Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/82522
Bits & Pieces MPC expands NYC team N EW YORK — MPC (moving-picture.com) has added to its New York team with the recent hiring of VFX supervisor Evan Schoonmaker (left) and lead animator Grae Revell (right). Schoonmaker brings strong VFX skills to the studio, having worked in shot design, execution and finishing. His credits include work with brands such as Verizon, DirecTV and Geico. He joins MPC after spending time at Brand New School, Psyop, Mass Market and The Mill. Revell has more than a decade of experience animating characters and creatures for film, TV, documentaries, games and Webisodes. He has done animation and VFX work for a long list of feature films, including Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Outside the feature film space, Revell has handled character ani- mation for Coca-Cola, Listerine and Lego. Scratch 7: realtime pipeline from on-set to post S ANTA CLARA, CA — If you stopped by the Assimilate (www.assimilateinc.com) booth during NAB 2012 you might have gotten a glimpse of a technology demo that hinted at some of the new offerings that were going to be rolled out in the next version of Scratch. At IBC, the company provided more than a glimpse. They introduced Scratch V.7, which, according to the company, allows its product line to enable "this new generation of ways people work" with advanced dailies and creative DI. They have announced a new busi- ness model as well. More on that later. In addition to enhancements to the types of native camera formats supported, a big part of Scratch V.7 is an enhanced creative toolset that includes com- positing, and allows more realtime creative DI on-set/ near-set. Assimilate says things like keying out the greenscreen and playing with different lighting and skies on-set with the director and DP allows for "a far more creative DI process in the back-end because By Randi Altman Plug In Sonnet Thunderbolt Expansion Products for the Creative Workflow ™ Accelerate your workflow with Sonnet's Thunderbolt expansion products for PCIe Cards and ExpressCard® adapters. Harness the power of Thunderbolt technology to use high-performance PCIe cards, originally designed for use in a Mac® Pro, with any Thunderbolt Technology enabled computer. Ingest, transcode, edit, render, stream, and serve in places you previously couldn't with computers you wouldn't have thought possible. Learn how you can expand your capabilities at sonnettech.com/thunderbolt 8 Post • September 2012 www.postmagazine.com you don't have to recreate all that stuff in post," says VP of marketing Steve Bannerman. "If you have these advanced color graded dailies with audio sync, you don't have to waste time in DI doing the basic blocking and tackling. Scratch V.7 is a realtime tool that has a blend of color grading, compositing and conform — all the things you need to start a creative DI session and move all the way through to finishing without having to farm out a lot of basic visual effects beauty work, like clean- ing up skin tones and pimples, repositioning objects and add- ing lens flares." But Assimilate is quick to point out you will still need a VFX studio for complex CG shots, just that some of the basic visual effects work can be done by the colorist and begin earlier in the process, like on- or near- set, saving time and budget. Assimilate chairman Jeff Edson feels we are beginning to see an evolution of what a DIT does, and that in the future that job description (and possibly the job title) will change. He says that now the tools have caught up to the vast knowledge base of today's DIT. "Historically they were seen as data wranglers, but more and more they are final- izing the look in the dailies, and that's being done together with the DP and director on- set." It's the move to digital that has spurred this change and the evolution, he says. "They will say, 'I do editorial on-set/near-set for dailies any- way, now I can do color cor- SHIPPING! NOW