Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/16039
DI News Steele calls on Pablo for music video work C ULVER CITY — Full-service post house Steele (www.steelevfx.com) contributed to two re- cent music videos.The studio provided HD online, beauty, compositing and stereo 3D finish- ing services for Shakira’s Waka Waka (This Time For Africa), the music video for the official 2010 FIFA World Cup song. At the same time Steele, worked on Lady Gaga’s Alejandro, providing HD online, VFX, beauty and additional color correction for the 8.5-minute offering. The Alejandro (pictured) video incorporated many invisible effects that were designed and cre- ated to help establish the video’s dynamic look. Extensive color passes were composited to en- hance the dark and somber atmosphere the piece demanded.There was also beauty work and a substantial amount of set clean-up that had to take place throughout the piece resulting in many hours of roto-scoping and additional compositing.The dramatic concluding burn-out effect was crafted and animated in NewTek LightWave 3D. The party-themed Waka Waka video, directed by DNA’s Marcus Raboy and edited by Rich Newey of Traffic Jam Films, intercuts festive performance footage of Shakira and South African band Freshlyground with clips of famous soccer moments and studio vignettes of top players clad in “This Time For Africa”T-shirts.Waka Waka had multiple deliverables and applications. 2D English- and Spanish-language versions were completed for broadcast and the Internet. A stereo 3D version was finished for the World Cup opening ceremonies as well as for display in Sony’s 3D pavilion in Nelson Mandela Square, Sandton and point-of-sale demonstrations of Sony Bravia 3D TV sets worldwide. Jerry Steele served as 3D stereo consultant, HD online editor/beauty artist, lead compositor and stereo post supervisor on Waka Waka, completing the entire project on the Quantel Pablo.This in- cluded the conforms of the multiformat edits, the visual effects — including crowd replication — the beauty work, additional color correction and, finally, the stereo 3D convergence and mastering. “Not many companies can handle 3D convergence effectively yet, but we already had the new Pablo with stereo 3D software,” notes co-founder Jo Steele.“Once again we were up against the clock:Waka Waka was completed in just eight days.That’s where the speed of the machines and the expertise of our of our artists come into play.” Digital Vision debuts new Nucoda products L ONDON — Digital Vision (digitalvision.se), which offers color grading, finishing, master- ing and restoration tools, debuted the Precision panel at IBC.The Precision is an ergonomic and slim panel that includes four track balls, panel touch features, a screen tactile control surface and a virtual keyboard.The high-resolution full- color screen offers a clearer display and a higher level of detail on the status and settings of the project, timeline and effects.The panel sees a re- duced number of controls while maintaining opti- mal functionality. Digital Vision also has two new solutions to complement its flagship Nucoda Film Master ($80K). Nucoda Fuse ($48K, pictured) targets both film and digital dailies applications, and also serves as a mid-range DI grading and finishing so- lution. At the entry level, Digital Vision is offering Nucoda Compose, a cost-effective ($10.5K), workstation to aid in the grading, finishing and mastering workflow for commercials, film and television projects. All grading solutions are equipped with a 3D toolset. Digital Vision also showed Phoenix Finish, a new flagship end-to-end restoration, remastering and delivery system, and Phoenix Refine, a mid- level solution with restoration image processing tools.The new entry-level Phoenix Touch uses DVO technology and is designed as a cost-effec- tive image restoration software solution for clean- ing up VFX plates and DI scans. It can also be used as part of large volume restoration projects re- quiring manual retouch of content. Digital Vision’s 2010 software release now of- fers DVO Clarity, its next-gen noise and grain management software, featuring automatic profil- ing, and additional 3D stereoscopic grading and editing tools, viewing modes and mastering op- tions.Turbine introduces integrated and distrib- uted background rendering, allowing rendering of multiple projects and compositions without tying up the client’s workstation. Updated file format enhancements include Arri Alexa support, MFX OP1a publishing and ALE file export.