Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/585189
CHANNELING TV'S NEWEST SHOWS www.postmagazine.com 25 POST OCTOBER 2015 Live remote collaboration links the col- orist with key players in Vancouver. "I use our live visual Stream Box system, which sends an encrypted signal from Level 3 to a bay at Encore Vancouver equipped with monitors calibrated to match ours," Manno explains. "I'll have a conference call with the DPs, then do a color pass based on their notes. Then directing pro- ducer Greg Beemon reviews the material and sends me notes." Finally, back in LA, the executive pro- ducers review the show on the mix stage and send Manno their notes. Manno grades with Blackmagic Design DaVinci Resolve. "I feel Resolve has the best tracking feature of any of the boxes. That's one of their strong suits," he says. "There's so much pressure in TV produc- tion to shoot more pages every day, so I use the track windows to help make up for the speed of production today." Manno has been impressed by the footage shot by Donlevy and Moxness; Manno worked with Moxness on Fringe and the DP asked him to come on board Minority Report. "David and Barry send me material that's very easy to work with," he says. "The two lead actresses, Meagan Good and Laura Regan, look fantastic in any lighting set up." So far his main challenge has been making effects shots of heads-up dis- plays and futuristic devices — created by multiple VFX studios — look seam- less. Sometimes he integrates footage shot with other cameras or from drones, too. "As color correction has become more powerful, we're contributing more on the back end to help produc- tion," Manno says. SUPERGIRL Based on the DC Comics character, Supergirl, the new CBS series of the same name, finds the young biolog- ical cousin to Superman learning to embrace her powers and embark on a career as a superhero. As can be expected with any superhe- ro scenario, VFX play an important part in the content of the show. Supergirl is shot in and around Los Angeles and on the Warner Bros. lot on Arri Alexa; Red cameras are also deployed when 6K resolution is required for greater control over certain VFX shots. A team of 120 people at Encore VFX Hollywood (www.encorepost. com) works on Supergirl and The CW's returning The Flash. They follow an almost identical workflow, except the latter show shoots in Vancouver. "Since our facility does all the effects work, the day-to-day is pretty much the same: meetings, prepping shows, seeing what's possible, talking to the location scouts. We know the strengths of the people on our team, which is especially important as we explore the nuances. That always makes things go faster without sacri- ficing quality, which is a big challenge for VFX for TV," says Armen Kevorkian, senior VFX supervisor and executive creative director at Encore. As Supergirl fans might expect, flying effects play a major role in the series. "There are three techniques for flying," Kevorkian says. "Starts and stops are sometimes a combination of wire work on location and a transition to a digital double; sometimes it's all digital dou- ble; sometimes it's close ups of [star] Melissa [Benoist] on greenscreen. A couple of years ago the digital double part wouldn't have been attempt- ed, except for being small and in the background. But we've had success with The Flash and his digital double, although Supergirl's hair, cape and skirt make her more challenging." As with The Flash, Encore took "a feature film approach in detail and resolution" when scanning Benoist for the digital double that would perform dynamic moves impossible even for a stuntperson. "It's more expensive, but it's worth it," Kevorkian says. As villains are cast, those actors are scanned as well. "We work closely with the stunt department to tie our digital doubles to their great choreography. We want the characters to perform practically whenever possible." A character team of about a dozen artists concentrates on building, rigging and texturing digital doubles using Pix- ologic's ZBrush and Autodesk 3DS Max. A team of 15 animators uses Autodesk Maya to animate the digital doubles, and compositors tap The Foundry's Nuke to integrate them into the live action. Sitni Sati's FumeFX and Side Effects' Houdini create contrails for Supergirl, tying her into the environment and really selling the flying shots. "Although skydivers drop vertically, we looked at shots of how the wind affects them, how the camera moves, what we're used to seeing when people control their flight," says Kevorkian. Encore created a complete digital city for Supergirl to fly through in the pilot. "That gave us the flexibility to do camera moves through the city that would be impossible to get otherwise," he says. Hollywood's Encore creates Supergirl's visual effects using ZBrush and 3DS Max, among other tools.