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workflow The Amazing Spider-Man goes native C ULVER CITY, CA — The Amazing Spi- der-Man is Sony Pictures' and direc- tor Marc Webb's reboot of the suc- By DANIEL RESTUCCIO Dansweb451@aol.com cessful Marvel Comics franchise. It is also the latest movie shot native stereo with Red Epic cameras to hit theaters this year. Taking advantage of this bleeding-edge technology presented some unique challeng- es that also inspired significant innovations in production, post and visual effects workflows. This journey started with Sony tapping Marc Webb (500 Days of Summer) to direct. Cinematographer John Schwartzman sat down with Webb in February of 2010 think- ing he was making Spider-Man 4 with Venom. He quickly realized this was a complete reboot of the franchise, focused more on the origin story with a new cast and hopefully a more modest budget. SHOOTING NATIVELY Sony also figured that with audiences A look at the stereo shoot, post and VFX. embracing stereo, this Spider-Man would make more money in 3D. So after evaluating a 2D-to-3D conversion and a number of digital camera options, Schwartzman and Webb decided to go native thanks to Red Epic with the 3ality stereo rig system. "The Epic was the size of a Hasselblad 501," recalls Schwartzman, who knew that 3ality's CEO, Steve Schklair, was building lightweight rigs around the Epic. With two Red Epics and a couple of lenses, it weighed 45 lbs. Another system they inves- tigated was two Sony F35s mounted on a Quasar Technica (also from 3ality) — that weighed 128 lbs. The Epic rig was light enough to be hand-held; Schwartzman felt this light- weight system, with a full-size sensor, was going to be the right choice for shooting the movie in 3D. "We could not have made Spider-Man without the Red Epic," reports Schwartzman. The camera rig had to be light and agile. "It's a movie that's about moving in the x and y and z axis all at the same time," he says. "It's being able to fly with a disenfranchised teen- ager, who has the ability to move at a speed vertically that humans can't do — and trying to capture that." Schwartzman wanted to start shooting in December, but the first cameras were booked on The Hobbit. When director Peter Jackson's perforated ulcer surgery pushed back The Hobbit's shooting to April 2011, Schwartzman made a deal with cinematographer Andrew Lesnie to get the Epics…provided he shared all his intel on using the cameras. 16 Post • July 2012 Principal photography began two weeks before Christmas. First unit used up to three rigs, one on a Steadicam, that increased up to six rigs for the high action scenes. Shoot- ing in stereo did not slow down production. They did 18 to 25 set-ups a day shooting in stereo 3D. Armageddon, says Schwartzman, took 130 days to shoot while Spider-Man was just 90 days. Plus, in many ways, it was more complicated. flow buoyant and having it touch the DIT workstation just briefly." Using Red Cine-X, Willard would sit with Schwartzman and color correct footage, building custom RMD (color metadata) files. "Brook was my on-set telecine guy," says Schwartzman. "I would color correct the stuff right out of the camera. Never in my career has editorial, on a daily basis, gotten dallies as close to what I thought they should be for my The film was shot using Red Epics with a light-weight 3ality stereo rig. "I didn't have to make exceptions to deal with that camera," he says, adding that the system was flexible enough that he could put the Epic rig on a Steadicam, techno-crane, dolly or hand-hold it. "I had never shot anything digital in my life," reports Schwartzman, "but I was familiar with digital still cameras. I used a light meter; I never used a waveform monitor. I lit it exactly the way I would light a film shoot. The differ- ence was in the digital world it was more like shooting reversal film. Instead of overexposing half a stop I would underexpose half a stop." ON-SET DATA Schwartzman and Light Iron Digital's (www.lightiron.com) Michael Cioni spent the summer months prepping and testing the on- set data systems. By day one of the shoot, the workflow was solid. DIT Brook Willard would take the twin 128GB SSD cards from the Epic/3ality rigs and do a quality control check directly on the cards, set the convergence, and do a color match between left and right eye. This was the concept of Light Iron's own Lilly Pad system, says Cioni. "Keeping the data www.postmagazine.com final version of the movie." Willard then passed the SSD cards and RMDs to Light Iron's Outpost system, run by data wranglers Zach Hilton and Steve Freba- rin. "Our role was data management and dai- lies processing," explains Hilton. They did a deeper dive on the data. First ensuring there were no data errors and then making three checksum back-ups on separate hard drives as well as an LTO tape back-up. They rendered out QuickTime DNxHD 115 side-by-side stereo for offline editorial as well as H.264 files uploaded to iPads that the director, cinematographer and producers could take home with them every night. Since principal photography on Spider-Man, the Outpost cart technology has been stream- lined and compressed into a version that fits inside a single piece of Pelican carry-on. EDITORIAL During the summer of 2010, Webb called his 500 Days of Summer editor Alan Bell to see if he was available to cut Spider-Man. Bell had Water for Elephants on his plate, so Pietro Scalia started cutting Spider-Man when pro-