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MillimeterDigital Vision Nucoda Film Master
Feb 1, 2006 1:59 PM, By Adam Hawkey iO Film
An All-in-one DI Toolset
Although I'm a senior digital colorist at iO Film, I think it's important to have a lot of different production experience first — something to prepare you for working in this new world of digital intermediate. My background is varied. I first broke into the industry as a tape-op/assistant colorist in the late ‘80s, which led me to various positions in online editing, telecine, and, finally, visual effects and 3D. I spent the next decade honing my skills in compositing, lighting, and grading 3D scenes while working on video games, commercials, and feature films.
By integrating an editorial toolset that goes beyond color correction, Nucoda Film Master offers an improved workflow that approaches all-in-one systems.
Using DI is about creating good workflow, and that allows us to do a lot of feature work. To date we've completed post on about 30 films, with 20 of them HD-originated and the remainder 2K film scans. I use Digital Vision's Nucoda Film Master software, which handles everything from SD to 4K end-to-end film and commercial finishing. We investigated a few other systems, but found the Film Master was our only choice. Why? In addition to realtime 2K color correction, the system offers a complete editorial toolset. All of the conform, optical, title, and pan/scan needs can be met in one box, on one timeline, and off a shared SAN.
Film Master, with its data conform capabilities, has the bells and whistles we need and fits nicely into our pre-existing pipeline. The ability to integrate with our other gear is key, since we have our own proprietary code with our own database, scanning software, and scripts to parse out Avid bins and EDLs. Such integration reduces human interaction with data, minimizing errors. There is some coding involved, but it's easy to script Film Master into an existing system, which helps dramatically because there is still no all-in-one solution in the industry for DI workflow. Facilities need to also incorporate things like dustbusting, line-up, shot tracking, QC, EDL conform, and tape output.
As a beta test site for Nucoda, we are an integral part of the development effort, providing feedback within an active production environment. Our advanced technical staff collaborates with Digital Vision's development team to uncover bugs, develop workarounds as necessary, and suggest new features that we think might be needed.
Recently, we completed a complex DI for the feature film Neverwas, directed by Joshua Michael Stern with cinematography by Michael Grady. The film was set to premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, but we didn't lock the picture until just a few weeks before the event. But we handled it with Film Master's recent speed increases. I was able to grade with many more shapes, keys, and blurs — all without any significant performance hit.
Much of Neverwas is made up of long montage or dissolve sequences and many stylized flashback or dream sequences. Here's where it got complex: The montages had up to eight layers of film at any one time. Normally, one would complete such a project in a high-end compositing suite. However, there was no time for pregrading, rendering, and revisions, so we did most of it in Film Master. This allowed me to grade each individual layer, in realtime, while the director and cinematographer watched the final output. For the flashback sequences, Michael Grady had the film developed with 50 percent skip bleach and pushed two stops. We added more contrast, saturation, and false color to certain tonal ranges, giving the final images a gritty, yet ethereal look.
iO Film’s senior digital colorist Adam Hawkey (pictured) says that the integration features in Nucoda Film Master minimize the possibility of introducing data errors.
In the two years since we bought our first Film Master, the software has grown in leaps and bounds, with a fourfold increase in overall speed. The control surface has been replaced with Digital Vision's Valhall panel, providing a more telecine-type feel to grading. Now, users can customize the panel with their preferences, and they can record macros for the more repetitive tasks.
Another very exciting addition from Digital Vision is its Digital Vision Optics (DVO) grain and noise reduction. DVNR is a plug-in that allows seamless matching of film stocks and exposures with spatial and temporal filtering. Also new in the Film Master 3 release are automatic scene detection, field-based editing and processing, multiple play heads for easy comparisons between shots, and video I/O — one of the most important additions to the product line, because I can now capture and conform from source tapes directly onto the timeline without the use of additional DDRs or editing systems.
As the industry moves towards 4K as the new standard, using a software-based system like Nucoda means we can adapt to whatever comes our way. Since it's not locked to one piece of hardware, Film Master allows us to make the workflow more collaborative. In the end, that means we can do more work while maintaining the same quality — that's what iO Film is dedicated to, and Digital Vision's Nucoda Film Master system has allowed us to achieve our goal.
Adam Hawkey is the senior digital colorist at iO Film. Founded in 2001, the Burbank, Calif.-based iO Film is a postproduction facility specializing in digital intermediate work. The service offerings include digital intermediates, 2K and 4K film scanning, film recording, visual effects, titles and digital opticals, and custom image solutions. iO Film recently completed the digital intermediate for the independent films Crash, Green Street Hooligans, The Celestine Prophecy, 10th & Wolf, and Neverwas. For more information, visit www.iofilm.net.
