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POSTING EPISODIC TV www.postmagazine.com 24 POST OCTOBER 2016 of post production and VFX at Sony Pictures Television. "But, due to the amount of VFX, we have to allow extra time in the schedule to com- plete them. The challenge of this show will be turning around episodes, which are almost equiv- alent to doing a pilot every week, on a network TV schedule. We have to create all the different time periods — the French and Indian Wars, the Alamo, Las Vegas in the '50s — and make them feel au- thentic to viewers." Dailies are processed at Encore Vancouver, which sends Avid DNx 36 files to the editors in Sherman Oaks, CA, who cut on Avid Media Composers with Avid ISIS shared storage. In addition to the three editors on staff, a VFX editor is charged with preparing preliminary composites and tracking all shots. After the director's cut is complete, Timeless creators Shawn Ryan and Eric Kripke come in to further refine and lock the show. At Company 3 Santa Monica (www.company3. com), senior colorist Siggy Ferstl performs the col- or grading on Blackmagic Design DaVinci Resolve Studio V.12.5. Ferstl, who also works on features and commercials, just finished Season 2 of the Netflix series Narcos. "As a colorist, it's great to be involved with a show that doesn't have the same look and loca- tions every week," says Ferstl. "It stretches you to think about the time and the place and be true to that. And it's fun to see what they come up with next." After the pilot, Ferstl set up a "virtual color" system so DPs Sam McCurdy, BSC, Jimmy Lindsey and Mark Chow in Vancouver can participate in his sessions. "It works quite well," he says. "They mon- itor the output of my room, seeing my windows and keys on their retina-display laptops in realtime. To be able to offer this service is really beneficial." Ferstl notes that costumes, set design and lighting go a long way in capturing the historical scenes in-camera. "CDLs from on-set or near-set are brought across to LA to give us the base look," he explains. "We get style frames as well to finesse the look. Couple that with virtual color and it's a pret- ty efficient process." With only the pilot and the first episode behind him so far, Ferstl has visited the Hindenburg crash and Lincoln's last days. For the airship disaster, the colorist enhanced the stormy weather of the landing, making sure "there were lots of cool tones and more weight in the images." For Civil War Washington, he maintained the soft, warm palette established by practical lamps and candles illumi- nating interiors and daylight flooding through win- dows. Ferstl gave "more snap with the contrast" to the present day, high-tech "take-off venue," where the heroes depart on their time travel adventures. A long-time Resolve user, Ferstl finds that the system's "ability to track images so well and so consistently is a real time saver. There are 900 to 1,000 cuts to each show, so there are a lot of shots. Company 3's Ferstl Encore handles Timeless' dailies. The Timeless pilot was shot in 4K using Red's Dragon.