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Update
JIGSAW AND TECHNICOLOR POSTWORKS TEAM FOR SINATRA
For postproduction on filmmaker Alex Gibney’s HBO documentary Sinatra: All or Nothing at All, Technicolor PostWorks New York collaborated with Gibney’s production team and editors from Jigsaw New York. Airing on HBO as a four-hour miniseries, the film tells the story of Sinatra’s life and career leading up to his famous 1971 “retirement concert” in Los Angeles. Unusually, the documentary is composed almost entirely of archival material—there are no new on-camera interviews. Rather, recordings of Sinatra himself provide the narrative thread, with the neverbefore-seen concert material used as a framing device.
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The massive research effort for the project was led by executive producer Blair Foster, who combed through books, magazines, television shows and news broadcasts, and also reached out to Sinatra’s surviving friends, family and colleagues. The material amassed by Foster was passed on to the Jigsaw editorial team, who worked with Gibney in shaping the elements into a cohesive story.
Jigsaw prepared a conformed version of the documentary in-house before passing it on for final editorial adjustment and color grading. Technicolor PostWorks vice president of creative services Ben Murray suggested this workflow based on past experience: Gibney and his team want the freedom to continue with editorial changes virtually to the point of delivery, so it is more efficient and economical if as many of those changes as possible can be implemented at the editorial house.
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Read more about Sinatra at creativeplanetnetwork.com/current-issue
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4@MoveableFest
Interview: Lisa Immordino Vreeland on
Getting Hooked on “Peggy Guggenheim:
Art Addict” — moveablefest.com/?p=9537 4@DCAdundee
“We wanted to be close to them, to feel them breathing,” Thomas Vinterberg on
“Far from the Madding Crowd” in @Guardian — dca.xyz/1H3ldAQ 4@InterviewMag
A good doc is more than just interviews in front of a camera: “It should be more of an adventure,” says Nick Broomfield — bit.ly/1zBU7Oh 4@BOMBmagazine
Filmmaker @frederictcheng talks Raf
Simons, Hitchcock and @diorandimovie — bit.ly/1F4EvCq 4@OTRBackstrokin
Filmmaker Alison Chernick’s “The Artist Is
Absent: A Short Film on Martin Margiela” is eerily inspiring — fb.me/7ceJZZXMa 4@DepictArts
“Fade to Slide,” a new audiovisual artwork by “The Clock” creator Christian Marclay — bit.ly/1Od8f7w 4@popcornreel
“What Happened, Miss Simone?” comes to @Netflix June 26. You must see this excellent documentary by @lizgarbus — nflx.it/1CZtxfa
4@NOWNESS
Now Playing: Marco Brambilla’s “Apollo
XVII” digi-art countdown, from Times
Square to outer space — bit.ly/1ARc2f8 4@gavino_mc
Great things always come from a @Madonna/@Akerlund_Jonas collaboration! — youtu.be/GgDxv0Qg_Rg
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Ethan Burke (Matt Dillon, right) meets Sheriff Arnold Pope (Terrence Howard)
Wayward Pines Post Spans Multiple Locations
Apsychological thriller executive produced by M. Night Shyamalan, FOX’s Wayward Pines required the creation of a custom production path that enabled working from multiple locations, remote viewing environments and collaborative timing. FotoKem developed a variety of solutions for Wayward Pines, including a secure post pipeline that connected the production site in Vancouver, Shyamalan’s editing suite in Pennsylvania and the edit facility in Hollywood.
Dailies from Vancouver were delivered to Hollywood and Pennsylvania simultaneously. Because moving the entire post team to Pennsylvania was cost-prohibitive, FotoKem set up networked, mirrored editorial suites in both places. Each location had calibrated monitors that ensured consistency, and the creative teams were connected via unique full-motion, colorcritical viewing platforms, allowing them to remotely “sit in” and watch color screens in near real time.
The iconic Billie Holliday is brought to life in HBO’s broadcast production of the Broadway musical Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill. The performance was recorded before a live audience using Ikegami HDK-97ARRI cameras.
Cinematographer Rick Siegel and director Lonny Price deployed the HDK-97ARRI cameras, together with several Ikegami 2/3-inch conventional HD cameras, in a complex shoot at the historic Café Brasil in New Orleans. Equipped with Fujinon’s Cabrio PL Cine lenses, the HDK-97ARRI was used throughout three days of shooting, capturing performer Audra McDonald from a variety of camera placements.
“The HDK-97ARRI sensor produces exquisite pictures,” says Siegel, who adds that the camera “brought out the beauty of Audra McDonald and supported her truly amazing rendition of the Billie Holiday character. My pictures became more painterly, which was essential for this period movie.”
UPDATE
“Trick Shot” Showcases Capabilities of Canon’s Cameras
Gale Tattersall
Directed by Evan Kaufmann and with cinematography by Gale Tattersall (Grace and Frankie, House M.D.), the short film “Trick Shot” was created to highlight the capabilities of Canon’s EOS C300 Mark II digital cinema camera and XC10 4K digital camcorder. A classic con movie (with a twist), “Trick Shot” was shot on location in Nevada, with Tattersall using the EOS C300 Mark II and XC10 to capture the darkness of a seedy pool hall, the stark beauty of the desert and the tense drama of a heist film.
Watch “Trick Shot” and a companion video that details production and post on the film at www. creativeplanetnetwork.com/trickshot.
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Extended versions of these articles are available at creativeplanetnetwork.com/current-issue
THE STUDIO GOES GRITTY FOR REBEL MUSIC
Taking inspiration from Latin American political poster art of the 1960s and ’70s, the STUDIO teamed with Nomadic Wax and MTV World to develop and design the graphics package for the second season of the documentary series Rebel Music, which explores the lives of young people around the world who are using art and music in the pursuit of social justice. Artist Shepard Fairey is one of the executive producers of the series, which airs on several MTV properties. The graphics are on display in the show open, as well as on the web site, in show promos and in other branding elements.
Mary Nittolo, the STUDIO’s creative director, says of the design, “Countries with complex political histories often have strong graphic traditions. A combination of institutionalized political art and people’s response to it in the form of graffiti informed the graphic look.”
TROLLBÄCK TITLES MAVIS STAPLES DOCUMENTARY
The opening titles for Jessica Edwards’ documentary Mavis!, celebrating iconic gospel singer and civil rights activist Mavis Staples, were designed by Trollbäck. Inspired by the halftone palettes and iconography of 1970s album covers, the title design is built around archive photography and presented chronologically, from the early years of the Staple Singers, into the Stax Record era and beyond.
Trollbäck also collaborated with Edwards to produce motion graphics sequences throughout the film, enhancing stories of music and activism from performers such as Bob Dylan, Bonnie Raitt and Chuck D. The graphics use retro visuals to capture the spirit of an era and a movement.
THE GREAT AMERICAN MOVIE HUSTLE RECORDED WITH AJA CION
Directed by Michael Anton, The Great American Movie Hustle features the cinematography of Doug Michaels, who used AJA CION production cameras. Reports Michaels, “CION is one of the most intuitive, easy-to-use cameras I’ve ever worked with.”
All of the material was captured in ProRes 444 at 4K 24 fps, transitioning to ProRes 422 at 4K 60 fps for action scenes that called for a slo-mo effect. The CIONs were configured for handheld, shoulder-mount setups, with a Zacuto Z-Finder viewfinder, MTF lens adapter and Zeiss Nikonmount lenses.
Michaels notes, “The footage looks great, especially with our darker and more contrasty scenes. We threw some clips into [Apple] Final Cut and did some grading and I couldn’t believe what we could pull out of the darks.”
thenewBlank and PBS Collaborate on Brand Campaign
“P BS Anywhere,” an animated brand campaign created in collaboration with design and production studio thenewBlank, emphasizes how PBS content can be accessed on demand from nearly anywhere. Executive creative directors Bobby Hougham and Servrin Daniels of thenewBlank collaborated with John Ruppenthal, senior director of creative services at PBS, and his team to define an original visual means to communicate the campaign’s message. The animated spot “Boxes,” which blends 3D animated cardboard paper dolls and origami, begins as a simple line drawing that folds and unfolds to take viewers through time and different environments, where PBS is always in reach and viewers are in control of what they explore.
On the Creative Planet Network
4COMPANY 3 COLORS COBAIN DOC
MONTAGE OF HECK
Filmmaker Brett Morgen worked with Company 3 and colorist Shane Harris to color grade Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck, a documentary that combines interviews, performance footage, archival audio, animation, motion graphics and home movies. Says Harris of Morgen, “He is so attuned to the ways color can help tell the story. He wasn’t trying to make the footage look ‘pretty’ or to make everything match. He cranked up the soundtrack and we experimented with every shot until it felt right and moved the story forward.”
4SNORRI BROS. RECORD CAMPAIGN
WITH 360-DEGREE CAMERA
Directing team the Snorri Bros. created the “Your World” campaign for Texas Health Resources by combining a 360-degree camera—one rig housing 10 GoPro cameras—with their own SNORRICAM, a bodymounted camera rig with a swivel feature. The equipment allowed the directors to follow each actor with one continuous camera movement, keeping them as the focal points as the scenes and supporting cast changed around them.
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Spotlight: DAN DOME
Q&A
Editor Dan Dome, who has worked on NBC’s Late Night with Conan O’Brien and Saturday Night Live and now serves as the associate director and lead editor for Late Night with Seth Meyers, says, “All of the jobs I’ve had have always been a whole lot of fun and a whole lot of hard work. That’s what I love about this business—you can have a great time and you get the adrenaline rush of trying to get something on air. And it’s even better when everything happens the way it should!”
What type of content do you create for Late Night with Seth Meyers?
Dan Dome: We do pre-taped bits as well as theatrical show composites. I’m the associate director and lead editor and I work with one other editor and an assistant editor. One priority when we began the show was figuring out how we were going to use Adobe Premiere Pro, Prelude, After Effects, Photoshop and Audition as part of our workflow to get the remote pieces put together and the show delivered, both looking and sounding great. We prepared three separate Premiere Pro templates: one for editing the remote packages, one for editing the show and one for creating the show open. I built the templates and tested them to make sure the control room liked them, and they did.
We take advantage of Creative Cloud for editing and graphics work on the editorial side. Our graphic artists are all over Illustrator, Photoshop and After Effects. Our assistant brings in all of the remote media through Prelude so he is able to put markers in clips for us and organize the projects. On the audio side, the fact that Premiere Pro is able to collapse all audio stems and give us one 5.1 audio track when we’re doing our edits of the show or other pieces of content recorded in the studio is really great.
What is your production workflow?
Taping of the show starts at 6:30 p.m. We ingest seven cameras, as well as a program feed, which I use as my foundation for the actual composite of the show. When the show is finished recording, our goal is to have each of the six acts laid out in their own timeline.
I save three versions of the show, and the editor, assistant editor and I edit different acts. We export the finished acts as ProRes 422 at 29.97 fps with 5.1 audio out of Premiere Pro and do quality control in AJA Control Room to make sure it’s an A+. The first act and the timing of the show are due to the network by 10:30 p.m. at the latest because that’s when the show composite happens. dv
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