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CHANNELING TV'S NEWEST SHOWS www.postmagazine.com 24 POST OCTOBER 2015 for the miniseries. Headquartered in Toronto and with offices in LA, Mas- ter Key has an expertise in this arena, with VFX plate credits for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Covert Affairs, Grimm, Royal Pains and 12 Monkeys. Heroes Reborn, however, has a world- wide scope not found in most TV shows. When an episode shooting last spring called for a girl to walk across the arctic tundra, Master Key was tasked with finding a suitable frozen vista. "We shot a double on a glacier three hours from Rekjavik, Iceland," says owner and presi- dent Elan Dassani. "There were giant ice fields 40 miles in every direction." Dassani's brother and partner, Rajeev, helmed a plate shoot in downtown Tokyo featuring helicopter aerials. "There aren't that many good [stock] plates of Tokyo, so we hired a helicopter and zoomed in on a huge Tokyo square," he explains. "When the plate was matched with greenscreen footage shot in Toronto, it looked like the character was in the square." Rajeev also captured extensive Tokyo stock footage for future use. Another shoot took Master Key to Paris for a chase sequence featuring the Eiffel Tower and other landmarks. An epic desert landscape was found in Jordan after Dassani sent producers photos of deserts in Argentina, Jordan and Morocco, and Iceland's black sand deserts. "Shows don't normally send units to those places, but we're a proven entity — we've shot in 25 countries," he notes. "We have a network of crews around the world to call, and I can direct plates or effects units with stunt people and doubles." Master Key uses 2.5K and 4K Black- magic Production Cinema cameras to shoot VFX plates, and a Blackmagic Pocket Cinema camera for stunt work. The cameras are also deployed for ele- ment shoots. "I had been kitting out Red to be as small as it can be, but I need a camera I can put in a backpack, take anywhere in the world and get a plate in one day," says Dassani. "The Blackmagic cameras deliver high-quality in a small package. The integrated battery keeps the form factor really small; for most shoots I just bring the camera and a lens, nothing else." Master Key shot the Tokyo plates and about half of the Iceland plates with the 4K Blackmagic Production Cinema cam- era; the rest of the Iceland plates were shot with an Arri Amira. The Iceland shoot included a drone. "We used DJI's Inspire1 professional drone, which was impressive," Dassani recalls. "It's powerful enough to fly in very high winds atop a glacier and be stable. It has its own 4K camera with a three-ax- is gimbal, so it's rock steady for but- ter-smooth shots. And it fits in one piece of checked luggage. We captured huge, epic aerials, which are so crazy looking that viewers will think they are VFX." Master Key's VFX plates are "pro- cessed like normal dailies," Dassani says. Footage is downloaded to hard drives and sent to the dailies house for Stargate to incorporate in its VFX shots. MINORITY REPORT Set 11 years after the events of the Tom Cruise blockbuster Minority Report, the eponymous Fox TV series serves up the sci-fi premise of crime prediction in a police procedural. Fans of the movie may be surprised by the look of the show, which presents a different view of mid- 21st century America. "When post producer Dieter Ismagil first discussed the show with me, he referenced the movie, which had a stark, cold, sanitary, futuristic look — a desaturated, bleach bypass look," says colorist George Manno, who performs final color at Level 3, Burbank, a Deluxe company (www.level3post.com). "For television, they want a more inviting sci-fi look that will draw in the audi- ence. It will be less harsh and more colorful, softer and warmer." Set in Washington, DC, the show's pi- lot was shot in Toronto then production moved to Vancouver. Alternating DPs David Moxness, CSC, and Barry Donlevy shoot the series on Arri Alexa. "Dailies are done near-set in Vancou- ver. A DIT applies a couple of custom LUTs the DPs created together, then all color and raw files are pushed to LA and stored on our SAN in Burbank," says Manno. When editors finish cutting an episode, an Avid bin is sent to Level 3 where all the picture finishing is done. "I get a DPX stream scaled to Log C," Manno explains. "All the color settings established on-set ride in the Avid Log Exchange list that comes with the dailies and is carried through the bin. The edi- tors provide me with an EDL/CDL, which I apply to build the project. That's our jumping off point." Colorist George Manno performs final color grading on Fox's Minority Report using Blackmagic's DaVinci Resolve.