Post Magazine

60 Post • October 2008 www.postmagazine.com photography as a hobby. He instinctively knows how he wants images to be composed and is sensitive to different color tonalities; both of those things, at least subconsciously, are in play when he's working. For the Nashville Star graphics package, a primetime country music reality series that aired this summer on NBC, Big Machine Design created a :30 open main title sequence, lower thirds and bumpers for client 495 Produc- tions in LA. "The client was on set when we were shooting the crowd and they had absolutely no idea how this was going to work," says Carlson."I could tell they were somewhat concerned about it. They weren't that vocal but I could see the look of concern on their faces. It was rewarding just hearing the feedback after we posted it, which was, 'Wow.'" In the :30 open, the camera zooms over a huge crowd watching a concert. The performer is silhouetted, the title layers over him. The client wanted the crowd to look like it was the entire state of Tennessee looking toward this Nashville stage, with hundreds of thousands of people in the audience. BMD did a greenscreen shoot with 50 people, rotating around different positions and using wardrobe and prop changes. They built out a 3D environment in Maxon Cinema 4D and expor ted everything for compositing into After Ef- fects CS3 running on eight-core Mac Pro workstations.They used the Particu- late plug-in for smoke effects with the flares and fireworks atop the stage. Some final effects were done in Maya. "We used the Red digital cinema camera to shoot the crowd," says Carlson. "We shot everything at 4K. Our final delivery was HD, and part of the move- ment in the spot is moving through the crowd to the stage. Whenever you're moving past images they start to break up if there isn't enough resolution. We shot at a higher resolution than we were going to deliver just so we had that extra degree of quality to work with." [ cont. from 38 ] C O M P O S I T I N G clue. The audience gets to see, along with Sean, telltale shards of glass in a zoom-in on a shir t, for instance.The series has about 25 visual effects per episode as well as generic greenscreen work, driving composites and the like. Psych also em- ploys plug-ins to create a grainy flashback effect. One extravagant effect in a recent episode shows a daredevil motorcyclist attempt to propel himself and his bike through a ring of fire. In this shot, com- pleted by Spin in Vancouver, we see that the per- former's gas tank is leaking dangerously just before it explodes in midair. "We pull either HD QuickTimes or DPX files at a 10-bit rate from our HD masters and deliver that to our VFX company. They deliver back to us uncompressed HD QuickTime files that cut right back into our Final Cut Pro system." Once all the approvals are made, Spin can post the finished shots on an FTP site "and we simply download them and give them to the online editors. I can download effects files in my office." Fotokem in Burbank cleans up any dir t in a Psych video assembled master (VAM) using MTI's DRS and performs color correction in da Vinci 2K. A Final Cut Pro HD specialist, Pete Fausone at Fo- tokem, also creates HD titles. "HD post is the rule, not the exception today," Garrett says."You've made the show in a format that's going to withstand the test of time." S O N S O F A N A R C H Y Craig Yahata is associate producer on FX Net- work's Sons of Anarchy, an hour-long drama (with darkly comedic undertones) about an outlaw motor- cycle gang operating out of a small city near Oakland. "Sons of Anarchy" also serves as the gang's name. The show is shot on Genesis by DP Paul Maibaum, who records LUT information on set to create a file that accompanies the circle takes on their way to transfer to D-5 and, ultimately, color timing, Yahata says. "The DP does a lot of shading on the set," and the LUT file helps maintain and augment the look Maibaum's going for. Maibaum records onto HDCAM SR from the Genesis. The Anarchy offline is done on Avid Adrenaline using DVCAM tapes,Yahata says. "When we lock the show, we rebuild it in online with the D-5s." Sons of Anarchy, though lower-budget, shoots for a grander, almost old-western esthetic that swings be- tween wide outdoor shots (on the road, for in- stance) and intimate tight shots. Smaller cameras are rigged to motorcycles, for verisimilitude, to convey the feeling of life on the road. Anarchy episodes have seven-day shoots and generate 90 minutes to three hours of dailies per day. Anarchy uses three editors — Hunter Via, Jordan Goldman and Jacques Gravett — each working on dif- ferent episodes in different stages of completion. "It's kind of a standard television show pattern,"Yahata says. Online on a DS Nitris is done "basically overnight" at Modern VideoFilm. Then a spotting session follows with sound effects and dialogue. Then music is added — often with needle-drop instead of scoring. "Music plays a pretty big part in our show," he says. "Anytime some badass bikers are going on a ride, we'll get some appropriate music to drive the scene. Bob Theil is the music supervisor and, even as we're cutting the show, we may send him a QuickTime and say 'Hey, we're looking for something that really plays to this tone or mood.' He'll come up with some choices." After online, the episode is now in full-res high def and the picture goes off for da Vinci color timing at Modern VideoFilm with Kim Schneider. "He works directly with the DP and our post supervisor, Grace Whitehouse, and she makes sure whatever notes from offline get translated. Color timing is more about the storytelling and the mood." Yahata adds, "If we have some visual effects, once we get closer to locking the show and the shot, we send whatever effects to our VFX house, Zoic." Anar- chy is not a VFX show, but it does call for occasional explosions and wire removal. Anarchy records its own sound effects, espe- cially the distinctive sound of the show's Harley- Davidsons. Making sure sound is right is a big par t of Yahata's job. The show's audio post is done at Smar t Post Sound in Burbank; Erich Gann is sound super visor. Sons of Anarchy's final mix is done at the Larson Studio Stages with head mixer Sherry Klein on dialogue and music, and Brian Harman on SFX and Foley. Thanks to streaming and the use of servers, distrib- uting cuts and dailies has gotten much better. "You'll get an email saying 'it's ready' and then you can star t viewing the dailies right there." Sons of Anarchy masters to HDCAM SR and is de- livered for broadcast as 1080i. [ cont. from 33 ] H D F O R T V S E R I E S

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