Short notes from "El Premio" Post-Production

by Kaspar Kallas

For DoP Wojciech Staron's, this was the first feature to be shot digitally. We did a 10 minute test to assure the quality of the workflow and the cameras to be used - SI2K. Compiled a list of equipment needed and developed the initial look for the film. 

The production itself was a rude introduction to latin america for me, everything was very slow to start in the morning and always took long hours into the night to finish.

All the film was shot at location in San Clemenete del Tuyu in Argentina.

Major advantage to Iridas tools was instant playback of full 2K footage with initial grade, pan and scan without any sort of rendering, just drop all the last days footage to timeline add keyframes and play.

This was on a laptop system with a firewire disk. When working up to 16h on set as camera assistant, this no render workflow was major help to get at least some sleep.

Also this project was lightspeed post, from the day that DoP arrived from previous shoot in Thailand to the premiere in Berlinale we had exactly 6 days. In this time we had to grade the footage, create DCP with 2 language subtitles, 2 different blueray masters.

As a bonus I had to deliver the DCP two days before screening, so this in turn reduced the post time to 4 days. With all rendering times it left us exactly 2 days to grade 118minute feature film. We setup in Kino Kultura, center of warsaw with Barco digital projection and started grading in standard cinema hall in less than 20 minute setup time. In this way were certain about what we get is what we see.

To help the matters to near insanity, director decided that we should make a different look for the film that we had originally developed, so I had start from scratch and finish in about 20h. I don't know any other tool that would let me move in such speed and mobility, without making compromises in quality.

"El Premio" was awarded Silver Bear for outstanding artistic achievement in camera in Berlinale this year.

Short Notes from "Cave of Forgotten Dreams" Post-production

by Kaspar Kallas

This 3D project by Werner Herzog and DoP Peter Zeitlinger, started for me by a phone call in the late evening offering me a DIT job on SI2K shoot in south of France. I had 10 minutes to decide. The rest is a documentary film…

 

On set Iridas tools were irreplaceable because we lacked proper tools to make this technical very demanding job on the first week of shooting. So there was quite a lot of duct tape and spit solution used to acquire the footage needed. This in turn required good tools for QC, to be certain that we would have something that we can use in a film.

The shooting period was split into two weeks of shooting with week and a half in-between. I used the in-between time to make a very solid side-by-side rig for use inside of the cave. There could be no adjustment screws as they would have become loose when the crew was climbing in and out of the cave. Because of Iridas native support for cineform RAW we could watch the dailies instantly when we left the cave to make necessary adjustments to our gear, workflow or both.

 

On the second week we had 2 sets of cameras, one would reside in the mirror rig while other were used for side by side. So when we needed to change in the interview we would just switch the heads to another setup while keeping the same recorder.

 

The production was extremely fast paced, up to 2h of footage daily. The postproduction was light-speed. I had exactly 2 weeks from the day I got the locked cut to the premiere in Toronto International Film Festival.

About 12minutes of the final 90minute film is non-synced go-pro cameras. I already knew the problem from set, as part of it was shot with one camera upside down the 3D was unwatchable because of rolling shutter tearing the images apart. There really are only 3 possible solutions to the problem today. Try to render a depth map based on original stereographic setup - extremely complicated because of the rolling shutter, compression and lens distortion artifacts. Use bezier shapes to push in or pull out parts of the image. Just use plain 2D slightly pushed into the screen.

 

The last option is worst, because it really pronounces all the problems with 3D cinema and leaves one wonder why to wear those geeky glasses in the first place. The first option was too time consuming and results were not really predictable.

2 days before screening, after 1st pass render I notice a bug, all the frames are not the correct frame size - a bug in beta version. Iridas was very prompt to deal with the problem in less than 12h I have a new build and everything is on the way again. The final version for the screening in the theater is taken to Toronto by Director himself just hours before screening as we hit another bug, this time in EasyDCP software that was also cleared within hours.

After 2 weeks almost no sleep, the show starts, I can breathe easily - the film is there, everything seems to look correct. 10 minutes before the end of the film the image goes black, sound continues for a moment and then it is stopped. Silence.

It turned out that it was the very first public screening in the Bell Lightbox for digital 3D and somebody had accidentally turned off the the AC for the projector and bulb had overheated.

The golden rule of filmmaking: if something can go wrong, it will go wrong, alligators or no alligators!

Digital Sputnik: The “New” Post-Production

INTRODUCTION
by Dankmar García

I had the opportunity to work with Kaspar Kallas on Argentina last year, during the shooting of the movie “El Premio” (The Prize) by Paula Markovitch. Kaspar is the founder of a very small post-house on Estonia. And by the time we were working on “El Premio” he was finishing the post-production of Werner Herzog’s 3D documentary “Cave of Forgotten Dreams”. Both movies participated on this year’s Berlinale.

Kaspar and his brother Kaur, founded the company 3 years ago. With only 3 employees, they are focused all their efforts on developing new tools and workflows to aid the postproduction so it can be more creative and less technical. With more than 10 years of experience and knowledge applied that go from edition to VFX artistry, they have created a reliable company that is getting closer to what seems to be the future of movie making.

This “New” post, as Kaspar calls it, has a simple premise: a “One man’s” support to the DoP from pre production to the final screening. This would be the only responsible for every step and every decision made on the way, from the picture being recorded to the final output. “Responsibility in this case means if I make a mistake, I have the means to fix this situation down the line in production pipeline. So the Producer, Director and DoP have only one person to deal with: Me. No meetings. No blame game.” says Kaspar.

The “New” Post
by Kaspar Kallas

There is actually nothing new about having a small and effective team for filmmaking. Then again it has always been a compromise of tools and possibilities. It has more to-do with quality and technology access, rather than innovation.

Technology keeps marching on and there is nothing new about that either. The only thing that keeps chaining is the time window of professional to prosumer. The tools that are bleeding edge in a moment are already in prosumer access within months of initial release in the highest end software/hardware. Then again there are some tools that are never available for highness systems.

Access to tools does not separate professionals anymore. Once again the industry is calling out for Hero's, artist who are capable moving fast and efficiently in post-production pipeline (Hero suite, used to be very expensive hardware and software combination used for film and television finishing by a Hero who is very capable in editing, coloring and mastering). Only this time the lines between production phases are even more blurred. The artist will have to leave the comfortable settings of a studio and take part of pre-production and production itself.

Throughout filmmaking there have been different technicians on set to assist DoP. But it has never been unthinkable that DoP cannot take care of all the responsibilities on his own. For a short period of time it was color technician who was the exception to prove the rule. Now with the advent of digital film cameras and stereography once again technician have temporarily forced their way into mandatory part of the camera team.

There is a very principle reason why the technicians job fades away in time. DoP responsibility is to create the most memorable images anyone can imagine. Technicians job on the other hand is to make sure that the images do not stand out in any way. So for the sake of creative freedom DoP needs an artist as assistant rather than technician to tell what is not technically correct.

The tools

Most prosumer tools today are very capable of producing content for the highest cinematic standards. Then again I have not found one tool that would suite all the needs for post production, even the highest end tools need assistance. So we developed our own in-house software that would "glue" together all the different pieces.

Iridas Speedgrade and Metarender: very intuitive and easy to use grading software with support next to none. There is no special hardware requirements for full technical support. Command-line rendering is very important for integrating to in-house software. As an extra perk, one can easily drive cinema projector over SDI for final work in any Digital Cinema theater. Most importantly it will work with most of the media I get directly without any conversion or import procedure.

Iridas tools are central for our workflow, because it will be the first thing to decode any incoming material, prepare dpx files for compositing and effects and also the final step to finish grading, before rendering out J2C files for digital cinema masters.

I use one computer to run all processes parallel so I could make good use of multi CPU environment. So while 1 pass of metarender is preparing flat grade DPX files for compositing I am grading another part of the film. When DPX files are ready I will to the preparation for camera tracking, for computing time again I can grade next available shot. When processing finishes I will do the composite. All in supervised session.

The glue

The in-house software we use is built on similar notion of Batch in Autodesk products. The software keeps track where the sources are coming from and what procedures have been used on them, so if any compositing, grading, etc. changes are implemented, it will mark the downstream procedures for re-rendering and generates a script for rendering. As all the plugins for different parts are just scripts, it is quite simple and straight forward.

Extra to Iridas tools we use Cineform, FCP, Premiere Pro, Nuke, EasyDCP and Photoshop.

No compromise in quality

Thanks to these tools it is possible for one man to do the extremely technical finishing jobs in unprecedented quality and time frame. The other perk in working with DoP from very early on in the production I know from the first steps on where the film is going aesthetically, so even when picking a camera and lighting equipment DoP can make well informed choice.

When I am on set as second AC, DIT, Stereograopher (or all of the above), I can help to make sure that every step is in the right direction for the end goal. The final finishing becomes just executing the final details rather than trying to bang the footage into something it was never shot for.

Real Steel Official Trailer & Theatrical Trailer / (Héroes de acero*)

(Texto en Español abajo)

Real Steel is a 2011 release from DreamWorks SKG that will be directed by Shawn Levy (Night at the Museum, Date Night, Cheaper by the Dozen) and starred by Hugh Jackman. The script is based on the short story “Steel” (1956) from Richard Matheson, which was adapted as a Twilight Zone episode in 1963.

The synopsis from what I have seen in the trailer and the web, is: In the near future, robots have replaced humans in boxing. Charlie Kenton (Hugh Jackman) being 2nd best boxer in the world, loses his chance to become a boxing champion when the fight game changes and humans are replaced by robots on the ring. He becomes a small-time promoter. He and his son Max (Dakota Goyo) discover an abandoned “Sparring-bot”. Max ask his father to “train” the old robot with his moves so they can contend for the championship.

The boxing legend, Sugar Ray Leonard supervised all the motion captured scenes for the robot fights. For the fight scenes they used animation and motion capture. For scenes where the actors interact with the robots, 19 animatronics robots were constructed. The movie was going to be released in November 18, but to avoid competition with “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn” was moved earlier to October 7th, 2011.

Richard Burton Matheson has had a very prolific writing career and, even though he didn't wrote “Real Steel”, he wrote the story that gives life to this script. He primarily writes about Fantasy, horror and science fiction. He is best known as the writer of What Dreams May Come, Bid Time Return, Duel, The Incredible Shrinking Man and I Am Legend. All five stories were later adapted as major motion pictures being “Duel” Steven Spielberg’s first movie in 1971. He wrote “I Am Legend” in 1954, which gave birth later to 4 movies: The Last Man on Earth (1964), The Omega Man (1971), I Am Omega (2007) and I Am Legend (2007). He has been an inspiration to the movie making industry and has been very close related to Movies, TV series and Short films since long time ago.

Real Steel – Héroes de Acero, es un estreno para 2011 de DreamWorks SKG que será dirigido por Shawn Levy (Noche en el Museo, Una noche fuera de serie, Más barato por docena) y protagonizada por  Hugh Jackman. El guión esta basado en la historia corta de “Steel” (Acero) de Richard Matheson, la cual fue adaptada para un episodio de la serie de Dimensión Desconocida en 1963.

La sinopsis, por lo que he visto en el trailer y en la red, es: En el futuro cercano, los robots han reemplazado a los humanos en el box. Charlie Kenton (Hugh Jackman) siendo el segundo mejor boxeador en el mundo, pierde su oportunidad de convertirse en el campeon cuando el juego de peleas cambia y los humanos son reemplazados por robots en el ring. Se convierte en un promotor de peleas sin importancia. Él y su hijo Max (Dakota Goyo) descubren un “Robot de entrenamiento”  abandonado. Max le pide a su padre que “entrene” al viejo robot con sus propios movimientos para que puedan competir por el campeonato.

La leyenda de boxeo, Sugar Ray Leonard supervisó todas las escenas de pelea capturadas por motion control. Para las peleas de los robots se utilizó animación y motion control. Para las escenas donde los robots interactuaban con los humanos, se construyeron 19 robots de animatronics. La película iba a ser estrenada el 18 de Noviembre, pero para evitar la competencia con la saga de “Twilight: Amanecer”, su estreno fue adelantado al 7 de Octubre del 2011.

Richard Burton Matheson ha tenido una carrera de escritor prolífica , y aun cuando no escribió “Real Steel”, él escribió la historia que le da vida a este guión. Escribe principalmente acerca de fantasía, horror y ciencia ficción. Es más conocido como el escritor de Más allá de los sueños, Pídele al tiempo que vuelva, Duel (Duelo), El increíble hombre menguante y Soy Leyenda. Las cinco historias fueron adaptadas después a grandes producciones cinematográficas siendo “Duel” la primera película de Steven Spielberg en 1971. Escribió “Soy Leyenda” en 1954, historia que posteriormente dio vida a 4 películas: El Último Hombre Sobre la Tierra (1964), El Hombre Omega (1971), Yo Soy Omega (2007) y Soy Leyenda (2007). Ha sido una gran inspiración la industria de la realización cinematográfica y ha estado relacionado con Películas, Series de televisión y cortometrajes desde hace mucho tiempo.

Production Companies / Compañías Productoras:  DreamWorks SKG / Angry Films / ImageMovers
Director-Producer / Director-Productor: Shawn Levy
Producers / Productores: Robert Zemeckis, Susan Montford, Don Murphy
*Héroes de Acero (Titulo provisional para la traducción por el autor)