Take 5 Productions

want to take anybody out of the scene to say, "Oh, that looks like a visual effect." It should always feel very natural and like it was captured that way. I think that's always the biggest challenge.

You have another big international

success like Vikings, which is the Handmaid’s Tale; it’s a completely

different production. What are the differences between them?

With Vikings, you know that visual effects play a big role with large battle scenes, or a big storm sequence. The audience is aware that when we take someone’s head off, VFX helped make it happen. With a show like The Handmaid's Tale it's more about the hidden. The viewer never feels that VFX is involved in creating a scene or a location. In season 3 of Handmaid’s, there was a big scene that took place at the Lincoln Memorial / Washington monument. Shooting on location in Washington was a big challenge because we couldn't close that area off to the crowds walking around. We tried to have as much crowd control as we could, but without closing the area off entirely, we knew we’d need VFX to make the scene work as the producers wanted it to look. This required a lot of work form Mavericks our VFX vendor, which included rotoscoping, painting out unwanted people, 3D extensions, cleaning up the environment and adding and duplicating the handmaids. As an audience member it looks like we went to Washington shot out scene and captured everything in camera.

Similarly, in season 2, we had a scene in which takes place entirely at Fenway Park in Boston. For a variety of reasons we couldn't go to shoot in Boston, so our VFX Supervisor Brendan Taylor and VFX Producer Stephen Lebed went to Boston and took photographs and scans of Fenway Park. We then shot all the foreground action at a ball park in Toronto and the Mavericks team put it all together, making it feel that the entire scene was shot on location at Fenway Park.

We understand asset and content management is critical for you, how do you manage that? Do you use some cloud service for that?

We use a variety of software/services. From a visual effects standpoint, we're running everything through Shotgun. It manages all of our elements, assets and shot production with our inhouse team as well as it helps us manage our vendor shots. On the post side, I'd love to tell you that we have a great asset tool that tracks it all, but most of it, is just spread sheets, Excel, shared docs, Avid tools and things like that where we track everything.

And for your media management?

We use stuff like Media Shuttle, Aspera and PIX. Right now we're

using a variety of things. As an example, we use PIX to distribute cuts to executive producers and to the network. If we're moving small data between visual effects vendors and ourselves, we use Media Shuttle, which is a secure tool to do that. Now, with COVID where we're not doing sound reviews and we all can't go into a mix theatre anymore, we're using Frame.io to send files to producers and creative execs to listen to.

With Colour Correction the biggest challenge is getting a proper calibrated image to our cinematographers and show runners. So, in most cases we will link them up with a remote streaming solution that supports high bandwidth, high bit depth streaming. Tools like Streambox Chroma and a OLED display. Particularly, if it’s a Dolby Vision master we’re creating, there’s an added challenge in making sure we can initiate the Dolby Vision function on the display. We also don’t want to always stream the colour but provide a file that the DP can review and make notes on. In this case we’ve been looking at Moxion for that. It has full Dolby Vision integration built into their service. Overall, we’re continuously looking for very specific tools and services that do exactly what we need in helping provide a solution.

With the entire COVID situation, remote workflows began important. Are you working on it or do you have any plans to advance on it?

Currently our visual effects team continues to work remotely. They're all at home. Our editing teams are somewhat of a hybrid as some editors and assistants are working from home and some are in the office. The film and television business in Ontario has been deemed an essential business and therefore we’re allowed to operate with all of the lockdowns we’ve had. The industry has proven to the government that we can maintain a safe way of working because of the various protocols in place which includes wearing multiple layers of PPE and the biggest factor is our testing protocols. COVID is not being spread set. Likewise in postproduction, we're allowed to operate. We've set up everybody to work remotely or come into the office, they have the option. At times we’ve wanted to do our part to curb the spread and keep our staff safe and have implemented full work from home direction. The amazing thing is that most staff wants to come to the office.

We've created a very safe office environment because everyone has their own edit suite. We don't have a lot of open environments; we've put up plexi-glass shields in open areas. Everyone wears PPE and most importantly we have a lab come in on a weekly basis and test our entire staff. We know that we're all safe and we've been working like this since August and thankfully, we haven't had a single positive test. Everyone feels safe about coming in. I think from a mental health standpoint everyone enjoys getting out of the house as well as it helps with breaking up the monotony of being inside for months on end, plus the efficiencies of working together is much easier. The communication is obviously a lot better when you can actually interact with people.

Companies like Netflix or HBO have replaced TVs as series producers, what is the difference you find working for a TV project or, for example, with Netflix?

From our standpoint not a whole lot has changed. The streamers, like Netflix, Amazon, Paramount+ have specific technical requirements that include delivering the projects in HDR (Dolby Vision) or in Dolby Atmos for sound. They typically want 4k/UHD resolution and therefore the native camera sensor needs to be 4k or larger. From our perspective these minor challenges, add to the overall quality of the show which makes for a much better viewing experience for the audience.

We like the delivery to some of the streamers like Netflix as all we need to deliver is a single IMF file. We don't have to worry about sending a version to Spain, Italy, Germany, and South America. It's one file that goes to Netflix, and that's it.

What are the challenges for the future of Take 5?

There is still the pandemic, so we are dealing with COVID and working through that. Making sure we continue to provide a safe environment for everyone. Providing solutions that allow us to pivot in the event there is another outbreak. The other challenges we’re dealing with now is having to relocate our office. We’re looking for new space which we’ll need to build out to our specifics over the next few months. The upside to the move is that it’s a good opportunity to revaluate how we’re set up and how we do things. The new spaces will us to create an environment that works for all of our post and VFX teams.