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4k Workflow The Ballad of Danko Jones N By MARC LOFTUS SENIOR EDITOR/DIRECTOR OF WEB CONTENT mloftus@postmagazine.com A 4K workflow for a Canadian rock band. Ballad was shot in 4K with Red Epics and edited in Media Composer. 14 EW YORK — The Diamond Bros. have completed work on a 4K production that is being delivered to consumers via Odemax's service, which makes use of Red's RedRay player. Jason Diamond, who makes up half of the directing duo, along with his brother Josh, is also partner in their production arm The Hidden Fortress, and says the company was initially called on to direct, produce and post a music video for the Canadian rock band, Danko Jones.The video followed the concept of a film trailer, but for a film that doesn't actually exist. As the team was shooting, Diamond says they intentionally captured footage that they knew wouldn't appear in the immediate video, but might be used by the band further down the road. It was decided that the music video had an interesting enough storyline that the band could use it as the first episode of a video trilogy. The Diamond Bros. (www.thediamondbros.com) would go on to produce two more music videos for the band, each rolling out several months after the previous single. The Diamond Bros. are long-time Red users. They own two Red Epics and decided to shoot the entire project in 4K, even though the music videos would be released for broadcast and the Internet in 1080 HD. 4K, says Jason Diamond, is coming quickly. He notes that while it may have taken a decade for SD to transition to HD, the transition to 4K for consumers is going to happen much faster. "Apple will get there," he says of a home delivery solution. "Most of world does what Apple does. This will lead to more 4K TVs being sold." THE POST All of the Danko Jones videos were shot in 4K and edited in Avid Media Composer at DNxHD36 resolution. Katabatic Digital (http:// katabatic.tv), which is located within the same building as The Diamond Bros., handled the color grade using Assimilate's Scratch. Post • September 2013 The Diamond Bros. then created a 23-minute video short, titled The Ballad of Danko Jones, using footage they had captured during the three separate music video shoots. "None of band's music is in it," Diamond explains of the short, noting cameos by Ralph Macchio, is the president of Odemax (www.odemax. com), which has Southern California offices in Santa Monica and Culver City. The company set out to build its library by gathering the "Odemax 100" — content owners and producers, many of whom are The brothers Diamond: (L-R) Josh and Jason. Both live on the edge of technology and see 4K's adoption coming quickly. Elijah Wood, Selma Blair and Motorhead's Lemmy. "It's scored like a film. The idea was to create more content for the band, and it's showing in festivals all over world." He admits, the trilogy, the short and the 4K production weren't part of a master plan. "To be completely honest, we live on the edge of technology," he explains. "I always need that new piece of gear. I decided to get into Red with the Red One from the opening bell. It became our camera of choice. We own Epics now and shoot in 4K because we can." Shooting in 4K provided benefits, even though the videos were released for broadcast specs. "Having 4K allowed us to push in on shots," says Diamond. "It upped the production value. We did a few VFX shots, and we shot them wide. We were able, in post, to push in for a tighter pan." The short was graded natively from the R3D Raw files by Andrew Francis at Efilm using Autodesk's Lustre. ODEMAX'S ROLE Through Twitter, The Diamond Bros. connected with Odemax, a company that has created a content delivery service for Ultra HD material using the RedRay player, now, and other solutions in the future. Scott Poarch www.postmagazine.com filmmakers looking to gain exposure for their unique and off-beat material. The content is hosted on the Odemax platform, which at press time was still in beta. Each content provider can set the look for their channel, helping to differentiate it from others and create a custom, stylized brand. Subscribers to the site can search by title or channel. Content is then downloaded to the subscriber's RedRay player. The device is currently available for $1,750 and works as a store-and-forward solution, requiring videos to be downloaded in their entirety, unlike a streaming scenario. Media is delivered to the player as a RED (not R3D, like the cameras) file. The format offers efficient compression, reducing files that may be terabytes in size to more manageable gigabytes in size. For The Ballad of Danko Jones, the 4K DPX sequence was 1.18TBs, but once encoded to RED, the file was reduced to 3.3GBs. "We are championing indie filmmakers," says Odemax's Poarch, who hopes to have both exclusive content and popular features as part of its service. Odemax is currently working out deals with major Hollywood studios. "We're putting together a great library. Some are shorts, some are showcases."