Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/19885
Color Mill streamlines 127 Hours bits & pieces S ALT LAKE CITY — Color Mill (www.colormill. net), here, handled the w orkflow for the feature 127 Hours, which details the story of hiker Aron Ralston, who amputated his lower right arm to free himself after being pinned down by a boulder for five days. The Danny Boyle-di- rected film was shot digitally in Utah, and rather than send the reusable media to an out-of- state facility, a lab was set up close to the production. The main set was a replica of the canyon where the hiker was trapped (pictured), and the cramped space made it tough to use traditional film cameras. In- stead, digital cameras, with their smaller form factor,were used. Camera tests w ere con- ducted, mostly with Silicon Imaging’s SI-2K and the Canon’s Mark IV. LA’s HD Camera Rentals provided the SI-2K rigs.A rig using the CMOS imaging sensor block tethered to a ruggedized laptop for direct to disk recording was selected. Rapid Films was the production company for the project. It was initially estimated that each crew would produce two hours of footage daily on the SI-2K cameras, generating about a terabyte of data per day. Three additional camera formats — Canon Mark IV, Redlake Y5 and DV — were also part of the mix. Some film was shot and sent to Fotokem for processing. David Cummins, head of post at Color Mill, said the studio quickly became aware of the project’s chal- lenges. A strategy needed to be put in place to process and protect large amounts of data, create Avid rushes and distribute dailies.The four key areas of concern were: content security and protection; lab turnaround time; quality control; and compatibility with the DI facility in London, which had to conform the Cineform and other media formats, and link to 2K camera package, HD Camera Rentals provided 1 Beyond Wrangler Dude stations. Color Mill’s on-set data managers used the Wranglers to playback video to verify recording.This was the first step of the QC process to flag any issues and notify the DIT of any problems.The data managers then copied each media chip to two hot-swappable drives using onboard sum check software for verification. Drives were then sent to Color Mill’s lab while the or iginal camera chips stayed with production. Each chip was marked as an “exposed (digital) negative” and stayed with the data manager until the chips were cleared for reuse. 1 Beyond offload copy stations were set up in the facility, and each camera crew was treated as a sepa- rate unit. Lasson chose Cache-A’s LTO-4 for the tape archive.After the content was backed up, the data was processed for various formats: DNxHD36 for the Avid rushes, H.264 and MPEG for dailies. Lasson de- vised a pathway to ensure the Canon Burst mode files and the Redlak e high-speed media w ould tr ack through the Avid rushes through the final DI. the Avid picture cut. Color Mill colorist/digital cinema specialist Russ Las- son realized the advantage of designing the lab, in part, based around the on-set workflow. As part of the SI- Blue Room’s ROAR PSA N EW YORK — Blue Room has com- pleted work on a PSA that helps re- brand ROAR, Animal Planet’s non-profit partnership program, which is designed to help fund animal or ganizations lik e the ASPCA,The World Wildlife Fund and the American Humane Association. The PSA encourages viewers to “ROAR” — Reach Out, Act, and Respond — by v olunteering at shelter s in their neighborhood, raising funds for animals in need, and adopting pets. Blue Room (blue- roomnyc.com) shot a variety of elements practically using both a Red camera and still camera for creating a stop-motion effect. Sequences of still images and jump cuts were employed to help the visuals move rhythmically and also give the spots a crisp and modern look that will appeal to Animal Planet’s target audience. The PSA was edited on an Avid system. Brian Aumueller directed the PSA for Blue Room and Chris Gargani served as ex- ecutive producer. Robert Aumer was the DP. Paul Waszak and Steve Harper acted as art directors/lead animators. Jun Sik Na pro- vided animation as well. David Gargani was editorial director; Greg Kiernan and Michael Kardis handled the :30 edit. Digieffects releases VFX plug-in suite W ILMINGTON,NC — Digieffects (www.digieffects.com) has launched Delirium V.2, a new suite of 45 visual effects plug-ins. Delerium was originally introduced nearly 10 years ago, and the product has thousands of active users to date.The Version 2 release offers an updated 64-bit compatible code base, significant speed and performance enhancements and a number of new capabilities, including select ef- fects from Berserk and Walker Effects. Additionally, the release has been optimized for use with many of today’s popular editing and ef- fects platforms, including Adobe Creative Suite 5.The effects are grouped into four different categories: Natural Forces; Special Effect Elements; Patterns, Distortions & Style Filters; and Lighting & Glow Effects. New compositing tools are also included. Pricing is $299 for new users; a $99 upgrade is available for existing customers. 4 Post • November 2010 www.postmagazine.com