Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/394837
www.postmagazine.com 29 POST SEPTEMBER 2014 COLOR CALIBRATION really rock solid. The Sony OLEDs are beautiful. Even consumer LCDs or plas- mas hold their color for a long time, but they can drift because they age faster." Nice Shoes makes sure that monitors not only match from color suite to color suite, but across the entire facility. "The monitors used by all of our artists — in eff ects, design, editorial — all look the same," Ryan reports. The company does a lot of remote color grading with partners around the country: Republic in Dallas, Engine Room in Boston, Vapor Post in Miami, Storyville in New Orleans, Optimus in Chicago and Volt Studios in Minneapolis. "We have calibrated their monitors to match ours," Ryan explains. "We do the initial set up with equipment we supply and talk their engineers through how to maintain them. We transmit the output of our color grading at Nice Shoes to the remote offi ces and communicate with the client via Google Chromebox as if we were all in the same room." Things are changing in the profession- al monitor arena these days, and facili- ties may fi nd it increasingly diffi cult to meet their needs for aff ordable displays. "Nobody is making professional plasmas bigger than 30 inches — there's almost a black market for the big ones. We've looked at the new consumer OLEDs, but once we started analyzing them, we spotted issues that a consumer wouldn't notice. "Our artists and engineers have worked hand-in-hand to craft an envi- ronment for creating the best possible imagery, no matter what the fi nal project will be displayed on. Whether it's content for television, theatrical, mobile, or what- ever screens and media the future brings, we've established a future-proof work- fl ow," Ryan concludes. APACHE Although Santa Monica's boutique post production color facility Apache (www. apache.tv) has been open only two months, they've had a solid calibration plan in place since before the doors opened. Each of the company's two color suites boasts a 24-inch Sony Trimaster PVM-A250 OLED reference monitor and 60-inch Panasonic TH-60PF50U and TC-P60ZT60 plasmas for client viewing. The GUI display for Blackmagic Design Resolve is a Dell UP3214Q UltraSharp 32 4K (3840x2160) monitor. Partners and colorists Shane Reed and Steve Rodriguez use Datacolor's Spyder- 4PRO color calibration system for their MacBook Pro displays, but they're calling in David Webb of Solve Engineering, who was subcontracted through integrator Alt Systems, to calibrate the GUIs, plas- mas and OLED monitors. Both Rodriguez and Webb previously worked together at Action Video. LaRue Anderson is the company's third partner. Webb's calibration toolkit includes a Photo Research PR-655 SpectraScan spectroradiometer, which he uses for the OLEDs and plasmas in concert with SpectraCal's CalMan Studio calibration software and an X-Rite i1Pro2 device for color calibrating and profi ling the GUIs. "In theory, the GUI displays are prob- ably the easiest to calibrate since the probes run off Mac software," says Reed. "But when you're working with a guy who's been calibrating and matching screens for 25 years, you fi nd that there are subtleties in adjustments that just can't be achieved with software alone. This is why we trust it to David. "Our Spyder4Pro is a software-based tool and USB probe in one," he explains. "The software displays a series of test patterns and the probe reads the value from the screen — then the software bridges the gap between the recorded and the correct value." Reed recom- mends the Spyder to clients for the calibration of their own computers. "If we render out a clip or a series of stills for approval, it's only meaningful when view- ing the material on a calibrated screen." In terms of forecasting the frequen- cy of calibration, "there will always be a need for some tweaking," says Reed. "Screens are physical devices that wear and age. Even new monitors may take a bit of time to settle in." Rodriguez agrees, "The direct light source scanning of the OLEDs makes them look terrifi c, the gray levels are just stunning; but when you start up a color bay with three brand new screens, there's bound to be a bit of calibration maintenance required early on as they settle in. A guy like David Webb understands that." Nice Shoes is home to fi ve identical color suites. The studio also off ers remote grading services. Apache's (L-R) Shane Reed, LaRue Anderson and Steve Rodriguez.