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The Morris Microscope

Jan 1, 2008 12:01 PM, By Michael Goldman

Errol Morris mixes media in a documentary examining the Abu Ghraib photos.

Conforming S.O.P.

Cinematographer Robert Richardson, ASC, brought visual-effects wizard Robert Legato into the world of Standard Operating Procedure after having worked with Legato on several projects, including a simultaneous collaboration on both S.O.P. and Martin Scorsese’s Shine a Light. The initial plan called for Legato, his producer Ron Ames, and his visual effects editor Adam Gerstel to help filmmakers produce close to 300 visual-effects shots — largely invisible effects, such as repositioning elements and morphing shots, as well as about 15 shots involving CG. After joining the team, Legato and Ames concocted a plan to do the conform portion of the DI before it went over to Company 3, Santa Monica, Calif., for color correction.

Legato was already in the midst of performing a similar conform job for Scorsese’s documentary, and he says the idea was to help both filmmakers develop workflows to affordably assemble the two movies using a boutique pipeline he had built in his Pasadena, Calif., home in recent years for commercial work and other movies. There, Legato, Ames, and Gerstel built visual effects and shot inserts and did assembly work on both films.

“[S.O.P.] had material shot with a cell phone, Photoshopped illustrations, digital stills, multiformat video, HD, 35mm and 16mm film, and Phantom [high-speed HD] material,” Legato says. “With all this disparate mixed media, we thought we could help Errol put it all together in a similar fashion to what we set up for [Scorsese’s multi-format movie]. It ultimately saved Errol money and some time by having us put it all together and fix any last-minute creative adjustments, visual effects, and added graphics, and then bring the newly updated conform to Company 3 [for final color work].”

For the conform, the first challenge for Legato’s team was to convert the offline Avid 30fps project to an HD-compatible 23.98fps project for the final conform on HDCAM SR tape. This was accomplished using Avid Media Composer 2.7 to create cut lists and organizational elements, and then bringing that material into Apple Final Cut Pro 6.0 for the HDCAM SR conform.

“This was harder than most DIs because there was so much mixed media, and it all had to be reformatted into one uniform medium,” Legato says. “We initially had to spend some time converting it to a 23.98 Avid project to make a direct correlation between what [the editor] was doing and what we are doing. But once we did that, we would share bins and instantly see what he did [from a creative point of view]. Sometimes, [the editor] created complicated repositions, speed ramps — other effects that ordinarily, in the conform, would have to have been thrown out and started over in another program [to replicate the original effect]. In our workflow, we are able to move it all to the Avid in uncompressed HD, and then simply relink up to the original Avid effect. The effect scales up perfectly and looks exactly as it did in SD — except now at the highest, uncompressed, HD resolution. That speeds things up in the end and makes sure the director’s vision is there — exactly as he created it, rather than risking some interpretive conversions in another package.”

Given the reams of material and multiple formats involved, there were dozens of technical details to tend to. Those details included organizing material into the Avid, capturing shots from different media to HD, and organizing scanned film elements, while also finalizing visual effects shots so that Morris and his editorial team could lock the cut before the conform could begin.

Key to the whole process was the eventual movement of the files from Avid to Final Cut Pro for the final conform work. That job took place in the closing weeks of the project and went smoothly — thanks to a few workaround techniques, according to Gerstel. “I captured clips into Final Cut Pro from [edit decision lists (EDLs)] made from the Avid,” Gerstel says.

“[Final Cut Pro] recently added the ability to relink on QuickTime files, because the software can calculate the timecode offsets of a particular clip when linking it into a sequence brought in from an EDL — even if the clips are shorter than they were when originally captured. So when we get to the next and most important step of relinking the sequences themselves, we can simply connect to media that has already been captured. Essentially, we issue an EDL from Avid and Final Cut Pro that can reconnect to the clips it had captured from the select tapes originally. The best way to picture it is that we throw a whole bunch of media into a bag and pour it into Final Cut Pro. Then, we give it the actual cut, and it can sift through that bag and find the pieces that make up the edit. The trick to it is in the file name. Final Cut does not know which clip is the one that has the proper timecode unless the name is the same. The way we got around this little challenge was to use the Avid to always refer to the new master clips we made, and add [the file extension .mov] on the end of the clip for Final Cut Pro to relink to.”

Beyond the conform, much of visual effects work done by Legato’s group involved repositioning of interview subjects, as well as the creation of the endless hallway shots. These shots graphically illustrate the description of Abu Ghraib by those who were there as a place populated by an endless stream of ghosts — nameless, faceless intelligence and/or military personnel who would appear at the facility one day and disappear the next.

“Errol photographed all interviews head-on, and then when he wanted to cut out some pauses or off-topic comments, he would normally have to resort to a jumpcut or a dissolve,” Legato says. “Instead, Errol had us reposition material so it looks like it was shot from a different camera, eliminating that feeling of a jump. If you photograph someone talking and cut to a couple of sentences later, they are probably in the same spot, so if you reframe the camera shot left or right or raise the frame, then it looks like it was shot with another camera. There were about 100 or so shots where Errol used that technique to great effect. The repositions all needed to be rotoscoped — stabilized with new repositioned backgrounds created for every shot.

“The endless, ghosted hallway was created with a motion-control move on the one constructed set to make it look like 50 to 60 rooms, creating the illusion of a transition in time as you pull back. We superimposed the people in and out — mainly representing the CIA, other intelligence agencies, and U.S. military interrogators. We made the hallway look like it goes on forever as part of the story of the endless parade of military factions passing through the prison. We shot a linear motion-control move and placed the end of one take with the beginning of the next. In CG, the plates were then reduced in size, depending on the degree of magnification needed for that portion of the hallway.”
— M.G.

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