profile - Solventdreams

solventdreams cgi
profile
4222 santa monica blvd los angeles, ca 90029
323.906.9700 323.906.9711fx
www.solventdreams.com
sd
Solventdreams is a boutique design and editorial studio focused on creative post for independent film, commercials and television. Based in Silverlake, California in a 4000 sq. ft studio, their facility offers realtime 2k digital
intermediates, HDCAMSR editorial online, film visual effects, motion design and 5.1 surround mixing. Founded
in 2000 by industry production and commercial veterans David Alexander and Sim Tuzun, the company emphasizes integrative post approaches using dedicated creative talent and best-of-breed technology solutions. As
suggested by it’s moniker, Solventdreams provides viable post solutions to filmmakers with vision.
With film and HD capabilities, Solventdreams packages creative post with staple technical services. The firm
boasts well coordinated strategic alliances with big-ticket telecine, laboratory and CGI, maintaining exceptional
quality with industry competitive cost. Staple services include state-of-the art video deliverable technical
services and for independent producers and distributors.
Recently, the company exclusively handled all post for the ambitious animation project, Disaster, a two year stop
motion feature. Solventdreams handled over 350,000 4k frames, integrated 650 compositing shots, generated
2d and 3d photoreal CGI, rendered a state-of-the-art 2k digital intermediate, designed a 5.1 theatrical mix, and
fulfilled all HD / SD deliverables. For this film, the company was recently featured on Apple’s site for their innovative workflow hybridizing off-the-shelf technologies with standard post conventions.
The boutique was commissioned by Find Film (formerly IFP) in 2005 to design the trailer for the Los Angeles
Film Festival, and in 2004 they designed the main title for Bunim-Murray’s long running The Real World. After
designing the main identify for Luke Films, Solventdreams delivered their first 2k DI for the trailer for Therese,
released in 2004.
Current projects include the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival pick, Farewell Bender; where Solventdreams is handling all
editorial, VFX and digital intermediate. The company is currently handling all visual effects for the Star Wars
movie, Fanboys.
solvent dreams
CLIENT LIST
ltd
Abrapalabra Films, Inc
A & E Channel
AMD, Inc
Amesbury Road Productions
Angry Young Ranch, Inc.
Arcwelder Films, LTD / Discovery
Ball Entertainment
Base-FX
Blue Ice Films, LLC
Breakaway Films, Inc.
Byron Katie, Inc. (BKI)
Blueridge Productions, LLC
Bonnieville Productions, LLC
Bunim-Murray, Inc.
CBS
Cinemajungle, Inc
Compass Films, Inc.
Cult Epics, Inc
Dino-Mae Creations, Inc.
Discovery Channel
Dream Entertainment, Inc.
Edutainment Films
ESPN
Facade Productions
Farmhouse Films, Inc
Filmmaker's Alliance
Fox Searchlight
Front Porch Entertainment
Greenleaf Studios, LLC
Gannet/Los Angeles Times
GRB Entertainment
German Entertainment Television (GETV)
Homunculus Films, Inc.
Intrusive Films
LA Freewaves
Lions Gate Films
Lipink, Inc.
Lost Canyon Films
Metaview Communications
Mopane Films
4222 santa monica blvd los angeles, ca 90029
323 906 9700 323 906 9711fx
www.solventdreams.com
[email protected]
Morganville Films, Inc
Motley Crue
MTV
National Geographic Channel
New Artist Media
New Line Film Productions, INc
Onramp Arts, Inc.
Papa Bear Productions
Paul Mitchell Systems
Parsons, Inc
PBS, Inc.
Pfizer Pharmaceuticals
Phoenix Productions
Pomegranete Films, LLC
Punch Films, Inc.
RebRat Edit
Run Entertainment, Ltd.
SDP/Media Hyperium, Inc.
Señor Grande Productions, Inc.
Simon Productions
Skylark Productions
Silverlake Film Festival
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Starz Encore, Inc.
STE Productions, Inc.
Tranquility Base
Trigger Street Productions (Kevin Spacey)
Union Station Media, Inc.
The Weinstein Company, Inc.
White Squirrel Productions, LLC
Without a Box, Inc.
Workaround Films, Inc
Zigzag Media, Inc.
PROJECTS
20 Funerals
A Secret Handshake
Bahama Hustle
Carlita’s Secret
Deep Rescue
Disaster!
Everyone Their Grain of Sand
Fanboys
Farewell Bender
Fear Itself
Final Sale
Fire Within
Inter-State
Limb
Mama’s Boys
Microkillers
Quake
Screaming Night (aka Passing of the Four)
Shrink Rap
So, You’ve Downloaded A Demon
Solitude
Something More
The Chain: From ID to Impact
The Real World
The Silverlake Film Festival
The Statistics Show
Thérèse: The Story of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux
Toi and Poochie
View from A Grain of Sand
solvent dreams
ltd
RECENT PRESS
Variety.com - Reviews - Farewell Bender
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Tribeca 2006
Posted: Tue., Apr. 25, 2006, 8:00pm PT
Farewell Bender
A Midtown Entertainment production. Produced by Jason Behrman, Mellany Behrman, Matt Oates, Emily Barclay.
Executive producer, Roger Flessing. Directed by Matt Oates. Screenplay, Oates. Editor David Alexander Davidson
With: Eddie Kaye Thomas, Kip Pardue, Josh Cooke, Marisa Coughlin, Alexandra Holden, Kaley Cuoco.
By RONNIE SCHEIB
Highly impressive debut feature by 24-year-old
helmer/co-scripter Matt Oates, "Farewell Bender"
revisits "American Graffiti," with a short "Big Chill"
detour, in its depiction of twentysomethings. In 1996
small-town California, three high school buddies
reunite a few years after graduation for the funeral
of a fourth, the titular Bender. Less surreally sterile
than George Lucas' classic neon-lit comedy
angstfest, Oates' bittersweet film is forcefully
composed, solidly scripted and effortlessly
embodied by an ensemble cast of up-and-comers.
With the right handling, evocative youth pic could
strike a rich minor chord.
In the days before the funeral, Mitch (Kip Pardue), a
golden college boy with an assured high-income future;
Stan (Eddie Kay Thomas), a perennial nice-guy with a
municipal job, and Dixon (Josh Cooke), a walking timebomb, perpetually wasted, who was present when
Bender drowned, tool around town reprising their old
high school hi-jinx in an inchoate tribute to their absent
comrade.
They generally do anything, in fact, to avoid thinking
about their prematurely deceased friend or the
seemingly predestined career paths they have drifted
into. Protective of Dixon, they are unwilling to probe
deeper for the source of his obvious distress.
Oates and co-scripter Jeremiah Lowder cannot boast
Cameron Crowe's or Amy Heckerling's ear for the
poetry of teenspeak, but their characters thankfully do
not all sound the same. The actors can stretch
comfortably within the parameters of their unremarkable
yet quite convincing dialogue.
Thesping is uniformly excellent, all perfs on the same
small-town page. Pardue's good-looking Mitch exudes a
moneyed ease that registers more as destiny than
choice, while Thomas' Stan projects a nice-guy
understanding of others that rebounds depressingly on
himself. Cooke as Dixon telegraphs his silent anguish
so strongly that he makes the viewer empathize with
Mitch and Stan's desire not to know what really
happened.
High school buddies reunite several years after graduation
to attened the funeral of a friend in helmer Matt Oates'
'Farewell Bender.'
On the distaff side, Kaley Cuoco is particularly affecting
as Katie, whose four-year crush on Mitch culminates in
a back-seat quickie and a pathetic/defiant insistence on
tagging along.
From the opening dolly-in to the final match-dissolved
traveling shots, Oates and lenser Paul Marschall evince
a masterful but never showy stylistic control. This is
nowhere more apparent than in the tour-de-force party
scene where Stan's new girl Amber (Alexandra Holden)
takes him on an emotional roller-coaster ride mirrored in
subtle lighting changes and vivid
foreground/background contrasts.
Other tech credits are aces.
Camera (color, Super 35mm widescreen), Paul Marschall;
editors, Oates, David Davidson; music supervisor, Adam
Swart; production designer, Gregory A. Berry; costume
designer, Carola Gonzalez; sound, Nikolas Zasimczuk;
casting, Mark Battaglia. Reviewed at Tribeca Cinemas, New
York, April 21, 2006. (In Tribeca Film Festival -- Discovery.)
Running time: 92 MIN.
Date in print: Wed., Apr. 26, 2006, Gotham
Apple - Pro/Film - David Alexander Davidson, pg. 1
By Bija Gutoff
Pro/Film
David Alexander Davidson
1 . A “Disaster!” in the Making
2 . Frame by Frame
3 . Independence, Efficiency, Freedom
Tools of the Trade
9 2GHz Dual Power Mac G5s (4 for
Final Cut Pro editing, 2 for Shake
compositing, 3 for Shake rendering)
Two of the characters in “Disaster!” find themselves trapped on a killer planetoid that
threatens to destroy Earth.
David Alexander Davidson was working as an art director when he had the
epiphany from which his post-production company, Solventdreams, was
born.
“I was doing a Coke commercial on the Universal Studios lot and the
executive producer walked over holding a manual of Final Cut Pro version
1,” he relates. “He pointed in this big gesture over the whole lot and said,
‘All this we’ve built up’ — the infrastructure and equipment — ‘will go
away. And this’ — he’s holding up the Final Cut Pro manual — ‘is what will
replace it.’ It was very dramatic, like those grand cinematic moments in a
film from the 1920s.”
“Since our budget didn’t permit a multimillion dollar
post, we orchestrated a methodology that a handful of
people could execute using off-the-shelf computers
and software.”
Davidson took the prediction to heart. “I saw the writing on the wall,” he
continues. “I’d heard of Final Cut Pro, and it seemed to be the Holy Grail of
the digital revolution. But that experience galvanized it for me. I saw that if
the big guys, the major producers, were interested in editing on the Mac, it
was going to happen.”
In 2000 Davidson started Solventdreams in his living room closet. Today, at
39, the filmmaker has weathered the start-up years and is gathering an
impressive roster of clients who engage him to do editing and post on his
all-Mac platform.
http://www.apple.com/pro/film/davidson/
Gigabit Ethernet network
3 3.5TB Xserve RAIDs
1 5.6TB Xserve RAID
2 17-inch PowerBooks (for remotely
monitoring renders during off-hours)
Blackmagic HD card
Shake
Final Cut Pro
Apple Remote Desktop
FinalTouch HD
Maya
Combustion
cineSpace
MacBibble
Where to Put It All
As you’d expect, the high-resolution
images for the film demanded careful
attention to storage issues. All told, the
film required more than 30TB of
storage, which Davidson put together
using a combination of 16TB of Xserve
RAID storage space and various other
storage devices. “During the planning
stage, we looked at a lot of different
options,” recounts Davidson. “I even had
this ridiculous notion that we could use
something like 50 FireWire drives!
Looking back, I can’t believe we
considered that — it’s hilarious. Finally
we decided the Xserve RAIDs would give
us the protection and speed we
needed.”
Lacking the money to install a SAN, he
says, “we attached local Xserve RAID
storage to each compositing
workstation and networked them
through a Gigabit Ethernet backbone.
That was fast enough for what we were
doing.”
Apple - Pro/Film - David Alexander Davidson, pg. 1
A Claymation Spoof
Most recently, Davidson and his whippet-lean crew have wrapped postproduction on an 87-minute feature called “Disaster!” The film is a spoof of
flicks like “Armageddon” in which, as Davidson puts it, “the Earth is unimperiled by the stereotypical blue-collar father figure and his extended
family of sophomoric miscreants.” The difference, in “Disaster!,” is that the
entire conceit is carried out in claymation.
Early in the development process, director Roy Wood and Dream
Entertainment contracted Solventdreams to manage the post-production
process on their stop-motion feature. For two years, Davidson and coproducer Sim Tuzun supervised thousands of hours of visual effects work,
including editing, compositing, CGI, and color grading.
Unique to the project was a workflow based on the use of standard digital
still cameras. To manipulate those stills, Davidson and his tiny crew relied
on a Mac-based system that included Power Mac G5s, Xserve RAIDs, Final
Cut Pro, and Shake. Says Davidson, “Since our budget didn’t permit a
multimillion dollar post, we orchestrated a methodology that a handful of
people could execute using off-the-shelf computers and software.” Such a
workflow, he believes, “has never before been realized at this scale for a
theatrical claymation feature.”
Two Sides of the
Golden Triangle
“This project was
more than eighty
percent greenscreen,”
adds Davidson. “We
started compositing
on day one and we
basically never
stopped. There
wasn’t a shot we
didn’t manipulate
frame by frame. I
Director Roy T. Wood (left) and David A. Davidson review a
don’t know of any
scene from “Disaster!” in Solventdreams’ HD color suite.
other film that has
that much visual effects compositing.” The challenge was to maintain
professional-quality results in an ultra-cost-conscious production
environment.
Davidson isn’t kidding when he says his crew was small. “We had two VFX
supervisors and two compositors,” he says. “That’s remarkable when you
compare this project to films of equivalent length and resolution. Look at
the credits for ‘Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit’ or ‘The
Corpse Bride’ and you’ll see that hundreds of people worked on them. And
that’s typical for VFX-heavy features. But on our project, if you don’t watch
carefully, you’ll miss the post credits — they’re gone in an eye-blink.”
To achieve pro results under strict cost restraints, something had to give.
“You know that golden triangle of speed, quality, price — pick any two?”
asks Davidson. “Well, something had to give and in this case it was speed.
That’s why it took us two years.”
Next Page: Frame by Frame
http://www.apple.com/pro/film/davidson/
Apple - Pro/Film - David Alexander Davidson, pg. 3
Pro/Film
David Alexander Davidson
1 . A “Disaster!” in the Making
2 . Frame by Frame
3 . Independence, Efficiency, Freedom
“Disaster!” Credits
Director: Roy T. Wood
Producer: Yitzak Ginsberg, Ehud
Bleiberg
The crew of disaster specialists inside the Space Shuttle on their way to try to save Earth
from a killer planetoid.
Unlike typical claymation features, which are acquired on film, “Disaster!”
was shot using digital still cameras. Each shot is an individual photo in
high-res 4K frame size. Resolution was key. “You just can’t shoot in DV and
get enough resolution to go to film,” he says.
The method was cheaper and more flexible, too. “We couldn’t shoot on film
because of the cost,” says Davidson. “Using digital stills within a video
workflow gave us highly compressed RAW files, which are so much easier
to work with. You can transfer them to a digital drive or other media,
uncompress them, burn them to tape, whatever. And it’s so much more
cost-effective than going to a lab, then sending to Telecine at $150 to
$500 per hour for processing.”
“I take the seamless workability of Apple products for
granted — no matter what the original code progeny.
When I get a G5 and Xserve RAID and Final Cut Pro and
Shake, I just assume they will work correctly together.
Frankly, that’s why we use Apple.”
To complete the feature-length film, Wood’s animators shot a total of
370,000 frames, of which 123,840 were used in the final edit. “They shot
about 15 seconds of final film a day,” notes Davidson. In contrast to the
blasting motion of the finished piece, the behind-the-scenes action was a
painstaking process measured in minute increments.
Round-the-Clock Compositing
The way Davidson describes it, post-production shared some of the grimy
chaos of a real disaster. “We were working feverishly in our cement bunker
http://www.apple.com/pro/film/davidson/index2.html
Post-Production Producer: Sim
Tuzun
Visual Effects/Post-Production
Supervisor: David Davidson
Visual Effects Supervisor: Joseph
Emerling
Editor: Yasu Tsuji
Compositor: Craig Hilditch
3D Artist: Didier Levy
Colorist: Aaron Peak
Assistant Compositor: Joaquim
Pecheur
Rendering CGI company: Basefx
Sound Designer: Jeff Jones
Solventdreams Partial Credits List
“Disaster!” (feature, 2005)
“The Real World” (MTV main title and
the longest-running reality TV show)
“Fire Within” (feature documentary,
2003)
“Microkillers” (National Geographic
series, 2005)
“View from A Grain of Sand”
(documentary, 2005)
“Farewell Bender” (feature, 2005)
“Broken” (short, 2005)
“Deep Rescue” (feature, 2005)
“Carlita’s Secret” (feature, 2004)
Los Angeles Film Festival (trailer,
2005)
Silverlake Film Festival (trailer, 2003)
Apple - Pro/Film - David Alexander Davidson, pg. 4
— a parking garage converted to offices — surrounded by hot, whirring
Xserve RAIDs,” he recounts. “Every day, this harried, overworked production
assistant would come by with hundreds of RAW files from the digital
sweatshop in the Valley — an old metal plating facility — where production
had built five miniature sets to do all the shooting.”
Post wasn’t simply a matter of connecting those zillions of stills into
sequences for editing. Because he was working under such severe
constraints of time, space, and budget, the director had to first ask
Davidson’s crew to composite many of the individual frames.
As Davidson explains it, “Roy would often introduce a greenscreen or
compositing shot into the workflow when he didn’t have the time or space
to shoot a full set. He’d shoot parts of the set, and we would put them
together. There would be background in one place and foreground in
another, or one character on greenscreen and another on the set, and we
had to combine them. Just the sheer amount of compositing was our
number-one challenge.”
Shake Engine
As the frames poured in, Davidson and crew organized them into folders
named for the shot. For two years they tracked every single frame this way.
Once the frames were all collected, they set to work animating. “We ran
every frame into Shake — just like you’d put film frames through a Telecine
machine — to condense the shots into a single QuickTime file for each
sequence,” says Davidson.
“Shake is a very efficient engine for combining disparate frames into single
clips. We did all the compositing at 4K resolution. Then we rendered rough,
DV-resolution QuickTimes out of Shake, and edited them in Final Cut Pro.
When we had the edit we wanted, we went back to the 4K material in
Shake, rendered out a QuickTime as an HD clip and put that into Final Cut
Pro — for what you call up-res’ing, conform or online.”
Edge Detail
Throughout, Davidson focused on resolution. “We needed as much detail as
possible in order to composite-in elements like other characters,
explosions, fire, tornados, rain, or to combine sets,” he notes. That’s why
he designed a workflow based on compositing the stills at 4K frame size to
generate HD 4:4:4 QuickTime videos. Since most of the film involved
effects, greenscreens, and pulling keys, he needed high-res files to
maintain the effects workflow. “The larger the file — the more detail on the
edges — the better able you are to remove keys,” says Davidson.
Next Page: Independence, Efficiency, Freedom
Home > Pro > David Alexander Davidson
http://www.apple.com/pro/film/davidson/index2.html
Apple - Pro/Film - David Alexander Davidson, pg. 5
Pro/Film
David Alexander Davidson
1 . A “Disaster!” in the Making
2 . Frame by Frame
3 . Independence, Efficiency, Freedom
Links of Interest
Solventdreams
Dream Entertainment
Alpha Cine Labs (lab for filmout)
Creative Cow
Cinematography Mailing List
Highend3D
A fleet of UFOs invades.
Who Needs an IT Department?
“I take the seamless workability of Apple products for granted — no matter
what the original code progeny,” says Davidson. “When I get a G5 and
Xserve RAID and Final Cut Pro and Shake, I just assume they will work
correctly together. Frankly, thatʼs why we use Apple.
“We donʼt have an IT department. And we donʼt have five people whose
only job is to figure out how to program something in UNIX. So we have to
be able to trust whatʼs going on in the applications, the hardware, the
operating system.”
Free to Experiment
When editing, Davidson prizes flexibility. “Final Cut Pro is amazing,” he
says. “Itʼs resolution-independent, so we can use virtually any resolution in
our offline editing environment. Final Cut Pro leaves you free to
experiment. For instance, we made a 2K Academy sequence — which is not
a typical HD or SD size — and it worked fine.”
“In the past, the limitations — training, budget,
equipment and so on — defined who you were. When
the software removes those limitations, people can
focus on the content, which is the most important
thing.”
His staff used Final Cut Pro with a Blackmagic card to support the highestquality HD standard: RGB 444. “Thatʼs the most color and spacial
resolution HD can deliver,” notes Davidson. “Final Cut Pro — with two
Xserve RAIDs and a good monitor and the Blackmagic card — lets you edit
and online in 444 effortlessly.”
http://www.apple.com/pro/film/davidson/index3.html
“Sure, thereʼs more crappy work out
there now,” says David A. Davidson. “But
thereʼs also more good work from
people who couldnʼt afford to make it
before.”
Apple - Pro/Film - David Alexander Davidson, pg. 6
Getting ready for delivery, Davidson appreciated his efficient platform. “We
took the frames from Final Cut Pro, rendered them in Shake, and sent the
entire movie to the lab to print to film,” he says. “Going right to film from
Final Cut Pro and Shake is normal now in the movie biz — what’s
extraordinary is to do that on a claymation project that started as individual
frames.”
Designed for Frames
Davidson calls Shake “a really intuitive node-based compositing system,”
adding, “it was fundamental for our compositors to be able to work with
frames. And unlike the layer-based compositing you get in After Effects
and other programs, Shake is uniquely designed to deal with film frames. It
was essential to our project — there was no other way to do it.”
Like Final Cut Pro, Shake is resolution-agnostic, so Davidson and his
colleagues could easily work with disparate media. As he describes it, “We
had backgrounds, plates, CG we’d had done by animators in China, live
action DV, public domain clips we got from the Internet — all this stuff.
Shake was amazing.”
The Important Thing
The ready availability of Mac-based editing and compositing tools, says
Davidson, has led to an outpouring of film and video product — both good
and bad. “Sure, there’s more crappy work out there now,” he notes, “but
there’s also more good work from people who couldn’t afford to make it
before.”
The danger, he feels, lies in the temptation to imitate. “So many people
want to become the next Michael Moore,” he says. “In the past, the
limitations — training, budget, equipment, and so on — defined who you
were. When the software removes those limitations, people can focus on
the content, which is the most important thing.”
Technology, he says, can help creative people work more freely. “It’s the
whole Zen idea,” muses Davidson. “With Apple, the computer gets out of
the way. You forget the computer in order to do what’s important.”
Home > Pro > David Alexander Davidson
Copyright © 2006 Apple Computer, Inc. All rights reserved.
http://www.apple.com/pro/film/davidson/index3.html
SOLVENT DREAMS OPENS REALTIME DI SUITE
March 3 - LOS ANGELES - Boutique post house Solvent Dreams (www.solventdreams.com) has opened a digital intermediate suite in an
effort to make affordable, realtime color grading available to independent features shot on HD or film.
(3/3/2005)
LOS ANGELES - Boutique post house Solvent Dreams (www.solventdreams.com) has opened a digital intermediate suite in an effort to make
affordable, realtime color grading available to independent features shot on HD or film. The new suite is powered by Final Touch HD by Silicon
Color, a software tool selected by colorist Yasu Tsuji and visual effect supervisor David Davidson.
"We chose Final Touch for its seamless integration with Final Cut Pro, Blackmagic support, and because Final Touch will scale in realtime
capabilities with the upcoming leaps due in graphic card technologies," Tsuji explains.
With 8 terabytes of high-speed, customized and removable RAID storage, Solvent Dreams' DI suite will be able to handle multiple HD features
simultaneously. Monitoring is performed via an HDSDI output from a Blackmagic HD link to a 23-inch Apple Cinema Display, a Sony 23-inch
evaluation monitor and a Sony Artisan for film evaluation. The suite outputs to any HD deck, including Panasonic D-5, for online mastering at
the highest resolution.
Solvent Dreams, which specializes in visual effects, main titles, color, and offline/online editing for a large broadcast and film clients, is building
a second suite and will add a full-resolution HD projector in the near future.
The company development its own process of making video look like film with its Magic Bullet software. The same process is integrated into
the new suite to further enhance video-originated products, enabling filmmakers to color-correct and generate film looks in realtime. The
studio believes it can provide all of the abilities of a da Vinci system, but at a more affordable rate.
http://www.postmagazine.com/ME2/Segments/NewsHeadlines/Print.asp?Module=News&id=E5B72265B4D2469893E8461EBEA62643
SOLVENTDREAMS
Innovative post studio Solventdreams helmed editorial, visual
effects and color for the ambitious CG and stop motion
animation feature, Disaster! due in theaters 2006. An industry
milestone, Solventdreams is the first independent post house
to roundtrip an stop motion film entirely on the Mac. One of
the key components to insuring the success of the workflow
was creating a high-end digital intermediate in an affordable,
controlled environment.
A quintessential indie film, Disaster! used a peculiar hybrid of
claymation to spoof genre-driven celebrity popcorn vehicles
such as Armageddon & Deep Impact. Produced on a CG film
shoestring for under $5 million, the feature was shot over a
period of two years at 4k resolution on common digital
cameras. A record number of 974 visual effects shots with
greenscreen, photo-real CGI and complex composites created
not only another first but a serious challenge for color grading
separate elements.
"With beta versions of FinalTouch 2k, we created a 16mm DI
for theatrical trailer Therese: The Story of Therese of Lieseiux.
It was clear that Silicon Color had arrived early on the grading
scene with the 2k's nimble data handling, intuitive interface
and fit with the independent fiscal reality. We wanted to be a
part of that enterprising spirit & we had this equally bleedingedge project; Disaster!," says Davidson.
Eventually delivered to film at HD RGB 4:4:4, the producers of
Disaster! realized the cost prohibitiveness of an industry DI,
with a baseline price-tag of $75k-125k. Solventdreams
researched the market of hardware/software packages, only to
find those systems bearing the same astronomical introductory
cost. "We wanted a Mac-centric real-time grading system with
conform and versioning options around which we could build a
film and HD color suite. And if it interfaced with Final Cut Pro,
then we would be happy." At the time, this seemed too much
to ask of any software offering. Yet Silicon Color was listening
to feedback had launched a HD version. "For a small
company--like ourselves--Silicon Color embodied the traits we
look for in partner businesses, the key of which is
responsiveness. When we were stuck, they helped. This was
highly important," said Sim Tuzun, Executive Director at
Solventdreams.
Davidson: "Our colorists are hybrid professionals who not only
work in both film and video colorspaces, but often in an edit
capacity, doing their own conforms. Since workflow with our
NLE was paramount, the XML control and conform was
integral. And stop motion presents an unusual set of
problems, mainly with conforming single-frame media to visual
effects and editorial timelines.
"Solventdreams built a full suite around FinalTouch, which is
put to use on every project. The studio has since finished the
sci-fi feature Deep Rescue, National Geographic series
Microkillers, with several upcoming features already planned.
Disaster! is a spoof of the Bruce Willis vehicle Armageddon, and any other disaster movie where the earth is
saved by the stereotypical blue-collar father figure and the extended family of sophomoric miscreants. Except
this is all done with clay and without Ben Affleck. The last claymation film released to the big screen was the
idyllic Chicken Run, to which Disaster! is the independent, rated-R American answer. An excerpt from the film
Page 1 of 2
can be seen here: http://www.solventdreams.com/disaster/press/media/mc_prog_lg.mov
Dream Entertainment contracted Solventdreams early in the development stage of the film to design
comprehensive post workflows for all digital stop motion feature. For the last 18 months, post producers David
Davidson, Sim Tuzun and visual effects supervisor Joseph Emerling have supervised thousands of hours of
visual effects creation for the independent project. With principle photography wrapped, the team will continue
for 3 months to manage ongoing compositing, CGI, and color grading.
Ambitious from the start, more than 60% of Disaster! requires rig removal, CGI, rotoscoping, keying, VFX
design or something that necessitates heavy visual effects compositing. “We started compositing operations on
day 1 of this film,” commented Ms. Tuzun. With a sliver of the budget larger CG productions command, the
company designed customized workflows to handle the challenges of keyed stop motion material. The entire
project is shot digitally with still cameras at 3k resolution and the film spans several Apple XRAIDs and G5
workstations. "Sometimes we forget, this is frame-at-a-time, and like any other film, there is a ratio."
“Ordinarily, a visual effects feature not only has several digital artists specialized for certain tasks, but often
several companies handling certain shots. All those names you see at the end of Pixar films, in this case will
be missed in an eyeblink. What's exceptional with new technologies is that we can and are doing it,” said
Davidson. “We handle the entire post here: storage, HD editing, web dailies, dvds, sound mix, color grading,
compositing, CGI, rotoscoping, main titles, online to D-5.” The whole film is Mac-centric; edited with Final Cut
Pro, composited with Shake, and color graded as a DI for film with Silicon Color's Final Touch.
Motley Crue makes an appearance in the film, and material from Disaster! can be seen on the band’s Red,
White and Crue tour that started earlier in February.
Material from the film can be viewed by browsing the below links:
Solventdreams
http://www.solventdreams.com
Disaster Official Site
http://www.disasterthemovie.com
Trailer
http://www.solventdreams.com/disaster/press/media/ohshit_lg_prog.mov
Dream Entertainment
http://www.dreamentertainment.net
About Silicon Color
Silicon Color, Inc. is a developer of high performance, highly scalable color correction systems and applications
for the post-production marketplace. Leveraging strengths in video processing, color science and display
technologies, Silicon Color designs systems to meet the ever-increasing need for powerful real-time systems
that support the resolution requirements of video and film professionals. The company is headquartered in San
Diego, California.
Silicon Color, Inc.
10875 Rancho Bernardo Road
Suite #104
San Diego, CA 92127
ph: 858 673-5200
fx: 858 673-5335
[email protected]
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SOLVENTDREAMS ESTABLISHES LOOK FOR NAT GEO'S 'MICROKILLERS'
LOS ANGELES - Solventdreams (www.solventdreams.com) recently provided post services for the National Geographic mini series
Microkillers, which explores the deadly strains of microorganisms such as Ebola, HIV, malaria, plague and the flu. The studio used Red Giant
Software’s Magic Bullet Editors plug-in to add film treatments to the project within the Final Cut Pro editing timeline.
(12/14/2005)
Solventdreams established the look for archival material, re-enactments and some of the program’s interviews. The Mexicali preset was used
for archival shots of India, the sepia tone preset Pale Olive was used for old hospital scenes, and a Bleach Bypass setting was used for reenactments of a soldier on patrol in Africa in the Ebola episode.
Solventdreams’ owner David Davidson says Magic Bullet Editors was useful in creating the high-quality, distinctive look for certain reenactment sequences, as well as for use on lower quality archival footage, some of which was from the 1950s and 1960s.
SOLVENTDREAMS DESIGNS 2005 LOS ANGELES FILM FESTIVAL TRAILER
LOS ANGELES (June 16, 2005) – Solventdreams, an innovative post design boutique, recently
completed the main trailer design for the 2005 Los Angeles Film Festival. The trailer will be screened
citywide at each event and with each film.
Festival director Rich Raddon ultimately turned to Solventdreams for the creation of this year’s trailer
after consulting several high profile commercial motion design firms. “The work that Solventdreams did
for the Silverlake Film Festival was stunning – the design was emotionally arresting,” explains Raddon,
“We needed a fresh design approach this year. I felt confident in Solventdreams’s ability to manifest the
spirit of our organization and its singular identity as the largest independent film festival in Los Angeles.”
The festival is produced by world-renowned independent film organization Independent Feature Project
Los Angeles. The debut of the 2005 festival trailer coincides with the recent re-branding of IFP/LA to
Film Independent, or FIND. “We appreciate that a high-profile festival, in the midst of changing an
established image, would entrust their key identity to Solventdreams.” says David Davidson, Creative
Director of Solventdreams. “As independent filmmakers ourselves, designing the trailer was an important
opportunity to support the mission of FIND.”
Motion designer Joseph Emerling developed a distinctive design that evokes the imagery of Los Angeles
while integrating the aesthetic of the festival’s other key art designed by The Cimarron Group. “The
trailer’s final design,” states Emerling, “incorporates two of L.A.’s most enduring icons: the palm tree and
the film strip. The idea was to represent not only the unique role that Los Angeles has served and
continues to serve within the independent film community, but also to highlight new brand elements
central to the sponsorship of the festival.”
Solventdreams also provided a full 5.1 surround mix for the festival’s trailer through Film Engine, a new
joint partnership between Solventdreams and Alan Audio Works. Composer and Sound Designer Jeffery
Alan Jones wrote original music for this year’s spot which, according to Jones, “underlines the dark
ethereality of the trailer’s visual elements. The 5.1 mix imbues the piece with a dimensionality that is as
much sound design as it is music."
The trailer will run in theaters throughout Los Angeles for the duration of the festival season. The 2005
Los Angeles Film Festival features over 100 unique screenings and is anticipated to draw an audience of
over 45,000 people. The festival opens with the annual Independent Spirit Award, given this year to
George Clooney.
Solventdreams has previously designed trailers for the Silverlake Film Festival and for numerous feature
films. The Los Angeles Film Festival trailer and other Solventdreams projects can be viewed at
www.solventdreams.com.
####
Any press questions regarding Solventdreams or the 2005 Los Angeles Film Festival Trailer, please
contact Alex Ward at 323.906.9700 or via email at [email protected].
For more information about the Solventdreams, please check out the website at
www.solventdreams.com.