Post Magazine

September 2013

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Colorfront previews 2014 releases B UDAPEST, HUNGARY — At the IBC show, Colorfront (www.colorfront.com) previewed performance-boosting advances for 4K and Ultra HD production and post production across the 2014 versions of its On-Set Dailies, Express Dailies and Transkoder products. On-Set Dailies 2014 will introduce CPU and GPU processing of HD/2K/4K video via Nvidia's Quadro K6000, Tesla K20 and GeForce GTX Titan cards. The on-set system will also support AJA's Corvid Ultra, with simultaneous HD/4K/ UHDTV high frame rate video output. On-Set Dailies 2014 will also offer an improved grading toolset, with new primary and selective grading tools; the introduction of masks and curves; and with mapping for third-party control panels, such as those from Tangent. On-Set Dailies 2014 also features extended audio and video format support, including embedded audio on Sony F55, ArriRaw, Red, QuickTime and MXF footage; rendering of DCPs; IMF AS-02 MXF; and support for the latest High Efficiency Video Coding H.265 video compression formats. Express Dailies 2014 extends support across new MacPro, iMac and MacBook Pro platforms, and adds parallel background rendering, using the latest Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan and AMD FirePro graphics cards for fast 4K video display, 4K deBayer and 4K deliverables. For VFX plate pulls, the new version supports the export of 2K/3K/4K/5K and 6K DPX, TIFF and EXR formats. On-Set Live!, Colorfront's advanced live grading feature, enables DITs or on-set color graders to create and manage looks, preview footage and grade on live RAW/SDI camera signals. It is included in On-Set Dailies 2014, with support for external 3D LUT boxes, such as Pandora Pluto and improved burn-in capabilities for timecode, watermarks, camera and lens metadata. Transkoder is Colorfront's standalone, automated system for fast, high-quality digital file conversion. The system (Mac and PC) handles online editing of RAW film data, converting to various output formats, color grading and rendering a range of 2K/4K/UHDTV material in various highend delivery and formats. Digital Film Central goes ACES for 4K finish on 'Elysium' V ANCOUVER — As the post facility for Neill Blomkamp's movie Elysium, Digital Film Central (www.digitalfilmcentral.com) constructed a 3.3K color and conform workflow that tightly integrated grading with both editorial and VFX. To ensure seamless collaborative working, the entire pipeline used the Academy Color Encoding System (ACES). The effects-heavy movie depicts two distinct "worlds": the ruined Earth and a pristine, man-made space station called Elysium, home of the privileged. When it came to creating the look, these two worlds needed to contrast one another, but still feel like they belonged to the same universe. The director worked closely with Digital Film Central's lead colorist, Andrea Chlebak. "The aesthetic for Elysium was incredibly important to me," explains Blomkamp. "A lot of Andrea's instincts were in line with mine and that just makes for a seamless, smooth process." Most of the film was shot anamorphic on the Red Epic in 3.3K resolution. The Red HDRx high dynamic range feature was used throughout production and every plate was delivered in both its original exposure and HDR exposure. Baselight easily switched between these exposures and other raw decode options, simplifying the process of delivering thousands of VFX plates. The metadata support in Baselight was integrated with DFC's tracking database, allowing editorial, VFX and DI teams to stay in-sync throughout post. The use of ACES meant that all the VFX pregrading could be done in the same color space as the visual effects and finish, while maintaining a linear-light workflow. "With full support for OpenEXR and ACES in Baselight, we could produce EXRs exactly as the VFX vendors needed them," explains Chris Davies, director of operations at Digital Film Central. "It was really powerful to be able to pre-grade and QC the VFX plates in-context of the DI look," he adds. "As soon as we needed to hand over the plates to VFX, we could just turn off all the DI looks and render our EXRs. We have used ACES workflows before, but this was the first time we fully switched over to floating-point OpenEXR, which the GPU grading on Baselight allowed us to do." In the final grade, Chlebak used Baselight to create a nuanced color palette between Earth and Elysium. "A lot of the film's aesthetic was rooted in photography and art direction, so I took cues from those approaches and explored a number of different directions. Using ACES kept all aspects of the production rolling at the same time, allowing us all to really push the process and get a really terrific, seamless result." Colorflow gets 'Heatstroke' for Bold Films B ERKELEY, CA — Heatstroke, a new thriller from Bold Films, got its finish at Colorflow (www.colorflow.com), here. Lead colorist Kent Pritchett applied the final grade, working under the direction of Australian cinematographer Ben Nott, who shot with an Arri Alexa. The film is set in South Africa with much action occurring in harsh, desert environments. Pritchett, working in Colorflow's DI theater, used Autodesk Lustre to help capture the environment's oppressive heat and awesome landscapes. "It was beautifully shot," observes Pritchett. "As things are good at the beginning of the story, we kept it rich and colorful, but when the plot takes a dark turn, the grade also shifts. We pulled out a lot of the color and made it more desolate. You get the sense that something is wrong." www.postmagazine.com Post • September 2013 13

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