Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1262492
59 S U M M E R Q 2 I S S U E T E C H N O L O G Y unlike cineSync, where each person has to have a local copy of the media, with Frankie all you need in order to view the content is a link. "Marcus puts the media onto the serv- er at his house and then he provides us with a link to it. We just click the link and watch him control the shots. The director can even draw on the frame, like, 'Let's add some more flames here and some more blood splatter there.' So during the VFX reviews, we have two windows open, the Frankie window to review the content and the Zoom window so that everyone can be discussing at the same time," Castillón said. So how do Dorn and her team edit the film if they're not actually moving any media to the iMacs at home? "We're using Jump Desktop to control the AVID's at the studio and we're using Tunnelblick for a secure VPN connection. That VPN tunnel doesn't allow regular I n te r n e t u s e ; t h e f i re w a l l h a s b e e n configured that way. This way, no media can be transported over the network," explained Castillón, who used a similar remote-editing setup while working on 'Justice League' a few years ago. For that film, the editor was in L.A. while Castillón and another assistant were in London. "We never had it set up in someone's house before, but luckily, it's been work- ing pretty well for us," he added. With Jump Desktop, the team is able to control the AVID systems remotely, but it's like looking at a snapshot of the AVID's screen. The image isn't full- screen and it's not full-definition. The resolution peaks out at 1080p, and the image quality is dependent on how many users are connected to the AVID at once. "When all four of us [Dody and the three assistants] are connected to the network, it will get a little sluggish. Sometimes the image we see is pixilated. It's dependent on the internet connection, too, and ev- eryone right now is relying heavily on the internet. So if I know that Dody will be working in the morning, I will offset my hours to work around that. Sometimes I end up working at night because there is less lag and fewer dropouts than we were experiencing during the day," he said. Had they not been so far into the post process on "Army of the Dead," Dorn feels the image quality that comes from using Jump Desktop would have been a concern. "We'd have to come up with a better viewing system because my ability to evaluate the material is compromised due to the lower resolution of the image," Dorn said. If image quality or the stability of the NEXIS connection is a concern — as it is for assistant editor Angie Luckey on The CW's "Dynasty" series — another approach is to use mirrored drives. But when copying content onto the editor's and assistant's local drives, the trick is to make sure you have everything you need to complete the episodes. Luckey has been handling the show's backups since Season 2, saving bootable b a c k u p s o n t o DV D s u s i n g B o m b i c h Angie Luckey. Re-recording mixer Andy Koyama's home workstation: "It's a completely contained studio." P H O T O : C O U R T E S Y A N D Y K O Y A M A