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May 2014

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46 Post • May 2014 www.postmagazine.com Ubisoft game series, Raving Rabbids. Rabbids Invasion, Season 2, is currently airing on Nick- elodeon, Saturdays at 11:30am EST. The CG-animated series features Rabbids, cute and crazy rabbit-type creatures that are extremely destructive, and well, not so intelligent. They're also indestructible, and therefore, reckless. All these ele- ments combine to make a very funny, and creatively- challenging show, says Molinas. "The animation on Rabbids is par ticularly nice, so the sound has to be on par. For every episode, it was a challenge to find or create the right sound to perfectly fit the characters and props, to make it come alive and meet Ubisoft Motion Pictures' goals." Molinas spends roughly two days on each episode. At the beginning of the season, he spent additional time creating location ambiences, including back- grounds for the seashore, supermarket and country. "For the shows I work on, I like to have ambiences that are rich in details," notes Molinas. And those details play a noticeable role in the mix. Whether the Rabbids are being experimented on in the laboratory, or are playing with dogs in the park, the background ambi- ences add life to the animated environment. Since the Rabbids only speak in "Bwaaahs," voiced by French actor Damien Laquet, the sound design communicates much of the story. While the action is extremely over-the-top, Molinas notes the goal for the show's sound is to not be too cartoony. Since this is a Rabbid invasion, the creators want the sound to be realistic. The Earth has to sound real, and alive. "The Rabbids discover this new world, and all the sounds come from that world," says Molinas. "It's real- istic and funny, but not cartoony." An example of real- istic-yet-hilarious sound design can be heard in Epi- sode 18's "Rabbid Games," where a load of plungers fall out of a truck and the Rabbids use those to chal- lenge each other in Olympic-style contests. The entire short is filled with a variety of rubbery suction sounds, and various wooden twangs whenever a plunger's handle wiggles. The indestructible Rabbids wreak havoc on each other and on their environment. As you can imagine, each episode features a plethora of impacts. In addi- tion to using commercial sound libraries, Molinas records his own sounds. "The funniest thing I recorded for Rabbids Invasion is an electric fan for a Star Wars-esk race scene. It's amazing what you can do with a pen and a fan blade," confesses Molinas. The show also features sounds cre- ated by Pilon Studio's Foley artist Cornier. Molinas says, "We work hand-in-hand to create the thousands of impacts and body falls necessary. More generally, we work to compliment each other's sounds. Yoann Veyrat, the dub mixer here at Pilon Studio, did a great mixing job. This series, like many others, is a team effort." Molinas uses a wide variety of plug-ins on the show. For example, he used the TL Space plug-in to add a tiny space reverb, the inside of a djembe, on a fly that goes inside of a Rabbid's body. He also uses SoundToys plug-ins, in particular the Crystallizer, to create the sci-fi sound effects. Molinas says he often uses plug-ins for GRM Tools as well. The CG-animation style of Rabbids Invasion feels very three-dimensional; the world isn't flat. There is a lot of interesting camera angles, allowing for a unique perspective to the sound design. Molinas points out that the scenes move fast, with only two or three frames to show an idea. "The Rabbids are doing crazy things, so you have to jump in with them," he says. "It's a very creative field, a playground, and I love it. Animation sound design pushes you to your limits every time and brings you back to when you were a kid." A U D I O F O R A N I M A T I O N [ Cont.from 35 ] Piñon and Curra work together on Rick and Morty. mainly work on these in-house titles. Any of the concerts bring equal challenges with conversion. Constantly moving musicians and hand- held camera work, and dark shots with heavy grain/ noise with the musician often wearing black will blend into the background making object isolation for place- ment in 3D space difficult. Stage lighting is also tricky. When a light moves from the stage to out in the audi- ence, you know it's coming closer to you, but it's not a physical object and you can see through it, so how do you represent that in 3D? The one advantage concert conversion has over movies is that a movie can have hundreds of locations and complex set ups, where a concert may only have, say, 24 cameras or less, enabling the re-use of some 3D scene configurations." MALHOTRA: "Nobody who has seen Gravity in 3D hasn't been wowed by what 3D is able to do. Gravity was conceived before conversion was the preferred format for 3D; they did a test to determine whether to shoot natively or convert and found that conversion gave them the same quality and more creative control. Our technology and tools provided a seamless inter- face between VFX and 3D. And from a technological and creative standpoint, Gravity has been a success at the box office and with the Academy [of Motion Pic- ture Arts & Sciences]. It really validated the fact that the filmmaker's creative vision could come together with 3D technology in the film of the year." 2 D T O 3 D S T e R e O C O N v e R S I O N [ Cont.from 29 ] uct and marketing, Front Porch Digital (www.fpdigital.com). Front Porch offers digital asset management solutions for migrating, managing and delivering media content. Hurt further explains that, "When comparing tape- versus disk-based cloud environments, tape's carbon footprint is about 99 percent less than disk alone. In other words, if the cloud is storing 35PBs of storage on tape, the total carbon dioxide is 11,863 kilograms ver- sus 1,093,067 kilograms on disk. Further, the total power requirements associated with disk would be 83,231 kilowatt-hours per month versus a mere 903 kWh per month with tape. So, when choosing a cloud storage provider, ask what technology is deployed and how it translates to a carbon footprint? At Front Porch Digital, we believe in balancing best-of-breed cloud solutions and corporate environmental responsibility. With digital tape, we can achieve that balance." Barnfind (www.barnfind.no), manufacturer of the multi-function, BarnOne low power signal transport solution that supports numerous signals in one frame, has incorporated green practices right from the start, according to CEO, Wiggo Evensen. The company re- uses materials when possible, including its packaging, which consists of recycled boxes that are wrapped with the Barnfind logo for minimal waste. Even the circuit boards are assembled, tested and packed together. In fact, the company touts its green benefits at industry shows, such as NAB, in its signage. "Where it is typical for others to use 500W of energy for 32x32 routing, fiber transport, CWDM/ DWDM muxing, conversion, distribution, sync, reclock- ing etc., our platform only uses 60W maximum, with an extremely low carbon footprint," says Evensen. "Barnfind has always strived to be extremely eco- logically responsible, and the end user/customer ben- efits in numerous ways," he adds. "First, our customers need only one software package — BarnStudio — and can configure the system as often and in as many ways as they want. They can also reuse their existing SFPs, as long as they are following the MSA standard for SFPs. Second, customers save significant real estate because Barnfind packs all these functions into a 1RU chassis. Last, Barnfind's price is easily one-half of what it would cost for similar solutions. We like to be seen as the 'new kid in town' that does things differently." GReeN PRACTICeS [ Cont.from 38 ] Pronology co-founder Mike Shore says that a tapeless workflow solution eliminates unnecessary waste of count- less tapes and also promotes less commuting for staff.

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