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BITS & PIECES www.postmagazine.com 7 POST MARCH 2017 ROUNDABOUT PURCHASES SAM'S RIO FOR 4K EDITING, COLOR AND FINISHING BURBANK, CA — Roundabout (www.roundabout.com), the Burbank-CA based post production facility that specializes in audio, syndication, closed captioning, restoration and feature film DI, has purchased a Rio 4K online editing, color and finishing tool from SAM for editorial and restoration work on multiple films. Craig Price, senior DI editor at Roundabout, explained that the decision to purchase Rio came easily, especially given the company's re- cent involvement with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) and his experience with Quantel products. "I've been doing a lot of 4K work for AMPAS, which now handles a lot of restoration of old features in 4K. Moreover, I've been a Quantel user for 20 years and have seen their technology evolve over time. With Rio, we get really sophis- ticated features that make our jobs a lot easier. For example, Rio's toolset has an intuitive layout so you don't have to think about it, which saves us a lot of time." Roundabout has already put its Rio to use on several 4K projects, including the indie film, Feed, which involved creating titles that appeared hand drawn. There will be more film work in the future. SAM's Rio is a complete color editing and finishing tool for HD, UHD, 4K and 8K projects. Its inte- grated toolset keeps the whole job in the suite and fully integrates with today's file-based workflows. With native color spaces stored on disk, Rio handles wide color gamut and HDR grading by using a range of transfer curves. It offers 32-bit full- float processing with high precision color reproduction output in a range of color spaces. SNUGGLE BEAR CREATES CUSTOM SERENADES DETROIT — The makers of Snuggle fabric conditioner products recently launched a new Website to honor National Hug Day and Valentine's Day. Ending on February 28th, anyone visiting SnuggleSerenades. com was able to easily create custom video Valentine's featuring unique performances from the brand's mas- cot, Snuggle Bear. The brand worked closely with advertising agency Campbell Ewald, RingSide Creative (www.ringside- creative.com), its partner Cutters Studios (www.cuttersstudios.com), and their divisions: Picnic New Media, Flavor, Dictionary Films and Cutters Editorial. Directed and creative directed by Flavor's Jason Cook, the project involved several days of shooting with Snuggle Bear and puppeteers on a set in Detroit. The site uses Cook's finished editorial sequences edited together by Dave Mariani of Cutters in Detroit. "We were invited to be part of this project by Campbell Ewald's integrat- ed producer Chris Robertson, who is based in Los Angeles," explains Jim Shanley, Picnic's managing director. "With Chris and Flavor's Jason Cook in LA, this was a unique opportuni- ty for us all to collaborate with the agency's creative team in New York, while leading the development of the digital application with the agency here in Detroit." According to Picnic's creative lead Joe Sciacchitano, the project's deliv- erables were the two hero music vid- eos, multiple pre-rolls for advertising use and the responsive, mobile-first microsite, all of which came together in under six weeks. "Creating two amazing music videos on that time- line is a task in itself, but letting thou- sands of users control the imagery and text within them is a whole dif- ferent ballgame," he points out. "We are very proud of the elegance of our video processing solution. The results make it feel like each user has a team of editors and wizards finishing their videos instantaneously." From the early going, Cook was inspired by the playfulness and fun of the "Snuggle Serenades" concept. Knowing that Snuggle Bear was cre- ated by Jim Henson's Creature Shop, the birthplace of The Muppets and Sesame Street puppets, he actively campaigned for a live-action shoot. "Snuggle was literally born in the 80s, so to me, this was an incredibly fun opportunity to playfully nod to that time with visuals and expres- sions from the glory days of MTV," he says. After viewing "tons" of old music videos and pulling countless references, he and his fellow design- ers produced storyboards for his vision of shooting the video on a real, minimalist set. "I knew this approach would let me tell the story in a simple way without having to rely on a ton of green screen post work," he says. After getting his boards ap- proved, Cook designed his shoot with director of photography Kevin Hewitt around the use of practical effects like fog, colored gels, back- lighting, neon, slow zooms, diffusion and double exposures. "These visual tropes added to the whole expe- rience and throwback nostalgia of the videos," Cook adds. He also set out to ensure a contrast between the two videos, envisioning Time of My Life as a performance piece and Loving You as a romantic daydream. Unique looks and storytelling styles were also devised in both cases, while also cleverly featuring user photos and dedications. Despite capturing so much in-camera, Flavor's VFX artists in Detroit played vital roles in finishing each scene. Beginning by removing the puppeteering rods on Snuggle Bear, artists also added smoke and lighting effects, and handled more clean-up, color correction and pol- ishing. "We did wind up with a few green-screen shots that required more intense compositing as well," Cook continues. "We used Maxon's Cinema 4D to create some 3D ele- ments and Adobe After Effects for a couple of animations. Everything went through Autodesk's Flame for final delivery." Director Cook also nodded to many talented colleagues at RingSide Creative, praising Picnic's executives for handling the project's interactive and integration components, and teams at Flavor in LA and Detroit for their masterful touches. "I was also lucky to have Dictionary Films' Robin Tracey as a production partner in Detroit," he concluded. "And, after collaborating extensively with Dave Mariani throughout post, I was de- lighted with the ideas he brought to the table."