Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/297945
32 Post • April 2014 www.postmagazine.com "On a truck in Atlanta, in a hotel room in Hong Kong, in a facility — it doesn't matter as the job is getting done. Then, the metadata needs to be there to feed into post, and I believe it has to be agnostic. We've done dailies on shows that have finished at every post house there is, and we design the meta- data so that it is agnostic and will feed into anyone's system. There are interesting and cool things you can do by leveraging the relationship by dailies and finishing, but these can't come at the expense of [allowing pro- duction to] get its day." These goals, he suggests, are what compa- nies involved in this space should really be trying to achieve. Thus, such companies are not really about "dailies" on-set or otherwise, per se, although dailies are certainly an important service that they offer. Rather, they are offering different kinds of data manage- ment services, unconstrained by location, and focused always at achieving the aforemen- tioned goals in support of creatives. Managing color data specifically is certainly a big part of the approach such companies are taking. Indeed, it's the whole purpose behind MTI Film's Cortex Dailies Solution, as discussed in the March 2014 issue of Post, to "coherently trade color decisions between production and post via the Cortex Mani- fest," as described by Larry Chernoff, CEO at MTI. "The Manifest contains, among other metadata, complete color information gener- ated in production, where LUTs and ASC CDL values are recorded in the Manifest and then sent to post production, where they are faithfully reproduced in another Cortex Dai- lies system. If desired, that color metadata can be altered and 'round-tripped' back to production via the Manifest. And then, all values stored in the Cortex Dailies database can be recalled after importing an EDL and then be exported as a CDL for later use as a base color correction for the DI." Still, part of the industry debate is over what the focus or priority of such service providers should typically be. If major facili- ties have the technology and expertise to provide near finishing color on-set, does that mean such a capability would actually be helpful to most filmmakers in most practical situations, when they are busy trying to meet their shooting schedules each day? Tech- nicolor, for instance, certainly has such capa- bilities, but over the years, the company has learned to craft mobile and remote service options based on the premise that every filmmaker, every cinematographer, every stu- dio, and every project will have entirely dif- ferent needs and creative desires, according to VP of on-location services, David Waters. "As it relates to spanning the bridge between dailies and finishing, we have the talent and tools to address our customer's wishes," says Waters. "The operative concept here is flexibility. We work with some cine- matographers and directors who select a few set looks early on in principal photogra- phy, and don't want to spend production time on finishing color. But other filmmakers wish to have a more robust palette of tools on-set or near-set so that they can manage the traditional DI process, for instance, in realtime. We try to be agnostic, to have the talent and tool sets to address multiple sce- narios with the same consistent quality, and in a completely-secure manner." Therefore, as MTI's Chernoff suggests, at the end of the day, what such companies are really doing, regardless of how their services are labeled, is simply offering production- oriented help or post production-oriented help, as needed, albeit in mobile or more flexible forms. "The easiest way to understand and dif- ferentiate [the services] is to just separate them into production versus post produc- tion," Chernoff suggests. "Generally, and there are cer tainly exceptions to this, the functions performed during production involve copying, archiving, and color correc- tion, while post production functions are more concerned about frame-accurate syn- chronization of picture and sound, and the manufacture of deliverables for the various concerned players." INDUSTRY SHIFTS These are just a handful of the questions this paradigm shift has forced companies to ask themselves. And that is why some major players are re-strategizing how they want to brand the on-set or mobile dailies and data management services or products they are offering the industry. Technicolor, for example, recently announced the decision to reorganize its Creative Services and Digital Productions divisions by bringing them together under a single banner, now called Production Servic- es. The company did so because major clients were requesting a more cohesive combina- tion of services, ranging from dailies, to visual effects, to DI color grading, to conforming, and more. Company officials eventually decided there was no reason to divide such services among two divisions any longer when, in truth, there is a constant inter-rela- tionship between the work, the data, the tools, and the artists and technicians involved during the content creation, management and distribution processes. Technicolor will soon be making a major announcement with more details about the restructuring approach and details. Technicolor officials also tell Post that the company recently hired well-known veteran industry software developer Daryll Strauss and acquired his software company, Cloud Takes, along with new pieces of dailies soft- ware code he has been developing as par t of its ongoing initiative to enhance and evolve its mobile color and data manage- ment services. Light Iron meanwhile — in keeping with Cioni's belief that there needs to be more industry-wide uniformity, consistency and reliability in on-set data collection and man- agement all the way down through the pro- duction, editorial, and post production chains Bling Digital's Chris Parker cautions that on-set services should not slow down production. On-Set Paradig m Shifts