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Beta Sight: Rising Sun Research CineSpace

Sep 1, 2007 12:00 PM, By Chip Potter, Executive Producer, Mechnology

Precise look management.

Mechnology, Based in Burbank, Calif., is a Boutique facility focused on two primary service areas: visual effects and DI/film finishing. One of our first projects was executing Title Designer Dan Perri's main title animation for Martin Scorsese's award-winning film The Aviator. We've also created main titles and visual effects for Director Mark Rydell's Even Money, shot by Cinematographer Robbie Greenberg; Santa's Slay, produced by Brett Ratner; SenArt's soon-to-be-released Bonneville, shot by Cinematographer Jeffrey L. Kimball; and, most recently, National Lampoon's Bag Boy, directed by Mort Nathan. Our television visual effects work includes Without a Trace, Boston Legal, Charmed, Veronica Mars, The 78th Annual Academy Awards, and “The Initiation of Sarahí,” which premiered during Disney/ABC Family's special 13 Nights of Halloween. We recently expanded our Burbank facility to provide fully equipped spaces for concept development, editing, visual effects production, final color timing, and screening.

When Visual Effects Supervisor Stephen Lebed and I started out in 2004, we focused on television work, which then led to title/optical work for feature films. Once we stepped into the feature-film world, it became critical to ensure that we could provide a digitally color-timed negative that integrated into the ongoing color-grading process at the lab. In some ways, I think color-matching individual pieces of a film to negatives already timed in the lab is more difficult than doing a DI from start to finish. It has to be incredibly precise.

At first, we eye-matched and created wedge prints just like an optical house, only our wedges were created from software. Our wedges, while close, would not always match back exactly to our monitor. And if the cinematographer wanted us to add a point of red or blue, as he had done in the lab, we were hard-pressed to make that happen exactly as he needed. Sometimes, we went through several wedge prints with the lab to get the color to match. We'd seen other facilities struggle with this same issue and had watched as multiple film-outs piled on the cost. And that's a cost you have to absorb — you can't pass it on to the client.

We knew that investing in software to maintain calibration among the scanner, color-correction displays, and final film print would be money well spent. On the advice of colleagues, we looked into cineSpace from Rising Sun Research (RSR). It handles two key functions: ensuring that all displays match each other and ensuring that they accurately display the final film look, whether it's a specific film stock or HD. Once Matt Griffith, our systems engineer, and I talked to RSR and learned that cineSpace integrated with the Assimilate Scratch DI system, which we were also looking at, and that it was easy to update, we brought it in for evaluation.

Griffith really hammered on cineCube (the cineSpace software that produces 3D LUTs for film calibration across a range of hardware and software tools), running lots of iterations, profiles, and inputs through it to see how it would hold up. Every test turned out exactly as it was supposed to, with no unexpected results. During the evaluation process, we saw how flexible cineCube was in terms of being able to take any profile in and match just about anything. We also liked that it could output to other programs in addition to Scratch because that gives us room to expand our tools without breaking the workflow.

When we brought in the Assimilate Scratch system for conform; grading; 2K playback; and review of visual effects, titles, and opticals for film and HD, we also invested in cineSpace. We implemented version 2.5 for Windows along with Scratch, calibrating the Sony FW900 monitor used in the color-grading suite with the Gretag Macbeth Eye-One Display 2 colorimeter. Once a week, we go to the setup process with cineProfiler and pull the monitor back. Eventually, we'll add a projector to that suite, and because cineSpace also calibrates digital projectors, we'll just apply it there, too.

We're using the packaged profiles provided with cineSpace, which have worked perfectly, and from time to time, we also use RSR's custom profiling service. In those cases, we print a series of test patches using a particular recorder and processed at a particular lab, and we send them to RSR. The company builds us new profiles specific to our film-out path, enabling us to get an exact match between what we see and what we print.

The first project we used cineSpace on was SenArt Films' Bonneville, starring Jessica Lange and Kathy Bates. We created the main title sequence/opticals and 80 visual effects shots. With Scratch and cineSpace, we were able to load everything onto a single system, color grade, apply a film LUT, and review at 2K and 24fps. We then provided Fotokem Color Timer Dan Muscarella with our color-timed negative, which he matched back into his color grade, which was in process at the lab. Being able to set up cineSpace beforehand to have the Scratch system emulate Fotokem timing lights with the particular film stock they were using made the process efficient and incredibly precise.

National Lampoon's Bag Boy, releasing in fall 2007, was shot with the Thomson Viper Filmstream and recorded to HDSR. Due to time constraints, we color-graded all of our visual effects plates using the HD LUT created by cineSpace and sent them off to Technicolor where the final color grade was already in process. All of our color plates were approved, we finished our composites, and the finals dropped right into the master at Technicolor. Our clients really love this flexibility because it lets them emulate any output they want. From the beginning of the project, the cinematographer has put a lot of time and effort into getting exactly the right imagery. During scanning, we capture as much latitude from the negative as possible so as to preserve that look. In color grading, we then have the freedom to create the color and texture of the imagery envisioned by the cinematographer using our digital toolset. CineSpace's role is to make sure that what we see on the monitor, as a digital image, will translate into a projected image at the theater or whatever viewing environment to which it is eventually delivered.

Some say the line between production and post is slowly disappearing. For us, it's already gone. Our clients rely on our expertise in the science of look management. Our client meetings used to be about figuring out their visual effects. Now they are about that, plus camera selection, editorial, and defining or preserving the texture of the project. We're meeting with producers way up front now, talking about 35mm vs. 16mm vs. HD, and creating color grades in Scratch that will ensure the look will be preserved when we go to film-out. Tools such as cineSpace allow our clients to be more creative and flexible and to work at a top boutique even if they don't have a huge budget.

DI is not inexpensive, but with our pipeline, which begins during production, we streamline the economics to make it affordable to almost every filmmaker. We can realize the film's look from the moment it comes out of the camera to the moment it hits the screen — whatever size screen that may be. For us, being in the business of visual effects, color timing, and living in the multiformat world, cineSpace is a critical piece of the solution.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Mechnology: mechnology.com
cineSpace: cinespace.risingsunresearch.com

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Chip Potter is the co-founder and executive producer of Mechnology along with Visual Effects Supervisor Stephen Lebed. Potter has been creating visual effects for television and film for more than 25 years. He received honors from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences for his contributions to the Emmy Award-winning visual effects in Frank Herbert's Children of Dune.

© 2008 Penton Media, Inc.