Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/941133
www.postmagazine.com 15 POST FEBRUARY 2018 PLUG-INS the show. It needed to be perfect to convince the viewers and match the other interviews shot on-location backstage. "I always look at greenscreens when I'm in off- line and on-line and it doesn't look right. I made it a big point of making them seamless for World of Dance," states Stotty. "The goal was to make the final interview shots as realistic as possible. We didn't want to just do a talking head. It needed to be a proper sit down interview. Otherwise it would stick out like a sore thumb if it was just a regular greenscreen shot." THE SOLUTION "Preparation and thinking ahead is always key," re- marks Stotty. "We needed to get the same cameras (C-300's) and lenses (Cinema Primes) we used throughout the whole show for the greenscreen interviews. Otherwise it wasn't going to match." Stotty also knew that lighting, lens focal length and focus on his subjects would be crucial. "We needed backup in case the studios weren't big enough. On the Boston stage, we were in a huge studio with proper lighting. We spent two hours getting it perfect. As soon as judge Derek Hough came in, we adjusted for his skin tone and we shot it. We didn't comp it on site, but I was confident we were getting what we needed," comments Stotty. "We were in a bit of a smaller stage with Jennifer Lopez since we only had access to the Thirty Rock stage. That was a bigger challenge, knowing the plates were shot in a huge soundstage on the NBC lot. There was about 50 feet of depth on the lot. We tried to recreate it as much as possible." Stotty, the former editor, recognized he had to get everything right. "I made sure to measure everything again and again, to get the right height, etc. Being an editor is good training ground for the field. I think everyone should spend time in the edit to understand what goes on and what the limita- tions are," says Stotty. "Before even going out to the field for the pickups, I spoke to Tal, my colorist and online editor, to get his take. Collaboration is key, especially with people you trust in order to get the best product." THE EDIT Fifteen editors offline the show on Avid systems. Once cuts are locked, it moves on to me, the col- orist, and Josiah Cohen, the online editor. World of Dance is handled in parallel, color in one room on a BlackMagic DaVinci Resolve and online work on Avid Media Composer. The show has up to 15 video layers. The open is the most intense segment — filled with treated video, transitions and GFX coming from Stotty's long-time collaborator Paul Claydon, all to give the show its hip and cool vibe. Before the color pass begins, the Avid sequence gets stripped of all effects, leaving only the video footage. Color correction is handled by me, a 20- plus year veteran who has worked on many network shows. We have a very robust system of round-trip- ping the shows from Avid to Resolve and back to Avid. This allows us the freedom to get the accurate cut from offline with all the layers and still color cor- rect with the wonderful tools and quality of Resolve. The biggest surprise came during the green- screen composites, after the colored footage and online were combined. Greenscreen interviews exist in almost every reality show and the problem is one can always tell. The goal here was to be as seamless as possible when intercutting with inter- views shot on set. That's where Continuum's new Primatte Studio toolset came in. At the time, it was still in the beta phase. As a member of the beta team, I decided to give it a go and the results were impressive from the first click. The Auto Analyze function got us 80 percent there. A few more clicks for finessing the key and I was done. Something that in most cases is a pain and rarely (in reality television) looks real was almost indistinguishable from the non-greenscreen interviews. That is the best compliment for a keyer. The entire process took minutes. Once complete, the pulled key effect could be applied to other interview shots of the same person. Add a quick background render in Avid while other things were worked on in the sequence, and the show was done. THE RESULTS Continuum's Primatte Studio starts with an auto an- alyze button that pulls the initial key. Next it cleans the background and foreground. Finally it applies spill correction for those frizzy edges. One of the great tools is the point brush for selecting a line of pixels to fix or a rectangular for square areas. The on-screen controls are organized in order of usage so there is no need to jump up and down menus or from one window to the next away from the image itself. Everything is in one place. A lot of thought has been given to maximizing the speed of the process. Continuum from Boris FX includes inte- grated Mocha, the renowned planar tracker, in most of its plugins. Primatte Studio is no different. Mocha is incorporated into the keyer to allow easy creation of garbage mattes along with a very easy way of tracking them all inside the keyer. There's no more leaving the effect to create masks for unwanted el- ements nor is the keyer limited to only hard square crop lines. Mocha's tracking and masking tools are extremely robust and it's right there at the editor's finger tips. Primatte Studio also includes many functions that other keyers have: Matte clean up, matte chok- er, foreground color correction, light wrap, edge color correction and drop shadow. But unlike other keyers, they are all inside one all-encompassing plug-in. If that's not enough, there are geometrics for image reposition, resize and other manipula- tions. Geometrics can be applied pre- or post key (a phenomenal tool). Continuum 11's Primatte Studio toolset (also available in the individual Continuum Key & Blend Unit) is a must-have in every online suite — quick and easy to use, very full featured and reason- ably priced. Boris FX's Continuum 11. Continuum 11 helped blend greenscreen composites for World of Dance.