reel-exchange

To help complete Bank of America's promotional website, Morris Broadcasting Channel (MBC), advertising agency Organic turned to Phoenix Editorial and Bonfire Labs. Phoenix and Bonfire were asked to make MBC look like an actual TV network, so they produced a number of logo animations, bumpers, show intros, and transitions. For the show open, Bonfire's Matt Silverman turned to a proven Red Digital Cinema Red One workflow for a one-day greenscreen shoot. Silverman and five animators then used Adobe After Effects to create the spinning van. Phoenix Editors Robbie Proctor and Jim Farber spliced together about 16 hours of footage for the series' seven episodes. We caught up with everyone to find out what went into the production. For more information about Phoenix, visit the company's Reel-Exchange profile.

AW: Could you describe your Red workflow, and is there anything specific to working in 4K? Were there any challenges in lighting greenscreen shots captured by the Red One at 4K?

Silverman: From our experience, Red produces some of the cleanest plates for pulling greenscreen extractions even with its heavy compression, but this is reliant on capturing a quality image in-camera. So we started our process by being on set during the greenscreen shoot.

Since the Red shoots 4K and the output is monitored 720p, what you see on the monitors is not what you get in your compositing tool. We solved this issue by spending extra time during lighting to move test shots from the Red camera to an Apple MacBook Pro and checked the quality of the keys in After Effects using the Primatte keyer. To speed this up, we captured the test shots to SD cards instead of the final Red drives and then simply transferred the files with a card reader. These tests were crucial for nailing down inconstancies in the greenscreen as well as checking final focus.

Working with After Effects CS4, we were able to load in native .r3d files into a 32-bit project maintaining all of the range found in the raw file. This allowed us to sit with the DP and figure out exact exposure compensations in After Effects, which were then translated onto his lighting decisions on set. Once all of this was nailed down, we knew that our postproduction process would be a breeze.

After a one-day greenscreen shoot and three additional days of a multicam live-action shoot at Cal State Northridge, the footage was transferred to FireWire drives and sent to our studio. An assistant editor transferred all of the footage from the FireWire drives to our 40TB Quantum StorNext SAN (Linux-based), which ties in seamlessly to our Mac workstations running Apple Xsan. Once the files were transferred, our LTO-4 autochanger automatically backed up the data using Atempo Time Navigator software.

Farber: From there, the assistant editor transcoded the .r3d files to Apple ProRes in Red Rushes. After all clips were imported and the appropriate settings selected, a script was saved from Red Rushes. That script was then split across multiple machines and run in multiple Terminal windows to transcode the files quickly, utilizing 10 eight-core Mac Pros. (Tip: Always consult any available white papers of your intended finishing suite before you begin your offline transcoding process. You'll save yourself a world of hurt if you properly plan out your entire post process with your finishing platform in mind.)

Offline editorial was performed using the transcoded 1080p 23.98 Apple ProRes Quicktime files in Apple Final Cut Pro 6. Once picture was locked, we exported an XML from FCP. Using Clipfinder, we ran a conform on the FCP XML to point to the original .r3d files instead of the transcoded .mov files.

Silverman: We then imported the modified XML into After Effects using Automatic Duck. From there we were able to do our greenscreen extractions (Primatte) and compositing. Final color correction of the elements used in the composited shots were done in After Effects with Red Giant Software Magic Bullet Colorista, and the rest of the show was conformed with a Colorista "one-light" in After Effects, then brought into FCP for a client-supervised finish.