Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/477283
DIGITAL INTERMEDIATE www.postmagazine.com 19 POST MARCH 2015 We create a template that is applied to files as they come in. We conform from camera original files. For Alexa materi- al, they are untreated Log C. That's our starting point. We pull them in their pur- est form so that I have complete range to go wherever I want to go with contrast and color." All of the shows the studio works on have visual effects that require Porter to do a digital rendering or background painting of the elements so that the visu- al effects can be put in the proper space. "After I color the elements, we send them to the VFX house in the form of a DPX array. They do the visual effects on top of that and send it back to us. I put it back into my timeline and match to whatever is around it. In terms of television deliv- erables, it's either an HDCAM SR or a file such as a ProRes 4:2:2 HQ. We are about to begin delivering to Netflix, which re- quires ProRes 4:4:4 wrapped in an IMF." WORLEYWORKS FINISHING PAKISTAN'S FIRST ANIMATED FEATURE Brooklyn, NY's WorleyWorks (www.wor- leyworks.com) was founded by Greg and Minah Worley in 2007, and evolved from a motion-capture animation facility that provided pre-visualization for directors and feature films such as Darren Aronof- sky's Noah. Boasting its cut, color and delivery services, the studio also provides support at all stages of post, including workflow design, suites for editorial and complete digital intermediate services. "The term [DI] is outdated but the name survives," says Jack Reynolds, head of post at WorleyWorks. "It's generally considered to be relating to motion pic- ture finishing rather than other delivery platforms, which traditionally required — and still does to some extent — a very specialist knowledge base and skillset. It's still useful in lieu of something more appropriate." The studio is currently working on Pa- kistan's first animated feature, 3 Bahadur, with Oscar-winner Sharmeen Obaid-Chi- noy. According to Reynolds, the film was "animated in Pakistan by a small but tal- ented group of animators and rendered to EXR in linear. We are lucky enough to be providing a full finish, which includes conform, color and mastering." Reynolds says the team conformed and finished using "our Mistika, which allowed us to employ an invertible GLSL curve to convert the files from linear and various methods to access the extended range available within the files. The final deliverable was a DCP, in addition to this, for posterity we created an extensive archive of the project. Our processes are designed to be non-destructive and future proofing for things like extended dynamic range, which are important to us, and increasingly our clients. We de- livered on just a regular EXT3-formatted drive and archived to LTO." The film will be released at some point this year. LIGHT IRON HANDLES BAD ASSES' 4K DI Light Iron (www.lightiron.com), with operations in LA and New York, has been collaborating with the team at Silver Nitrate for the better part of a decade. Recently, the studio partnered with di- rector Craig Moss to provide DI services for Bad Asses on the Bayou, the latest theatrical title in the franchise, which is set for release this month. The film stars Danny Trejo and Danny Glover as Frank Vega and Bernie Pope, who join forces in Louisiana in an attempt to find a kid- napped friend. Light Iron provided 4K DI services for the film, which was shot using Red Epic cameras, but also incorporates repur- posed material. "They would use a scene from a movie that was already shot and take the scene of the larger movie and cut it into their movie to make their mov- ie feel larger," explains Paul Geffre, VP of post production at Light Iron. "In the case of Bad Ass, they shot it Epic, but there's a pretty good-size chunk from a movie called Air America in the early '90s. They went back and scanned that at 4K, and we cut that into the movie. It was color corrected and we worked the digital footage around it to make it fit in the picture." Paul Sage served as colorist on the feature and Matt Blackshear was the conform artist. "You have to stretch your money as far as you can stretch it, and there are so many ways for filmmakers to do it that they never had before," says Geffre of the creative use of material. WorleyWorks' Jack Reynolds says the studio is using its Mistika system on the animated 3 Bahadur. Light Iron's Paul Geffre (left) says his studio completed 4K DI services for Bad Asses on the Bayou. CONTINUED ON PG 44