Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/4585
out of style, and it is going out of style."They currently use Red and other HD "We are constantly retraining our- work with the latest in HD and digi- footage. It has made things so much easier; the files so much faster... even on set." Hachey offers up the Bell Aliant spot as example of the benefits of being on set digital shoot. "We were testing footage sure it would work with the graph- 3D models we had put together the shoot. One of our 3D anima- on set, so he would get files right Red, do a quick mock-up, make everything was right, and then show it director and the creative team from agency. Then we went on to shoot. That about half the amount of time that it a film shoot." addition to file-based workflows, sees another trend that hammers impor tance of post's early inter- more and more agencies are incor- greenscreen into their projects. "It's post heavy, which means your tradi- directors now have to adapt to a green/bluescreen studio world. If a director have that post exper tise but teams somebody from post, they at least comfor t in knowing, 'I'll be giving these they need and not something they to have to fix for us.'" recent passion project for Egg Films shor t film, called Conscript, from one animators; it was an all-green/blue- shoot. Hachey says ever y shot and angle was measured up and done in well as the pre-editing, so it's "es- just post people on set."The film is a of two aliens torn apart as one is conscripted into the militar y to invade They called on After Effects for the of the compositing and for 3D used 4D, 3DS Max and LightWave. offers up these tips: post in at the conception stage. always great for somebody in post to be in the prep of a production, not just there on set, but involved from when concept is mapped out and during the stage. If they consult with somebody post, the right people, the project better than they ever anticipated." Consider having an editor on set. editor showing up on a commercial hugely important because they get to ything that is going on in all the They are just as involved in telling the the director is. I think that some of the best editors make the best directors and the best producers.They see everything that's gone wrong in the production and they know it could have been avoided." Work collaboratively with the direc- tor. "Technology changes, and the people most on top of that are the people who are seeing the project at the very end." L U K E D I TO M M A S O One of The Molecule's biggest clients is FX's Rescue Me, a show about New York fire- fighters after 9/11, starring Denis Leary. Re- cently, the NY-based VFX studio (www.the- molecule.net) was called in early to help with a dream sequence where Leary's character, Tommy Gavin, wakes up in the basement of the bombed out World Trade Center. The character is walking around, and then looks up through what had been the ground floor of the building, and you can see the towers have already fallen. He sees a figure walking around — it's his cousin who died in the towers during 9/11 — and follows him down a hallway and around a corner. This is where The Molecule came in; they created a set extension for the corner. It was during preproduction that Luke DiTommaso, VFX super visor at The Mole- cule, learned the script called for a long hand-held shot around the corner of an L- shaped corridor in the basement of the WTC. "During pre production meeting, the production designer Andrew Bernard ex- pressed concern about the scope of building such a set with all the destruction and detail involved. We suggested building just one straight corridor and dressing it twice," he explains. "A hidden cut between the two could be buried as the actor turned the cor- ner. Alleviating that burden allowed him to think of the production design in a different way. He was able to focus his resources and still have his set look amazing, and we bene- fitted because he became our staunchest ally for opting to use VFX in scenes." Another thing DiTommaso learned from that meeting was that this basement scene was going to be shot very dark; so dark that the typical tracking point — a piece of tape in the shape of an X — wouldn't do the trick. "We knew that black gaffing tape was- n't going to show up, so we found this thing on vfxhack.com where you take an LED light and heat shrink it to a little watch bat- tery. We set up this giant wall of LED lights off in the distance…imagine a corridor and the end of it was capped off. We used a blackscreen and put the series of LED lights on there, so no matter how dark the scene Intervention