI was a challenge given that the facility is built into the south side of Waterloo Bridge and traffic noise was audible. "We couldn't get additional takes. We had no isolated mic tracks and no ADR, so Neale had to edit some minor dialogue points. We couldn't run the projectors at the BFI because they were so noisy and required we run the extractor fans, too, so I added the projector sounds later, which covered up some of the traffic." Neale Ross finished the stereo mix in Avid Pro Tools. The Projectionists was shot in an old movie theater in London, which led to many issues, including a noisy audio track. It was edited in FCP and mixed using Avid Pro Tools. Initially McClure performed the color grading in Final Cut. Over the course of post he learned to use Apple Color and "went back and regraded the entire series." Production involved "quite a few lights on the set,"which delivered "a slightly nostalgic, orangey feel" to the video that the filmmakers wanted. But the lighting outside the booths at the BFI was more "harsh and industrial" by contrast. "Grading helped in this situation," McClure says. "It was a fairly straightforward process." He also did some VFX, replacing the name on the cinema marquee and changing the names of the classic films that appeared on the marquee in each episode. He delivered a QuickTime file for distribution on YouTube this summer. "The series is quite whimsical and playful, and its pace is almost a test for audiences — The Projectionists doesn't exactly explode out of the screen," he laughs. "But I'm happy with what we got considering the universal filmmaking challenges of money and time." VIDEO GAME HIGH SCHOOL Set in the near future where video game play has become the world's most popular competitive sport, Video Game High School is a prestigious institution teaching a curriculum of video games of all genres to an elite study body. The action-comedy Web series, from RocketJump Studios (www.rocketjump.com), Los Angeles launched season two this summer. Each episode runs 30 to 38 minutes and airs on the RocketJump Website and on YouTube. "The series is unique, not only for its mix of genres but also for its focus on quality narrative storytelling. That's not typically seen on the www.postmagazine.com Post • September 2013 19

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