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editor’s note Offhollywood shoots a 3D stereo movie with Red Epic M By RANDI ALTMAN EDITOR-IN-CHIEF raltman@postmagazine.com ark L. Pederson’s Offhollywood has developed a strategic partnership with fellow New York house The Mol- ecule, a visual effects studio that does TV work for many New York-based shows.The two are now working together on the first independent Red Epic-shot 3D stereo film, called Hellbenders. He met Chris Healer, one of the founders of The Molecule, and immediately hit it off in terms of technology and new ways to develop pipelines. “What got me excited was they were working on developing stuff specific for stereoscopic and reso- lution independence, meaning being able to do 4K finishing in visual effects.We don’t do VFX in-house so we started doing tests together — streamlining high resolution (4K, Red) — and 3D workflows where we are acquiring, managing the media and handling the dailies, and they are doing visual ef- fects. Final finishing and DI is at Offhollywood.” Pederson says Healer is more progressive than a typical VFX shop.“A dirty little secret is many vi- sual effects companies don’t have a real infrastruc- ture; just individual workstations with local stor- age, so it’s not easy for them to do 4K renders. But Chris has custom shared storage and a ren- derfarm built to work with The Foundry’s Nuke and Ocular. He can work in 4K with less overhead POST SCRIPT On-set post I By MARC LOFTUS SENIOR EDITOR mloftus@postmagazine.com than some can work in HD,” he explains. “I got the itch to shoot a high-end, high pro- duction value 3D feature film with lots of CG vi- sual effects. Something that had only really been done with a 100-million-dollar budget at the stu- dio level, and I wanted to kill it with technology and the right people. I found a project but it didn’t have the money. Still, I liked it so much I was able to, with my business partner Aldey Sanchez, con- nect with other producers and got financing.” Hellbenders is now in production, shooting on two Epics in stereo 3D. They are using the new Adam rig from Ele- ment Techniqua, specifically tailored to connect two Epic cameras.On-set dailies are being done on an iPad with Teradek Cube. It captures HD-SDI off one of the cameras and compresses it to H.264 and streams it to an iPad live. “We are capturing stereo dailies in realtime with the Qtake, a product I helped develop and market,” says Pederson.“It’s a high-end video assist playback system that is software-based and runs on a Mac. On the editing side,we are using a ver- sion of Media Composer.” Color grading is via Assimilate Scratch directly from Epic raw files in Offhollywood’s Dolby DI theater. EDIT ORIAL RANDI ALTMAN Editor-in-Chief (516) 797-0884 raltman@postmagazine.com MARC LOFTUS Senior Editor (516) 376-1087 mloftus@postmagazine.com KEN MCGORRY Consulting Editor mcgorry@optonline.net CHRISTINE BUNISH Film& Video RON DICESARE Audio BOB PANK European Correspondent bob.pank@virgin.net DAN RESTUCCIO West Coast Bureau dansweb451@aol.com IAIN BLAIR Film MICHAEL VIGGIANO Art Director mviggiano@postmagazine.com AD VER TISING MARI KOHN National Sales Manager (818) 291-1153 cell: (818) 472-1491 mkohn@postmagazine.com GARY RHODES Eastern & Intl Sales Manager (631)274-9530 cell (516)410-8638 grhodes@copcomm.com CHRIS SALCIDO Account Manager (818) 291-1144 csalcido@copprints.com CUSTOMER SERVICE 620 West Elk Ave, Glendale, CA 91204 csr@postmagazine.com (800) 280 6446 opt 2 (publishing), opt 1 (subscriptions) had a chance to speak with a half dozen post pros that are working on-set this month. But they’re not supervising VFX shots or trou- bleshooting greenscreen shoots.These profes- sionals are overseeing the acquisition of footage in a tapeless workflow. Craig Mumma of LA’s MonkeyButtVFX defines his role as that of a “digital acquisition supervisor.” He uses a Codex recorder to cap- ture material, create backups and deliver files to editorial. See our feature on page 32 for more on “On-Set Post.” Jacob Rosenberg, CTO/partner at LA’s Bandito Brothers, says the duties of an on-set media manager is to get files to editorial.“Our media managers come from the post side of things,” he explains.“We find that a post trained and minded media manager, who knows the edi- torial process, usually does a much better job.” Bandito Brothers’ media manager is responsi- ble for the acquisition of all of the file formats from every camera. He’ll come with an HP mobile workstation featuring the DreamColor display, along with USB 3.0 and Express ports. 2 Post • April 2011 “The Express ports are great if you are shooting with the Alexa, and have an SxS card,“ he explains.“USB 3.0 is perfect because of the speeds that you get going to USB 3.0 drives.The DreamColor monitor is great.” Bandito Brothers specializes in spots and recently worked on projects for BF Goodrich, starring Shaun White,Yokohama,AAA and Mattel, many of which involved shooting with Canon’s 5D.They are also using the 5D for a self-produced feature that’s in the works. “We’ve made a name for ourselves with how we’ve developed the post process for the 5D Mark II,” he says, acknowledging that the camera has some shortcomings.“If you are making Avatar or The Departed and want to have 10-bit color space, clearly that camera is going to pre- sent some challenges. But if you are shooting in controlled environments and know what you get and know your post process,we’ve made magic with the 5D.We have commercials that are airing on television that were shot with the 5D. We know the strengths and weaknesses, and how to get around some of those things.” www.postmagazine.com REPRINTS Reprints (781) 255-0625 • (818) 291-1153 LA SALES office: 620 West Elk Avenue, Glendale, California 91204 (800) 280-6446 WILLIAM R. RITTWAGE President / CEO See us on Post Magazine is published by Post, LLC,a COP communications company. Post does not verify any claims or other information appearing in any of the ad- vertisements contained in the publication, and cannot take any responsibility for any losses or other damages incurred by readers in reliance on such content. Post cannot be held responsible for the safekeeping or return of unsolicited articles, manuscripts, photographs, illustrations or other materials. 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