Post Magazine

October 2013

Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/202179

Contents of this Issue

Navigation

Page 19 of 51

Posting TV Series latter being especially useful for manipulating the timing of jokes. "I can audition every possible timing very quickly.  A matter of a few frames can make a huge difference." Her involvement with the show continues as episodes move to Smart Post Sound.  "I spot sound the day I lock and attend every sound mix," she notes.  "A lot of people probably don't go to the mix because they don't have time.  But sound is very important to comedy; I'm in tune to what the producers want so it's really valuable for me to attend. Just turning up the volume of a line a bit can make it funnier." Modern Videofilm handles the show's final color and finishing. Modern Family is shot on Arri's Alexa and edited in Avid Media Composer 6.5. 18  BANSHEE The Cinemax original series, Banshee, the name of a not-so-quiet Amish town where an ex-con has assumed the identity of a murdered sheriff and continues his criminal ways, has its on-set color and data management and in-editorial services performed by Hollywood-based Light Iron (www.lightiron.com). "The show is shot on location in North Carolina, and the camera team needed an onset system with a small footprint that's able to go down a lot of back roads and into demanding environments and still perform well," says Light Iron senior producer Paul Geffre. Enter Light Iron's Lily Pad, a compact on-set solution for downloading media and creating and setting color looks. "It allows DP Christopher Faloona to look critically at a shot and use Colorfront Express Dailies to set color looks with DIT Jimmy Cobb, who operates Lily Pad," Geffre explains. "It gives the cinematographer more creative control. Faloona captures Banshee to Arri Alexa ProRes. Lily Pad works in conjunction with Outpost, Light Iron's in-editorial services system back in LA. Lily Pad copies camera source media and sound files to encrypted shuttle drives, which are sent daily to LA. Outpost operator Drew Kilcoin copies and archives the source files and applies the color created on set using Express Dailies. He syncs all sound using the metadata from the sound files to name clips with the same scene and take information, creates Avid offline media for editorial and makes Pix files for the executives' review. "Outpost is tied to their Avid Unity so the offline files were available immediately with no re-ingesting," Geffre points out. "Coproducer Allen Marshall Palmer was impressed with the system's ability to save not only money but time. That's one of Outpost's most powerful features." Technicolor handles the show's final color and finishing. Post • October 2013 For Season 1, the production used only the Outpost system. After discussions with the camera team, the Lily Pad was deployed on-set in North Carolina for Season 2. "Adding Lily Pad ensures that what Chris and Jimmy created on-set was replicated exactly in the dailies process in LA," says Geffre. "Lily Pad and Outpost are meant to be an end-toend system, to work together. By creating an EXD color profile on-set, the pressure to properly apply the color looks is off the dailies creator because it happens automatically. The entire production has a high level of confidence that what was created on set will be seen in the dailies and editorial." Geffre says "the biggest compliment" he gets from clients like Banshee is "not hearing from them. We set them up in early April, and the systems worked as they were supposed to without needing a lot of handholding. Lily Pad and Output were run by two people on opposite sides of the country: Jimmy in North Carolina and Drew in LA. Their consistent operation meant one less thing for the production team to concern itself with." Season 2 of Banshee is set to air in 2014. BLACKLIST NBC's new Blacklist, starring James Spader as a notorious fugitive who surrenders to the FBI with a list of criminals and terrorists only he can help them find, is following a 4K post workflow at Sony Pictures Entertainment's new Colorworks 4K Television facility in Culver City, CA (www.spe.sony.com). Colorist Randy Starnes says he's handling the series as he would an HD- or film-originated series, but there are important differences. "It's standard operating procedure for me, but these are big files, so it takes a lot of horsepower to move them," he says. "4K gives me more resolution and 16-bit color depth, which is much closer to original color negative. So we're back to where most of us love to be." Blacklist is a multi-camera Sony F55 show. DP Yasu Tanida shot the pilot with Frank Prinzi coming on board at the start of Season 1. Arthur Albert is the current DP. The show shoots primarily in New York. "I have the luxury of working with raw data," Starnes says. "But Arthur communicates directly with colorist Aurora (Rory) Gordon at Sony's 24p Dailies Lab for an approximation of what he wants scenes to look like." Starnes meets with Gordon at the start of principle photography and conferred with the DPs after the first day of dailies for the pilot and, later, the series. Gordon "flags" www.postmagazine.com Starnes if she spots any concerns and comes to see the final color correction, he reports. "I'm not color timing through a LUT, but use reference [footage] in sync with the final picture to give me a sense of what people have seen. If they don't say that's counter to what they want, I just go for a pleasing look and try to bring out depth." DP Tanida graded the pilot with Starnes aiming for a "very clean look. For the most part, I let the image and lighting dictate the look I put on it," says Starnes. "We have a lot Longmire editor Adam Bluming says his cutting style is often driven by a scene's music. of different settings: the prison, FBI control rooms, vans, practical locations and visual effects shots." All of the data is stored on what Starnes calls "the TV production backbone," a SAN, which currently has more than one-half petabyte of storage . "It comes to online editor Chris Meagher at Colorworks who conforms in 4K on a Baselight 2. I'm working on a Baselight 8 system, so I pick up the files off the SAN; Chris can drop in any VFX that I'm waiting for in the background while I'm working." A typical episode takes two days for final color. While Starnes notes that Colorworks 4K Television's technical facility is state of the art, "if the whole team doesn't really care about every project, then the technical plant doesn't mean a thing. Everyone has been hand picked to be here. This is our craft. I don't even think about the technical tools after a while. The infrastructure is designed so I can take care of my clients." After all, he regards his role as "the interpreter, the person who enhances the look that the DP has created using the full 4K data. This is the final polish on a collaborative process." At Colorworks 4K Television, Rebecca Moon is the project manager for TV. THE GOOD WIFE, MAD MEN For the last three seasons the CBS hit The Good Wife has used the Autodesk SmokeLustre combination for editorial and color correction, reports Tim Vincent, senior color

Articles in this issue

Links on this page

Archives of this issue

view archives of Post Magazine - October 2013