Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1262492
Stephen Semel. 39 S U M M E R Q 2 I S S U E F E A T U R E typing their notes on an Excel document designed for the purpose of collating everyone's notes. Afterwards, we'd all chat on a conference call, and review Jonah's big concerns. Meanwhile, all the notes would be compiled and collated by Morgan Shaw, one of our post supervi- sors. Kelly Morgan, and I would stay on the Clearview session for the remainder of the work day, executing the notes with Keith, Ben, Sue, and Chris. A couple of weeks into the remote mixing process, it was determined that as a precautionary health measure, Ben, who had a mix setup at his home studio, would work from home, which left just Keith and Rick on the stage at Universal. This made the process more cumber- some, since any sound effects content updates would first have to be made by Ben at home and then sent to the stage, but we persevered. When the VFX vendors had a shot to send us, they would send both a small, low resolution QuickTime version and a full resolution DPX file to Matt Martin, the VFX production assistant. Matt would distribute the QuickTime files to the other members of the VFX team for review, and the DPX file would be sent on to Fotokem. Jay and the team, which included the VFX editorial staff, VFX pro- duction manager Jackie VandenBussche, and VFX coordinator Octevia Robertson, would review the shots, sometimes on their computers, sometimes collectively in Clearview sessions, while they spoke to each other on a conference call. In addition, there were many VFX review sessions with Jonah, executive producer Denise Thé, Kelly, sometimes the picture editor, and me. Shots that were deemed acceptable for the sound mix were sent in an EDL to the assistant picture editors, who conformed their versions of the picture and passed the new shots along to our sound and music editors and the mix stage. The VFX editorial staff would send new EDLs to Fotokem so that Alex and Ish, the conform editors, could add the approved shots to our color-timed master. Jackie, who had basically lived at Fotokem before shelter-in-place was de- clared, was responsible for keeping track of all of the versions of all the VFX shots, whether they were approved for sound but still in-progress or final versions cut into the CTM. Fotokem had their act together. We lost a few days of color timing and a half day of conform editing before we resumed working remotely, nothing major. The home systems were slower because of the comparative internet signal strength of home vs. commercial facility (which was true everywhere in the process), but the work continued. Natalie Toto, one of our post supervisors, who had also pretty much lived at Fotokem in the weeks preceding shelter-in-place, was our main interface with Fotokem. Along with the participation of our Fotokem producer, Leena Gundapaneni, conform sessions continued, as did Clearview color timing sessions with Kostas, which were also attended online by Jonah and/or Kelly and me. When the show was about to be delivered to HBO, Leena would upload a ProRes version of the J2K delivery file to an encrypted server, and a number of us would download it to our home laptops or desktops, scrutinize it for problems – minor VFX imperfections, boom shad- ows or matte box flares that we hadn't caught in previous passes, etc. Natalie would compile the list of problems, and they would be addressed and fixed---or if they were deemed too minor, expensive, or time-consuming, left alone. Then a revised file would be scrutinized by the same pairs of eyes, given the thumbs up, and sent to HBO for their QC process. That left the issue of dirt, by which I mean negative dirt. "Westworld" shoots 35mm f ilm, and negative dirt, which typically shows up as white spots on a positive image, is inherent to the me- dium. Before shelter-in-place, Fotokem used a combination of a computerized dirt removal system (DRS) and individ- ual technicians to locate and paint out negative dirt. After their painstaking work, our post team would go through each show, shot by shot, to look for more dirt, and it would be painted out. Then, after the delivery file was sent to the