• Blogs
• Forums
• Tradeshows
• Partners
• White Papers
• Podcast Show Notes
• Events

Green Meets Red

Sep 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Ellen Wolff

Inside the Red One workflow for the Sci Fi Channel's Sanctuary.

           

The majority of shots for the Sci Fi Channel's new series Sanctuary, which originated as eight webisodes before it caught Sci Fi's eye, combine greenscreen footage shot by DP David Geddes using Red Digital Cinema Red One cameras and visual effects produced by Anthem Visual Effects. Photo: Jeff Weddell © SCI FI Channel

In the hallway of a former bicycle factory outside Vancouver, British Columbia, a bloody corpse lies on a gurney, swathed unceremoniously in plastic wrap. It's not real, of course. It's just a rubber dummy — a victim of the monstrous creatures that wreak havoc in Sanctuary, a new series debuting on the Sci Fi Channel this fall. The dummy is one of relatively few physical props used for Sanctuary because the show is being filmed predominantly against greenscreen, with virtual sets and digital creatures added later by Vancouver-based Anthem Visual Effects. What makes this ambitious plan workable for a TV series is that the greenscreen footage is of such high quality — the equivalent of 8 megapixels — that it blends seamlessly with Anthem's digital imagery. Sanctuary is one of the first episodic productions shot with the Red Digital Cinema Red One, and this tapeless approach brings new meaning to the phrase “more bang for the buck.”

In the cavernous green space that dominates the Sanctuary factory, the actors have only one practical doorway to touch as a scene plays out. Director Martin Wood and DP David Geddes, CSC, confer with Anthem Visual Effects Supervisor Lee Wilson about the sharpness of one actor's shadow against the glowing green cyc. How this shadow will play later against Anthem's virtual background is a key plot point for the scene. The three men huddle around a trio of monitors that beam images from close-up, long-shot, and crane-mounted Red One cameras. But the 720-line progressive scan monitors they're watching represent just a fraction of what is actually being captured.

It's the job of Data Acquisition Supervisor Richard Winn, who's squirreled away with a Macintosh computer in a cubbyhole behind the set, to examine what's actually being captured in Redcode RAW mode by the Red cameras. These dailies, which are processed as .r3d files in Red's proprietary software, are backed up on a 9TB drive. Winn copies the Red data onto two other drives, too: one in standard def that goes to the inhouse editorial team and a 4K version for Anthem. By day's end, all dailies are in the post-production pipeline. “Eliminating the costs of film or tape stock and scanning, and going straight to edit and post effects is just amazing,” Winn says. “Especially for filmmakers on a budget.”

The backstory

Sanctuary has actually followed an ambitious path ever since writer/producer Damian Kindler partnered with his Stargate TV franchise colleagues Wood and actress Amanda Tapping to launch the story online in 2007. They produced eight webisodes that chronicled the monster-hunter adventures of Dr. Helen Magnus (Tapping) who tracks down abnormal creatures that skulk around society's fringes. The sanctuary in which she shelters these creatures is an intricate seven-story gothic structure — the kind of place that could never physically be built. But judicious use of digital effects gave the Sanctuary webisode series a unique look, and it attracted more than 3.7 million views in six months. It even built a following of fans that were willing to pay for downloads. Directed by Wood, the webisodes were shot in HD with Sony HDW-F900 cameras, and the digital effects were done in Softimage|XSI. When the Sci Fi Channel ordered 13 episodes for television, some of the webisode elements were selected to be saved and “rebooted” by Anthem using Autodesk Maya, Apple Shake, Pixar RenderMan, mental images mental ray, and Adobe Photoshop. But most of the elements in the TV incarnation of Sanctuary had to be created anew.

Want to use this article? Click here for options!