Post Magazine

August 2011

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D P S [ ] with us about how to en- hance the musical numbers and give them the specific mood and feel we had spoken about in prepro." Besides creating signature color for each musical number in You,Me & The Circus, Curreri concentrated on "matching the extreme looks" captured by Red and the Canon EOS 5D used for additional coverage, Martinez recalls. "It's becoming a more and more common part of the workflow to match different for- mats and make everything look seamless." Lleo tries to ensure as much as possible that the projects he shoots are finished at In a Place Post."Not because it's our business but because I know we will [ ] you put a sound up there, that's where the audience gets their bang for the buck. They're hearing it come from where the character is looking and it puts the audience on the bridge." During the bridge scene, the audience is right there in the middle of the action. "The suspension bridge collapse is pretty spectacular," reports Peder- son. "We're on the bridge with all the characters as they go through the mayhem. Imagine that you're in the middle of a bridge that's about a half mile wide and it starts to break apart.There's a lot of sound.This was something we wanted to push and we made it as big as we could." As they went through the mix, the visual effects continued to be refined."During an early temp mix the picture looked like a fairly static bridge, and then suddenly chunks of asphalt fell off. It looked like the pieces just gave way.As the visual effects continued to refine the bridge was no longer static and breaking in pieces, but it was now swinging.There was a lot more detail in the cables and pieces of debris, and metal snapping. It was those elements that made it so real. Steve is a real stickler for authenticity. So if a piece of bridge collapses and a chunk of concrete weighing two tons is going to fall two hundred feet, how many seconds does it take to make that fall before it punches into the bay? A lot of work, a lot of math goes into this to make it feel real. Then ultimately when they get that detail in the picture, we would bring that detail in the sound to match.We were con- stantly evolving up to match the visuals.The end result is pretty spectacular.With the bridge swinging, there was a lot of panning left to right.When we're on the bridge, we're using all the speakers. There is a lot & C O L O R I S TS have more quality control and more control over how much we can push the image. That gives me peace of mind.And something creative always hap- pens with Milton and Bob that's very satisfying." Last year Lleo shot Tsuyako in Japan capturing images for the short period drama on Red.The film has been winning on the festival circuit in the US and Japan. The most challenging aspect of the shoot came when Lleo had to shoot a train station scene. Because the film was a period piece, production had to make five train stations work as one. For this reason, Lleo had to make five company moves over a two-day period. "I was quite concerned while executing the scene going on in the surrounds.The objective was to get it off the screen, because what's happening on that screen is what is happening all around you.That in- cludes panning voices.When people were running for their lives, I'd have groups running, and it would sound like they were in the theater. It won't be as pointed as 7.1, but you definitely get the movement. And the movement is so fast that it never sat in one speaker. They'd be moving around the theater. It really im- merses you in the mayhem." About choosing 5.1 over 7.1, Pederson says,"The choice for 5.1 was the right fit for this film. In the fu- ture there will be a project where the filmmakers and the sound supervisor decide that 7.1 is the way to go because there will be things that they want to specifi- cally put on the back wall.We'll go there. It's a differ- ent mix in terms of delineating things, but I also think a lot of that can be nuance. How important is it? Steve, the director, came to the mix not wanting to compromise anything. He wanted a big soundtrack. He came to the mix with a sophisticated ear. Steve is a technical guy. He's very astute and really into the process. He was there with us for the entire process, from the beginning of the day to the end of the day. He basically wanted to see how the soundtrack wall was built, brick by brick. He was really into the process and I feel that his standards were high and we achieved what he was going for." As more cinemas become capable of digital play- back, the number of audio channels can increase well beyond 7.1. Says Pederson, "Once we get off the 35mm print, and this is going to happen within the next five years or so, it's all going to be digital. It's all going to be played off a hard drive,so we're no longer COMPOSITING [ ] that decision was made halfway through production. "Even though it was a full CG movie, we had written plug-ins in Eyeon Fusion to be able to render the second eye and eliminate the need to go back to 3D renders for the bulk of the show." Stodolny sees the line between 2D and 3D blur- ring."It used to be that you needed to look at one final image to tell if something integrated well. Now to be a compositor you need an understanding of how the two images work in stereo, how animation 46 Post • August 2011 works and how texturing works.You need to know a lot of different jobs, and there are a lot more tools to learn than there used to be." TIP: Stodolny,who came into the industry from the cinematography world, teaches a photography and cin- ematography class to compositors/lighters before every project."The best thing for people to understand is what's being captured within the frame and what's happening within the lens.A lot of artists will add things like flares and light effects, but if they don't actually www.postmagazine.com know how the camera lens is picking up that informa- tion it's hard to layer that properly within the image." He encourages artists to watch movies and freeze frame on shots with and without VFX and to shoot HD video and study it. "A lot of artists forget about motion because they are looking for color ac- curacy and film grain at a frame-by-frame level. Everything we do is imitating photography, so if you understand photography you'll know immediately what to look for." because the film's train sequence had to look like it all happened at the same time, but it was tough to get everything to match with the light changing day to day," he says."Thanks to Milton, we were able to achieve that.Working with the colorist, a cinematographer is not only able to achieve a great look but also tell the story without pulling the audience out of the story." After doing considerable research Lleo suggested ac- quiring Pablo because the post house was "looking for a machine that could do a bit of everything, not just color," says Martinez."We wanted to do color, editorial and beauty work within the same session. It's been perfect for what we do here." AUDIO FOR FILMS consumed with the real estate allotted for the sound- track. Once we are digital, and the sound is some- where on a hard drive, it's then a question of how many channels do you want? Seven? Ten? Twelve? The- aters will definitely be examining increased channels of sound to heighten the experience of going to the theater. Suddenly there is something flying over your head, or parked under your seat.That's being a little far fetched, but you get the idea.These are the kinds of things that will immerse the audience even more in the movie.The theaters can say, come out and see the movie in 3D with 11.2 sound. Let's see you do that at home." The film was mixed on an AMS Neve DFC Gem- ini. Playback was through a three-way speaker system using McCauley sub speakers,Turbo Sound for the low frequencies, Community speakers for the mid- range, and JBL 2445 for the high."Brad Sherman, the other mixer on the film,mixed through the DFC but the pre-dubs remained virtual, so he had a Pro Tools D-Command available for him to be able to go in and manipulate the channels of the virtual pre-dubs," ex- plains Pederson. "What's happening more and more with these complex films, especially with digital ef- fects, they're not pre-dubbing them in a traditional way anymore, where things are committed. For ex- ample, whatever the cable snapping sound is, tradi- tionally it would be printed, and then the picture changes would come in and now the cable snap comes in later and it's a little bit longer of a visual ef- fect, then that pre-dub is no good.Well in theory, if it's virtual then we can go all the way back to the original effect, and we can stretch it and play with it. It gives you flexibility." cont. from 23 cont. from 29 cont. from 33

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