Post Magazine

March 2013

Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/115625

Contents of this Issue

Navigation

Page 20 of 51

RINGSIDE CREATIVE One of the biggest changes in the color world that RingSide Creative colorist (www.ringsidecreative.com) Rick Unger has seen in the last few years is how DI platforms have shrunk in size while gaining capabilities and capacity. "We used to do color on big-dollar, hardware-based color correctors using film chains," he recalls. "Now, PC-based software platforms with custom panels offer much lower price tags and perform very well. Another major difference is that we receive our media mainly as digital files on hard drives." Detroit-based RingSide is a beta site for Quantel's Pablo Rio, which runs Quantel software on a generic PC and uses Quantel Neo panel systems for color. "The Rio software, while using one GPU, gives us realtime playback without rendering," Unger explains. File-based work has created a revolution in image capture: everything from HD to 4K files. He even received a thumb drive containing five :30 Chrysler spots as 1080p Pro-Res 4:4:4:4 for color grading. Another important change in the color world that Unger has seen in the last few years is the vast improvement in home display systems, which makes his work look better than ever. "In every big-box store, pub and home, there are consumer monitors with factory presets that look great. At RingSide we have a high-end 55-inch consumer flat-screen monitor sitting alongside our professional reference monitor, which we use for grading. It would have been taboo to have a monitor like that 10 years ago in the grading room. But our clients appreciate the ability to compare how their projects will look at home [with] what they're seeing on our reference monitors. It's amazing how closely they track colors. Plus, everyone loves a big display." Unger and fellow RingSide colorist Eric Maurer have a number of tools at their disposal. "We have three Quantel Rios, a 2K Pablo iQ, DaVinci 2K, Nucoda FilmMaster, plus seven Autodesk Flame/Smoke premium suites and a set of Lustre panels," he reports. "Color is an essential part of every project and at RingSide we have that covered in every creative application we use in post." Unger recently colored two noteworthy spots on Quantel Rio. Ford Motor Company's Rant from Team Detroit, featuring Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers, is a dynamic Ford F-150 commercial shot on Arri Alexa. Unger was charged with integrating various passes of Rodgers in workout mode and the rugged vehicle with bold, graphic backgrounds crafted with duotone palettes. Adobe After Effects stitched all the environments together into one seamless scene where the quarterback and the truck both come out Number One. Unger says he couldn't have done the job on an "old-school" color correction system. And, he couldn't have done it with conventional colorist skills. "The spot demonstrated the evolution of the equipment and the evolution of me. I had to marry a lot of passes, and my color grade had to make it look like everything belonged in one shot. In the past, color grading layers was done on multiple passes. With today's timelines it's simple to use mattes to create layers of color correction isolated to specific parts of the image. The colorist is now a link in the chain of how everything comes together. I'm thinking quicker and deeper about all the layers and actions that get you to the final product." RingSide called on Quantel's Rio and plug-ins for this Ford Rant spot featuring Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers. The other recent spot was part of McCann-Erickson's Pure Michigan campaign. The beautiful :30 commercial, True North, demonstrated how Rio can seamlessly mix source material. "The Travel Michigan spot materials typically arrive in various forms, including film, Arri Alexa, and Red Epic files," Unger explains. "We conform and grade all the sources so they blend together into one cohesive piece. Thanks to plug-ins which run on Rio, such as Sapphire and Neat, I can create handles for the different grain layers and match elements to make the spot look like it all originated from one source." BENT IMAGE LAB Lead colorist/lead compositor at Portland, OR's Bent Image Lab (www.bentimagelab.com), Jalal Jemison says he doesn't use the term DI for most of his broadcast work, although source footage from Red and Arri Alexa cameras "emulates the latitude and workflow of traditional 35mm." Today, Jemison works with "full-resolution online files" for television shows and commercials. He helped set up the workflow for the NBC series Grimm last year and served as its primary compositor; now he mostly works on the color for season two. He also does color for a number of animated projects, both CG and stop motion, created in-house. "We use final renders for the look and movement of the CG characters but do enhancements and color in a DI pipeline," he explains. "Animation always poses different challenges from live action." Color grading CG spots can involve "subtle enhancements" of elements, which "have already been art directed and are ready for the screen." Or they can entail color treatments that make the spots more remarkable than you could ever imagine." The potential need to touch many individual animated elements means that DI for CG requires the ability to "isolate and make mattes for all the elements in a scene. You want ultimate and complete control of everything." Last year Bent Image Lab and Hallmark Channel reteamed on Jingle and Bell's Christmas Star, a 24-minute sequel to Jingle All the Way, which they created in 2011. Bent Image Lab's Chel White directed the special based on three Hallmark storybooks. The approximately foottall characters were placed in landscapes — both snowy and tropical — and inside warm and welcoming homes and schools. "Stop motion is shot on multiple stages at once, so even if you have the same characters and presumably the same lighting, things will look different," says Jemison. "So there's a lot of color matching to do." Bent Image Lab shot Jingle and Bell's Christmas Star on Canon 60D DSLRs with Dragon software to control the frame count. The characters and sets were all fabricated by the company, and the content was animated on twos. Jemison found that some shots of the miniature snowy landscapes made of sugar "went really orange" in the cameras. So he used Resolve to cool them down for a more icy blue look. Color grading stop-motion animation featuring humanoid characters was "a lot like live action, but with smaller actors," he says. "It's not like having a red or purple monster that's over the top. These characters have subtle skin tones, bodies and faces. Also, no mattes are generated as part of the animation process, so you have to figure out ways to pull keys while you're doing the color correction. Resolve's keying capabilities really helped me." Jemison was tasked with some post effects, too: enhancing shadows, adding glow to windows and enhancing the day-for-night look in this newest Christmas broadcast tradition. NEW HAT Feature colorist Doug Delaney of New Hat, Santa Monica (www.newhat.tv) is "source agnostic" and sees filmmakers come in with "everything from S16mm to all the current digital formats." He drives a Filmlight Baselight color correction system, which he calls "a very powerful grading platform. I've used it for years. It's very fast — I'm able to work quickly and intuitively on it, which translates into a more creative session for the client." The Call, a thriller directed by Brad Anderson and starring Halle Berry and Abigail Breslin as a 911 operator and kidnap victim, respectively, was shot with Arri www.postmagazine.com Post0313_018-21_DIRAV7FINALREAD.indd 19 Post • March 2013 19 3/4/13 1:30 PM

Articles in this issue

Links on this page

Archives of this issue

view archives of Post Magazine - March 2013