Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/551510
52 CINEMONTAGE / SUMMER 2015 52 CINEMONTAGE / SUMMER 2015 TECH TIPS by Joseph Herman F ilmmaking, of course, is a highly collaborative medium. Editors, cinematographers, production designers, lighting technicians, actors, musicians, animators, compositors and many others all work together to create a unique vision. Hopefully the result is a work of art, whether it is a feature film, music video or commercial. With all this collaboration occurring, it's important that everyone is able to give his or her feedback during the course of a project. Traditionally, however, the review and approval process wasn't that easy, unless everybody happened to be in the same room. In the bad old days, getting other people to review work meant sending a tape around to everyone via FedEx. Then came Vimeo and YouTube. But what if you wanted to do things like have everyone watch the video in sync, as if they were sitting in the same room? Or suppose you wanted people to be able to leave comments on specific frames in the video. To do that (and more), you need Frankie. Frankie is a useful and versatile interactive tool by Cospective that allows editors, directors, producers, effects supervisors and production designers to conduct review and approval sessions for videos during post- production. These people can be in the same building or on different continents. All everyone needs is some kind of a computer and an Internet connection. You might be familiar with Cospective's other product, cineSync, which you can think of as Frankie's bigger brother. Also designed for review and approval, cineSync is designed for feature film productions that require locally hosted content and high levels of security. On the other hand, Frankie — being browser-based with cloud-hosted content — is ideal for commercials, indie projects and shorts. With Frankie, you can invite colleagues and clients to a session where everyone can interactively review and discuss a video or work-in-progress. When you play the video, everyone sees what you see. Pause the video, and it pauses for everyone. If someone has a comment about a specific frame on the video, he can simply add it by typing it in for that frame. For example, you might have a frame where you want the music to swell up or a sound effect to happen. Just leave a note to that regard. Another nice thing about Frankie, besides synchronized playback and the ability to make notes, are the drawing tools that let you sketch or write on a Frankie Goes Hollywood; axle Simplifies Data Management Frankie lets you make notes for specific frames and also lets you draw on those frames with a set of drawing tools.