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The Alexa-shot Revolution
gets its on-set/near-set
solution from Bling Digital.
Mango is “equipment agnostic” and configures its rack-mounted near-set solution, in
consultation with a show’s DP, with Colorfront’s On-Set Dailies system or Assimilate’s
Scratch. “We’re also looking at MTI Film’s Cortex Control Dailies,” Cassio says. “Our system
looks like a permanent environment, not a collection of road cases. It’s like what the client
is accustomed to seeing in a facility.”
Cassio intends to get the word out to more DPs that Mango’s near-set dailies and color
solution offers “the same comfort level of a four-wall facility with engineering support 24/7.
Once people try it, they love the efficiency and logic of it.”
REVOLUTION
“On a show like Revolution, with multiple units and massive amounts of stunts and action,
the amount of footage through the pipeline is pretty huge,” declares associate producer
Geoff Garrett, who works with co-executive producer Phil Sgriccia on the NBC series.
“We use both on-set and near-set dailies solutions with Bling Digital (a division of Sim Digital; www.simdigital.com). On-set we get the color looks they want quickly and focus on
backing up material for protection, then Bling does the heavy lifting near-set, focusing on
dailies outside the crazy environment of production.”
Revolution shoots on location in Wilmington, NC, using Arri Alexa as its primary camera
with Canon 7D and GoPro cameras supplementing. In North Carolina, Bling maintains a
colorist, sync technician, Avid technician and screening techs who prep and distribute the
dailies for each day’s work.
The on-set solution finds the show’s DP setting color values with the DIT using FilmLight’s
Truelight color management system.Truelight is connected directly to the Alexa, enabling the
DIT to see what the camera sees in realtime and apply the desired looks. The CDL values
are carried across to Avid editorial and ultimately to online finishing at Level 3. With this
method, the intent of the DP and director is maintained from on the set to final color and
nothing gets “lost in translation,” according to Bling’s dailies producer, Jesse Korosi.
Because the show is so big, it isn’t possible to deploy the Truelight system on extra units
shooting on location or on vehicles and boats. In that case, “Bling works with the DP and
DIT at night to apply the color looks,” Garrett points out.
To prep dailies, Bling ingests Apple ProRes 444 QuickTimes in Log C color space and
applies the CDL values to each take; the files are read by Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve, which
marries the two together to produce Avid DNx36 files for editorial.
“Bling’s North Carolina office utilizes the high-speed fiber pipeline on the Wilmington
Screen Gems lot and Aspera point-to-point software to give them a direct high-speed link
to the writers and editorial office in Burbank,” Garrett explains. “Bling organizes the Avid
files, syncing all the audio tracks, embedding CDL information in the files and producing bins
for circle takes. Every night, Bling uploads files to our computer in Burbank, which is connected to an Avid ISIS. Even late-night shoots are ready for the editors when they come
into work in the morning.” In several instances, Bling has even dispatched same-day dailies
for a pick-up shot or to meet some last-minute requirement when the show needs to lock.
Garrett had previously worked with Bling on the defunct Fox series, Alcatraz, which shot
in Vancouver. “We did a fair amount of R&D for those dailies,” he recalls. “We’re using a lot
of the same workflow we established on that show, but now our Avids are connected to an
ISIS storage system, which is Ethernet-based, unlike the older Unity, which is fiber-based. So
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Instant Gratification
Oz The Great and Powerful
used Fotokem’s own
NextLab solution.
all our computers are linked to the ISIS via
Ethernet, making moving dailies files around
simpler and straightforward. No more shuttling around external hard drives.” Arthur
Ditner is Bling’s dailies supervisor.
Garrett hails the green aspects of the process. “Our connection to Bling is bi-directional, so if someone from production in Wilmington wants a DVD, editorial can transfer an
ISO-DVD file to Bling, which can burn the
disc and get it to whomever needs it in
North Carolina without having to ship a disc
across the country. That’s a time saver and
good for the environment too. I’ve gotten
DVDs to set thousands of miles away faster
than to Santa Monica,” Garret says laughing.
THE CREATIVE-CARTEL
Craig Mumma’s history with on-set dailies “goes back to the Dalsa camera days.
I’ve been at it at least since 2005 with the
digital pipeline for Where The Wild Things Are
in Australia. I can recall every meeting I had
trying to convince people to do this. They
looked at me like I was crazy. Even three or
four years ago it was a difficult sell. Now, it’s
a new world.”
Mumma is CTO at Culver City’s The
Creative-Car tel
(www.the-car tel.com),
which offers a near-set dailies solution with
FilmLight’s Baselight as its main engine. “My
philosophy is that on-set dailies are more
problematic than helpful, so we set up near
editorial or the production office, or in a
mobile truck,” he explains. The CreativeCartel does near-set dailies mostly for feature films, including the upcoming After Earth
and Grown Ups 2, and next year’s remake of
About Last Night.
In addition to Baselight, the system has
50-100TBs of JMR Linux-based storage and
a Mac Tower for transferring footage to The
Creative-Cartel’s software, Joust. Joust is a
cloud-based service for uploading, downloading and viewing dailies and performing
online transfers.
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“The Creative-Cartel customizes
the workflow for each show
depending upon how the filmmakers prefer to work. For example,
how each client wants their color
and sets of dailies,” says Mumma.
“Do they want only circle takes
uploaded to Joust? Do they specify
LUTs for each shot? Do they want
secondaries? Some DPs have a standard repertoire of looks for us to
apply; another wants a Rec.709
transfer so he can deal with color
later. What’s great about shooting in
raw is that the sensor captures
everything: It’s like shooting film — you don’t
have to make decisions on-set.”
The Creative-Cartel can also provide
more than a near-set dailies solution, he
notes. “We specialize in engineering the
whole show from camera to DI.”
The generic workflow for a feature begins
with engineering the camera to be in a certain color space. “We work with the camera
department to make sure the settings are
correct and that they understand them. The
goal is that what the DP sees on-set, he sees
in the dailies,” says Mumma.
“If there’s going to be on-set color we
calibrate all the monitors on-set to match
those in editorial and at the top of the food
chain. If there are on-set looks to be applied
we discuss how to manage that: Do we deal
with metadata sent into the camera or will
they provide it on a thumb drive for us to
apply at the end of the day?”
When shooting begins, the camera cards
are taken out of the camera and dispatched
to the near-set system, where all material is
verified, a back-up copy is made, the cards
refreshed and ferried back to the set. “Then
we take the material and sync the sound,
apply the color as needed and output the
deliverables: we back up on LTO or other
media, and prepare H.264 files for QuickTimes for Joust or another system and files
for DVDs,” says Mumma.
The Creative-Cartel wrote Joust “to
retain the brain trust from the set,” he
explains. “It takes all the metadata from the
script, VFX wrangling and other departments
and attaches it to each shot so it’s a part of
the viewing dailies process that people are
accustomed to. Up to the final DI you can
see any information from that day on-set.”
Joust also acts as a transcoder for editorial and finishing. “You can put the EDL
in it and transcode all the high-resolution
material, too,” he notes. “Joust keeps the
same final-naming conventions throughout
the process.”
He sees near-set dailies moving forward
rapidly now that many DPs are shooting
digitally and producers have experienced
the speed, savings and efficiencies of preloading post.
OZ THE GREAT AND POWERFUL
During the Pontiac, MI, shoot for the 3D
feature Oz the Great and Powerful, FotoKem
went above and beyond on-set dailies and
color with its NextLab on-set solution. Data
management supervisor Kyle Spicer handled
all the initial media management and associated prep work, including fine-tuning the
color with DP Peter Deming, ASC and collaborating with stereographer Ed Marsh on
3D quality control.
“We had never used NextLab before, so
FotoKem worked with us to make sure the
system fit the workflow we envisioned,”
says Todd Livdahl, director of production
technology at The Walt Disney Studios.
“NextLab became the on-set nucleus of
our data center.”
Working in a tent about 40 feet from the
set, Spicer loaded all the data from multiple
Red Epic 3D rigs into NextLab, which featured a 60TB RAID, Avid Euphonix control
surface for color, and multiple card readers.
Once the data was in the NextLab software,
the system became a kind of QC station for
the stereo 3D. The software combined the
left and right eyes to create 3D clips to
which HIT and VIT were applied. Spicer
teamed with Marsh to ensure that all the
settings were correct and balanced the color
between the eyes.
Smaller carts with NextLab software were
also on stages with 2nd units. The software
was networked with the DIT cart manned by
Ryan Nguyen for passing off CDL data.
In prepro, Deming asked for an elegant live
color solution that would enable him to take
the live feed from the Red Epic cameras, set
the look for every scene and have those
looks follow through in post. FotoKem wrote
on the spot NextLab Live, which took multiple feeds from multiple cameras into Blackmagic HD Link boxes, fed them into Deming’s laptop running NextLab Live and applied
the agreed upon LUTs with CDL balancing.
“Peter wanted to do live color on-set to
establish the look for the dailies. The color
he applied on-set was then imported to the
NextLab carts in the near-set editorial
offices,” Livdahl says.
The dailies process began when the Red
camera cards were dispatched to the editorial offices, where two NextLab stations, connected to a general NAS, were set up. All the
cards from the set and all the project files
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