Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/283421
www.postmagazine.com Post • March 2014 25 Chernoff says MTI will debut the initial Car- ryOn "set to post" set-up for the new season of the AMC crime-drama, Longmire, which returns to production in mid-March. Among the beneficiaries of this approach, Chernoff suggests, will be the DI process, which will more efficiently receive organized media files for visual effects, finishing pulls, and dailies color metadata to factor into the finishing equation. "We want to make sure that both the creative color process and the mechanical aspect of copying media are accurately rec- onciled when production sends post produc- tion all its assets," he explains. "The point of these initiatives, the main thrust of the entire company right now, is about developing technology that makes a difference in how the set and post interact. Since DPs are very concerned about color, and producers are concerned that their assets are protected and accounted for, our software is designed to track all assets and color metadata, allow- ing productions to exactly reproduce them in any post environment with Cortex Dailies, reporting back instantly if any asset is missing. On any given production, a tremendous amount of media is generated on a daily basis, and there are occasions where lack of harmony between production and post pro- duction causes irritating and costly mistakes. During production, Cortex Dailies generates what we call a 'Cortex Manifest' that accounts for all media and metadata — picture and sound, LUTs, and so on, and when imported into another Cortex system, reconciles it against the delivered media. This ensures the cinematographer that what he saw on-set will be faithfully reproduced in the post envi- ronment, and for the producer, it provides peace of mind that his file assets have been accounted for. This is obviously important during the dailies stage, but also provides the potential for more options for the final DI." Chernoff adds that, at NAB, MTI will introduce, as part of Cortex Dailies, "a spe- cial algorithm for up-res'ing from any frame- based format to any other frame-based for- mat, which will have applications for the advent of UHDTV as producers look to re- purpose existing content." On the facility side of its business, Cher- noff says MTI has had the advantage of weav- ing these kind of solutions into its data-cen- tric infrastructure since, after all, "we only began our facility construction about three years ago, and so we had no legacy infra- structure to remove. We built the entire plant for data from the beginning, so it was a big advantage." Chernoff says the result has been "an entrepreneurial technology company" that has sold its software to many other post production companies even as it has launched a facility business using that same technology to do restoration work and pro- vide services for a variety of major TV shows, such as Longmire, The Walking Dead, Dallas, Hell on Wheels, and many others. "Post is a niche business, with lots of sea changes," he adds. "We are kind of unique because we produce technology, share it, and also compete for work. It can be a bit of a delicate balancing act, but customers on both sides of our business are finding the industry to be very challenging, so you have to think in new ways to make it all work. I'm happy to report that our products have helped many companies do just that." CINELICIOUS Six-year-old Cinelicious, with locations in Hollywood and Santa Monica, has recently grown its suite of services from its longtime film scanning, restoration, and commercial telecine base into the DI world. In the last year the company opened a 4K DI theater with a Barco 4K-P Series 2 DLP projector, and promptly started expanding into HD, 2K, and 4K color grading work for both broad- cast projects in Rec.709 color space and long-form indie feature work in P3 DCI color space, in addition to its ongoing work on commercials and music videos, while main- taining its long-standing scanning and resto- ration business. Ironically, according to Paul Korver, the company's president/CEO, Cinelicious' path into the DI realm was made easier by its film scanning and restoration success — a capa- bility he suggests that has now made the company an attractive destination for inde- pendent filmmakers who continue to shoot film. For example, this past year, Cinelicious worked on three high-profile movies acquired on film that were well received at the Sundance Film Festival: Michael Tully's Ping Pong Summer, a Super 16mm project; Jeff Preiss' Low Down, another Super 16mm proj- ect which earned cinematographer Christo- pher Blauvelt the Dramatic Cinematography Award at the festival; and Richard Linklater's Boyhood, a project acquired mainly on 35mm over many years, which Cinelicious and Texas boutique Stuck On On both had a hand in. Cinelicious provided different mixtures of DI-related services on the three projects, depending on the filmmaker's needs, includ- ing final DI scanning for all three films, and some timed sound-synced dailies, dust bust- ing, scratch removal, film grain optimization, DI color grading, and final mastering work. Korver argues the industry's move to terminate film prints and distribution has not triggered the end of all film acquisition for modestly budgeted indie films, as some have suggested. Rather, he points to the fact that Kodak has emerged from bankruptcy with an open-ended commitment to continue to offer acquisition and preservation film stock for such filmmakers, while companies like Cinelicious and others continue to provide Cinelicious' Paul Korver says his studio sees a lot of business coming from film-originated content. continued on page 38