Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/526086
www.postmagazine.com 4 POST JUNE 2015 BITS & PIECES SUPEREXPLODER POSTS SPIKE'S TUT MINI-SERIES TEASER NEW YORK — Audio post house SuperExploder's (www.superexploder.com) sound designer/mixer Jody Nazzaro recently helped to intensify the mystery and scandal of ancient Egypt in a :30 teaser. Fate is What You Take promotes Spike TV's new mini-series, Tut. The mini-series, starring Academy Award-winning actor Sir Ben Kingsley, tells the saga of one of history's most extraordinary rulers, Tutankhamun (King Tut). The six-hour scripted event series is scheduled to premiere in 2015. Nazzaro handled the sound design and mix for the intense teaser, as well as the sound design for the accompanying bumpers and throws to the new Tut trailer. Having previously collaborated with Spike SVP brand marketing & creative Terry Minogue and VP brand marketing & creative David Phillips, Nazzaro was eager to amplify the stunning visuals that post house Psyop (and its creative di- rector Lauren Indovina) designed with equally captivating audio, and to promote an original series that is a markedly-different direction for the network. Nazzaro initially designed the sound to compliment a temporary music track, but chose to present the sound design separately as an alternate. He aligned the sound design in the key and feel of the initial music track, but ultimately the decision was made to leave the music track on the cutting room floor. To create the ominous and as- phyxiating tone of the spot, he used a sample of an Egyptian lute-like instrument, an Oud, and mangled the sound in the Spectrasonics Omnisphere synthesizer. Also relying on Pro Tools for the finishing touches, the resulting effect is mysteri- ous and enticing. INHANCE DIGITAL USES FUSION STUDIO FOR VFX ON NBC'S GRIMM FREMONT, CA — Hollywood's Inhance Digital has been relying on Black- magic Design's (www.blackmagicdesign.com) Fusion Studio to com- plete VFX work for a number of primetime TV shows, including Jane the Virgin, Nashville, and one of NBC's most popular and longest running shows, Grimm. A drama series inspired by the classic Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales, Grimm follows homicide detective Nick Burkhardt — a descended from a long line of "Grimms," who have the ability to see and hunt down su- pernatural creatures. Since its start in 2011, the show each week requires a huge amount of CG and VFX work as Burkhardt battles humans turn- ing into various creatures. Inhance has been providing VFX work on the series for the past four seasons. Inhance VFX supervisor Eddie Robison manages and helps create the VFX shots for the show. Robison began using Fusion in 1996 while working on Star Trek Voyager, and has continued to use Fusion on shows such as CSI Miami. "Grimm is our largest client in terms of complicated CG as well as volume of work, and we do a lot of shots for Grimm where we turn the actors into creatures. To do this with Fusion, we take the 3D tracking of plates provided by production leads to 3D elements of the crea- tures in several layers and bring them into Fusion for compositing. Fusion handles the prelim work, such as tracking dot removals from the actors' faces and roto of their clothing to the complicated layering and blending of CG elements to make a very convincing and photo re- alistic creature," Robison says. "We import not only the various passes rendered from 3D as imagery with alphas, but also the elements from .exr file formats that allow us to access in comp things like metadata, UV data, Z-depth and world position data. Having access to all of this is invaluable." Robison continues that for Grimm, "Fusion's node set up is perfect. Node comping just makes sense to me. With the main 'flow' window, you can see a start and a finish to the comp with everything very evident in between, and you can arrange the nodes and their connec- tions any way you want so it's really easy to make it your own. Time- line-based software just sort of restricts you and makes you do things only one way." Robison adds that with the industry the way it is, "what they are expecting on a TV timeline and budget, everything is a huge challenge. Fusion helps us with memorable shots on a daily basis." New episodes of Grimm will air on NBC in the coming Fall TV season.