Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1039130
www.postmagazine.com 37 POST OCTOBER 2018 FIELD TESTED 've been working in motion graphics and short-form edi- torial and finishing for over 10 years now. My day-to-day projects consist of finishing and visual effects work on film and TV trailers and ad campaigns. This encompasses conform, visual effects and often color grading as well. Recent projects I've worked on have promoted Sorry to Bother You, Hotel Transylvania 3, Deadpool 2, Love Simon, The Looming Tower, Collateral and Kingsman 2: Golden Circle. The nature of my work is very fast-paced and often has short turnaround timelines. Working with the recent Autodesk Flame 2019 release on Mac, I'm increas- ingly able to complete more functions of my job entirely within the one appli- cation — a massive timesaver. FLAME: A ONE-STOP-SHOP There are several recent develop- ments that have made Flame more of a one-stop-shop for me than ever before. The latest release introduced the Effects Tab, which is a great new toolset. The layerable color tools and effects make it easy to ripple through and apply treatments across multiple shots. A big advantage is now having the storyboard shot-to-shot navigation inherent in color grading tools, while also allowing me to apply a wide array of Flame's effects. With Connected Conform, I can batch existing timeline effects and au- tomatically replace them into newly-ed- ited sequences. This feature has been a real time saver on projects where I can apply all of my effects and color for the longer trailer, and I don't have to redo the grade manually when the client asks for :30 and :60 cutdowns. I'm starting to migrate more of my color grading workflow into Flame because of the new Mastergrade fea- ture in the Effects Tab. Mastergrade has given me the flexibility and control I'm used to from other color tools, but with some great additional parame- ters that are tailored to different color spaces. The new color controls paired with the connected conform allows me to increasingly keep more and more of my color work in Flame. It's been excit- ing to see the roadmap with more and more high-end color grading features being added in. BEAUTY WORK Another thing that has been increas- ingly asked of us during finishing on a project is beauty work. Every once in a while there's a shot that I have to fix quickly, and the new A2Beauty shader is a time saver with a lot of great control. This matchbox effect used along with the motion vectors tracking has been a great solve for things like blemish removal that would otherwise require a ton of 2D tracking and manual labor. Flame 2019's flexibility allows me to create composites very quickly for fast turnaround projects. For a recent Deadpool 2 trailer, we were able to create some very quick composite mockups to sell an idea of what the spot could be in order to get buy-in from the studio. For our work on Hotel Transylvania 3, I did some traditional finishing, conform and color, but the client also asked for a number of 9x16 versions finished for mobile phones, as well as ads for both digital and outdoor signage. Our existing NLE software couldn't handle the different format siz- es and aspect ratios, but finishing these spots in Flame was quite easy. Big Picture Entertainment is an entertainment marketing agency that partners with some of the biggest media companies in the world, includ- ing Disney, Netflix, Warner Bros., HBO and Hulu. From editorial and production to entire 360 marketing campaigns, Big Picture creates movie trailers, online social campaigns and special shoots for summer blockbusters, high caliber TV series and brands. Visit them online at www.bigpic.com. FLAME 2019 FOR MAC BOOSTS BIG PICTURE WORKFLOW BY ARI BROWN HEAD OF FINISHING BIG PICTURE ENTERTAINMENT CULVER CITY, CA WWW.BIGPIC.COM THIS SINGLE APPLICATION FINISHING SOLUTION SAVES TIME IN AD PRODUCTION I Hotel Transylvania 3 Deadpool 2