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www.postmagazine.com 13 POST APRIL 2015 DELUXE'S EC3 CREATES CUSTOM TAILORED ON-SET SOLUTIONS LOS ANGELES — Deluxe's (www.bydeluxe.com) EC3 business leverages the technology and experience of Deluxe Creative Services' feature finishing houses Efilm and Company 3 to create tailored on-set and near-set solutions for productions, whether they are mega-budget studio features or more modest indies. Marc Ross is EC3's production manager, and is based out of Efilm's Holly- wood offices. "People know we're not a one-size-fits-all company," he explains. "We don't just have one product, one workflow, that we make the production fit into. If you're shooting 3D stereoscopic material and you want to hand off mags in the morning and watch color graded 3D dailies in a perfectly-calibrated D-cinema theater on wheels at lunch, we can do it." That was the set-up for last year's X-Men: Days of Future Past. The filmmak- ers were so happy with the solution that they are going to use it for the next X-Men movie, which starts production shortly, notes Ross. "If you just want to see a raw image with a 'look' added, we can do that with our Colorstream set-up, either to a calibrated monitor or to an iPad," he notes. "If you want one of our extremely-talented and highly-experienced colorists to build complex looks in your dailies, we do that. If you just want to apply a simple LUT to all your dailies, we can certainly do that too." EC3 can go just about anywhere in the world the production goes. They've worked in Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Rome, Brisbane, and remote parts of the Republic of Malta. They have production offices, self-contained Star Waggon projection/grading trailers, or can make a space if necessary, which is what they did for Michael Mann and cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh for the thriller Blackhat. "They shot in multiple cities in the US and Asia," Ross recalls. "They used about a dozen different types of cameras and had extensive deliverable re- quirements, so we found spaces in each city they shot in and four-walled our own mini facility, where our colorist graded everything that was shot and a support team managed the massive amounts of data." While it's not a requirement that EC3 clients work within the Deluxe eco- system, doing so can add a level of efficiency and security. Recently, EC3 built a small set-up for the live-action elements of The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge out of Water, which were shot in Savannah, GA. Here, the production was able to leverage the fact that Deluxe's Stereo D would be doing the final color work and Iloura would be doing the animation. EC3 provided a colorist/technician, who took in the mags from production, processed the ArriRaw files, backed them up to LTO and did a color pass using Colorfront OSD. Dailies were deliv- ered via the Pix system to production and editorial departments. Cinematographer Phil Meheaux subsequently pre-built LUTs to his specs at Efilm in Hollywood to create a "color bible" for the VFX. All his color decisions were then available to Iloura and Stereo D as the project continued towards completion. Throughout SpongeBob's production and post, all the footage was kept within the efficient and secure realm of Deluxe Creative Services. "Studios like us in a situation like that because we don't just offer techni- cal services," Ross explains, "we offer peace of mind. Long after the crew has moved on to other things, we've kept track of all the production's files, CDLs, versions, everything. " For more on the latest "Dailies" technology, turn to page 34. BITS & PIECES C M Y CM MY CY CMY K EEG_NAB'15_Post_Half Island_ScribeAd_Final.pdf 3/20/15 11:36:44 AM