Post Magazine by Leah Duffney

magazine JANUARY 2014

WHERE TECHNOLOGY AND TALENT MEET

oscar picks A LOOK AT 2013’s TOP

PROSPECTS FOR EDITING, VFX, ANIMATION AND MORE.

AUDIO FOR INDIE FILMS REVIEWS: VRAY & CINEMA 4D AMERICAN HUSTLE DIRECTOR DAVID O. RUSSELL COMMERCIAL VFX POSTMAGAZINE.COM $7.99

SERVING THE INDUSTRY SINCE 1986

FILM OSCAR PICKS

A LOOK AT 2013’S TOP PROSPECTS FOR EDITING, VFX, ANIMATION AND MORE.

ON THE COVER

BY: IAIN BLAIR

AUDIO FOR INDEPENDENT FILMS

LOWER-COST TOOLS, IN THE RIGHT HANDS, CAN HELP BUDGET-STRAPPED INDIE PROJECTS. BY: JENNIFER WALDEN

TELEVISION VFX FOR COMMERCIALS

POST HOUSES HELP MARKETERS TELL STORIES AND SELL PRODUCTS BY: CHRISTINE BUNISH

BUSINESS BUYING GEAR

THE LATEST EQUIPMENT SALES & INSTILLATIONS

DEPARTMENTS EDITOR’S LETTER WALTER MITTY’S SECRET VFX

BY: MARC LOFTUS

BITS & PIECES

WHAT’S NEW IN POST PRODUCTION

09 SPECIAL REPORT CANON DEBUTS 4K MONITOR

BY: BEN CAMPANERA

DIRECTOR’S CHAIR DAVID O. RUSSESLL --AMERICAN HUSTLE BY: IAIN BLAIR

36 40 42 46

POSTINGS

A GRAPHIC GLIMPSE OF SOME RECENT WORK

PRODUCTS

THE LATEST IN HARDWARE & SOFTWARE

PEOPLE

KEEPING TABS OF THE INDUSTRY’S MOVERS & SHAKERS

REVIEW

MAXON CINEMA 4D STUDIO RELEASE 15

BY: TREVOR M. CARLEE

REVIEW

CHAOS GROUP’S V-RAY 3.0 BY: TONI BRATINCEVIC

12 POSTMAGAZINE.COM

DAILY NEWS UPDATES WEB EXCLUSIVES GETTING STARTED - VFX PRODUCER RICHARD THWAITES

DIRECTOR’S CHAIR

David O. Russell American Hustle By: Iain Blair

HOLLYWOOD — Director/writer David O. Russell, who made his directorial debut with 1994’s dark comedy Spanking the Monkey, has since amassed a small but diverse body of work that includes the Gulf War thriller Three Kings, the existential comedy I Heart Huckabees, and the sports drama The Fighter, which earned him Oscar Best Picture and Best Director nominations. He repeated those nominations with 2012’s Silver Linings Playbook, a hit drama about bipolar disorder.

His new film, American Hustle, is a fictionalized version of the real-life ‘70s political corruption scandal known as Abscam, which once again stars Silver Linings’ Oscar-winner Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper, along with Christian Bale, Amy Adams and Louis C.K. Here, in an exclusive interview with Post, Russell talks about making the film, the challenges involved, and his love of post.

POST: What do you look for in a project and what made you choose this one? DAVID O. RUSSELL: “I always look for amazing characters who I find are fascinating, charming, flawed, romantic and in trouble. Those are the key elements I look for. And they have a very specific world they’re in, as in The Fighter and Silver Linings. They’re a sort of community, and they’re having to reinvent themselves. So they’re in trouble of some kind, but their world also has some enchantment in it that they love. There’s love and passion and compassion in it. And then there must be a sizeable theme, and in this one it’s not just about conning people, but reinvention. When Christian Bale and I first discussed this, we were both struck by the notion of his character’s passion and the attention to detail — like a theater director or artist. And then there’s the larger question of what roles and identities everyone plays everyday, the narratives they use to get through life. And everyone has to have one you believe in, or you’re a bit adrift.” POST: Do you see this and those two previous films as related?

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RUSSELL:

Completely. For me, this is the third part of a trio of films that all my work’s been leading up to. I feel all the others were like preparation for this.

POST: You mention “community.” You seem to have this repertory company of actors you love to use — Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper.

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RUSSELL: “I love that idea of working with the same team on both sides of the camera, and having that continuity.” POST: What sort of film did you set out to make? RUSSELL: “It’s the same aim, the same voice, the same song if you will, as my last two films. You go into the humanity, and what comes can be heartbreaking and inspiring and also funny — and not even intentionally. It just comes naturally from the flavor of the characters.” POST: What were the main technical challenges of pulling all this together and how tough was the shoot?

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RUSSELL: “It was pretty tough. On each of these last three films… it’s been about briskness. You must come from instinct, and we developed a team and a style of working. We shoot nearly every frame with Steadicam — sometimes using two — and that’s because it’s unobtrusive and moves fluidly through the compositions and spaces. We had Geoffrey Haley on The Fighter and again on this with Greg Lindstrom, so two operators this time who traded off.

And we used the briskness as an asset, and it makes us come from instinct and passion and intensity. We do very few takes, so everyone has to hit it right and just jump in. And that gives us a lot of energy. There’s no time to really over-think it or secondguess yourself too much. But we still have to make choices — do we play the scenes hot, medium or cool? So the actors get a chance to explore. In terms of the video tap, I don’t do the video village ever, so it was a big deal for me in production to get a reliable monitor, as I’m always standing next to the Steadicam and moving through the scenes with a very large cast — the largest I’ve ever had. So we searched until we found this pre-digital monitor that turned out to be the most reliable for the image. POST: Did you shoot film or digital?

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RUSSELL: “Film, and DP Linus Sandgren shot the very last stock of Fuji film. And that’s very sad to me, as I love Fuji stock. There was talk about going digital, and I’m a romantic and a little superstitious, and I love shooting film. And I’ve been told by a lot of people in post that even though cameras like the Alexa are pretty amazing, they still can’t quite match the richness and depth of film, and often you end up spending more time lighting for digital. We tend to roll the mags — 10-minute, 20-minute mags on the Steadicam — and the very fact that we all know we’re burning film and it’s going to end adds to the immediacy and intensity of the process.”

EDITOR JAY CASSIDY “I met David through dailies on Silver Linings, and as I was hired after they began shooting it, I never actually even met him until post, as he was shooting in Philadelphia and I was in Santa Monica. But I heard a lot of talk about his methods, and how he runs these long takes with re-sets. So you hear a lot of discussion in between the takes, and it’s a very interesting way to meet a director as I felt as though I was on the set. I felt like he was giving me instructions at the same time. “After I began working on this last March, Crispin came on a month later, and then Alan came on a couple of weeks after that. We broke the film

Director Russell on-set (right): “We do very few takes, so everyone has to hit it right and just jump in.”

down into different segments and then each of us really focused on those segments through all of the post. Because there was so much material, that way of handling it just made the most sense. Certain scenes did go back and forth between us, but we kept it pretty consistent in terms of each of us dealing with specific segments. “We cut on Avid at Tribeca West and it was great place to work — and Michael Mann was down the hall, Oliver Stone was next door, and they were also doing Hunger Games there. So Jennifer was back and forth. And we only really finished cutting and post at the end of November.”

POST: Do you like the post process? RUSSELL: “I love it. We have this great post team headed by [editor] Jay Cassidy and a great way of working. We have a rhythm that’s very creative. We get into [it] quite slowly with the material. I don’t like to look at a rough assembly, so we tend to cut it in sequences. Sometimes there’s a sequence that has been assembled and Jay will say, ‘Let’s take a look’ and it does come in handy, but in this case, we had such a short shoot — just 40 days — and we had one of the shortest posts I’ve ever had, which was added pressure.” POST: The film was edited by Jay Cassidy and Crispin Struthers, who were Oscar nominated for Silver Linings Playbook. Tell us about that relationship and how it worked? RUSSELL: “Jay was actually assisted by Crispin, who also worked on my last two films, and Alan Baumgarten. Jay didn’t visit the set and edited in Santa Monica. He can explain how it works.” (See sidebar) POST: How many visual effects shots are there in the film? RUSSELL: “We used a surprisingly large amount — over 600 — for two reasons; First, the characters wear sunglasses a lot, so there were a lot of pesky reflections from the fill lights that we constantly had to get rid of. Then, we also had to do quite a few period adjustments, such as with cars on the street, and backgrounds. We also ran into a situation with the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan that’s under construction right now, so we had to do a lot of work with existing plates to remove all the scaffolding.” POST: Who did them and how did you approach them? RUSSELL: “We realized that the best way to deal with them was for us to create our own in-house team, headed by Jay. So we then combined that with various vendors for specific visual effects. We used Zero VFX in Boston, and Lola in Santa Monica did a lot of make up and hair effects, and Crafty Apes also did some shots.” Bradley Cooper (left), Christian Bale (right)

“But we still have to make choices — do we play the scenes hot, medium or cool? So the actors get a chance to explore. In terms of the video tap, I don’t do the video village ever, so it was a big deal for me in production to get a reliable monitor, as I’m always standing next to the Steadicam and moving through the scenes with a very large cast —the largest I’ve ever had.”

POST: Can you talk about the importance of music and sound to you as a filmmaker? RUSSELL: “I can’t over-emphasize just how important sound design and music are to me. The environment of sound from scene to scene and moment to moment is very specific, and we create enormous layers of sound. There are different kinds of silences, or dog barks in neighborhoods when there’s chaos, and I like to use ambience to actually create enormous tension that you can then suck out of the room, which we do in a very dramatic way right at the start of the film. We did a lot of interesting things in the mix to layer in sounds to create moments of energy at the start and end of scenes, when something momentous is about to happen. So as two characters end a conversation and you leave the room and go outside, we used sounds that don’t necessarily belong to either environment, to make a dramatic point.” POST: Where did you mix? RUSSELL: “In the cutting room a lot, and then we went to Olympus Sound, which is John and Nancy Ross’ mixing stage, where we also did the last two movies. Myron Nettinga mixed all the effects with John, who’s our supervising sound editor and also a part of our team. We get into a rhythm of doing mixes at screenings for ourselves, and it’s a set up where everyone’s involved. Jennifer, Bradley Cooper and Jeremy Renner will come, and they all give notes — and I’ll take notes from anyone to help advance the final film.”

POST: The DI must have been vital. How did that process help? RUSSELL: “It’s extremely important. We did it at Efilm and you have to watch your dailies very carefully or they move sideways at the 11th hour — which happens with the mix too. For the most part we loved the look of the dailies, but you have to mother them and preserve the look. I love rich color, I love redness in people’s faces. I do not like things to feel cool. So with Jay and colorist Yvan Lucas, we sit there and go over it all frame by frame.”

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POST: What’s next? RUSSELL: “This is the fastest I’ve ever made two films, as we were prepping this while still finishing Silver Linings. So that was a first for me, and I marvel at filmmakers like The Coens and Woody Allen, who never seem to slow down. I need to take a break now and figure out what’s next.”

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“I can’t over-emphasize just how important sound design and music are to me. The environment of sound from scene to scene and moment to moment is very specific, and we create enormous layers of sound. There are different kinds of silences, or dog barks in neighborhoods when there’s chaos, and I like to use ambience to actually create enormous tension that you can then suck out of the room…”

EDITOR’S NOTE

WALTER MITTY’S VFX SECRETS

By: Marc Loftus

One of the most challenging visual effects takes place during the film’s storm sequence. “It is all based on large simulations, and it’s very difficult to art direct,” he notes. “You need to find very specific timing and very specific timing controls. It requires a lot of computer processing and a lot of artist time to turn around different iterations. It’s something that’s pretty complex to put together.”

I remember a couple of years ago, you would do a 400shot movie and it was a huge film,” recalls VFX supervisor Guillaume Rocheron, who was part of the Oscar-winning team that worked on The Life of Pi. “You work on the blockbusters nowadays, and you work on 1,200 shots pretty easily. And some go up to 1,500. It’s a pretty significant number of shots.” Rocheron recently supervised VFX for Twentieth Century Fox’s The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, which “only” has

700 visual effect shots. In it, Ben Stiller (who also directed the film) stars as the lead character from the classic James Thurber story, escaping his mundane life by slipping into fantastic daydreams of action and adventure. “It’s quite a lot for a non visual effect-driven movie,” notes Rocheron. “What I found interesting about Walter Mitty is, it’s not really a visual effects movie. The visual effects are here to support story… but it’s not about showing a lot of visual effects. It’s an everyday story.”

“The fight scene between Walter and his nemesis Ted was yet another challenging sequence. “It’s all about that cool surfing into the streets of Manhattan,” notes Rocheron. “It involved creating digital doubles of the two main actors, but also tearing up the roads and concrete-destruction effects.” Rocheron assembled a large team of VFX studios to meet the film’s needs. “MPC was one of them,” he recalls. “Framestore in NY and London did some work; Soho VFX in Toronto did some work; Hydraulx in Vancouver and Los Angeles did some work; Rhythm & Hues; Mr. X in New York; plus other facilities that did smaller bits and pieces.” One of the most challenging visual effects takes place during the film’s storm sequence. “It is all based on large simulations, and it’s very difficult to art direct,” he notes. “You need to find very specific timing and very specific timing controls. It requires a lot of computer processing and a lot of artist time to turn around different iterations. It’s something that’s pretty complex to put together.” Hydraulx handled much of the fluid simulation. “I’ve done that before in The Life of Pi, with all the digital oceans, and it’s something on its own that is a very complicated thing to solve. We had Framestore dealing with the wider shots and vistas, and at some point Walter jumps into the water and the camera goes into the ocean. Hydraulx, from that point on, tackled the close up water. That involved less large-scale simulation, but more of a certain detail, and foam and sprays. It was really about trying to find what was appropriate and spread out the work nicely.” Soho VFX handled the volcano eruption, which also presented challenges.

“We were trying to simulate that plume of smoke that comes down onto the village and chases Walter’s car as he’s trying to escape,” says Rocheron. “It was a combination of creating that big cloud chasing the car. At the same time, volcano smoke does not move that fast. If you did get it to move fast, you can destroy the scale a little bit, so it took a lot of iterations to find the right timing.” The fight scene between Walter and his nemesis Ted was yet another challenging sequence. “It’s all about that cool surfing into the streets of Manhattan,” notes Rocheron. “It involved creating digital doubles of the two main actors, but also tearing up the roads and concrete-destruction effects.” Rocheron says his favorite sequence can be seen when Walter goes to Himalaya Mountains. “It was a sequence that was done by Look Effects,” he recalls. “It’s a virtual sequence because it was all shot in Iceland — a fantastic location with mountains, and they shot all that beautiful, practical photography. For every shot, we replaced all the backdrops with digital mountains and reshaped the terrain to make it more high-altitude and on-top-of the-world landscapes. At end of day, there’s pretty much visual effects in every single shot, but when you watch it, it was filmed in a way that most people don’t question it.”

SPECIAL REPORT

CANON INTRODUCES DP-V3010 4K DISPLAY By: Ben Campanaro

AFTER TEASING CROWDS — at trade shows for the past three years with glimpses of prototypes, Canon officially announced its entrance into the high-end hardware market with the DP-V3010 4K reference display. Post Magazine was invited to the Canon Shimomaruko headquarters in Tokyo, Japan, for an exclusive first look and handson demonstration of the display.

The DP-V3010 is a big step for Canon. Growing from its legendary history as a leader in lens manufacturing and the launch of its EOS Cinema line in 2010 (most recently used on Ron Howard’s Rush and the indie hit Blue is the Warmest Color), the company is now serving its customers 4K digital cinema hardware that spans from input to output. While rewarding those who stick to the Canon brand with an optimized workflow from lensing to the color bay, the display has enough brand-agnostic features to cater to anyone working in high-end, onset monitoring, editorial, VFX and motion graphics, photo editing, and color correction. As the industry evolves to a 4K standard, the DP-V3010 marks Canon’s intent to take the reference display throne

away from Dolby’s 1080p PRM-4220. Ideally paired with footage from Canon’s flagship EOS C500 4K camera, the DP-V3010 is a 30-inch, IPS LCD display with a resolution of 4,096-by-2,560. This yields a 10.5 megapixel image area in a 16:10 aspect ratio, well suited for viewing 4K video with the extra vertical space for a menu and task bar. With some marketing campaigns focusing on pixel density over the last few years, the Canon display scores a 161.01 pixels per inch measurement. Compare that to 52.45 on the Dolby, 94.34 on the HP DreamColor, or 108.79 on Apple’s Thunderbolt Display. Seeing really is believing for just how beautifully detailed, smooth and natural 4K imagery can appear when compressed to a desktop-sized

“The 30-inch display has an 89 degree viewing angle horizontally as well as vertically off-center, while still maintaining uniform color. This will come into play during those unannounced visits from directors or VFX supervisors, as four or five sets of eyes can stare at an artist’s desk and each of them will be presented with the same imagery.”

“The DP-V3010 can receive 4K signals over 3G-SDI or DisplayPort in frame rates ranging from 24 to 60p. It is DCIcompliant, with a contrast ratio of 2000:1. All color processing is calculated internally in 18-bit color space before being presented in 10-bit, on-screen.”

screen. I sat down with Canon’s Shinichi Yamato, chief of display products, and Hideyuki Komatsu, general manager of display products, at the Canon headquarters. Though not quite ready to release specifics, the Canon executives were proud to say that the reference display has been engineered completely from scratch: a new image processor, new imaging algorithms, and a new LCD panel and backlight design. They also alluded to an “internal feedback loop” designed into the display, which enables it to automatically adjust itself to maintain consistent imagery throughout the product’s lifespan. The DP-V3010 can receive 4K signals over 3G-SDI or DisplayPort in frame rates ranging from 24 to 60p. It is DCI-compliant, with a contrast ratio of 2000:1. All color processing is calculated internally in 18-bit color space

before being presented in 10-bit, on-screen. The display supports ACESproxy output for monitoring from the Canon EOS C500, and includes presets for linearizing Canon Log footage also coming from the C300. A USB 2.0 port on the display allows for the import of ASC .CDL LUTs, and exporting any modified .CDL or other settings presets chosen on the display to share with the rest of your team. Additional 1D and 3D LUT formats are said to be supported natively, but at press time, a comprehensive list was still pending. The display also has an Ethernet port, which connects to the included controller bar, a separate interface with buttons for video selection, menu navigation, 10 programmable functions, and dials for color adjustment. While it’s always hard to

MOTION BLUR — looked completely smooth and natural to the photography. It’s simply beautiful to look at. The busy Canon booth at InterBEE showcased a trio of DP-V3010s with identical looking imagery.

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The Canon Shimomaruko headquarters in Tokyo.

The display also has an Ethernet port, which connects to the included controller bar, a separate interface with buttons for video selection, menu navigation, 10 programmable functions, and dials for color adjustment.

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give up desk real estate, I like having this interface separate from the monitor housing. Canon’s design avoids the problems I’ve run into while working on an HP DreamColor for the past few years with the standard buttons-on-bezel layout: unintentionally tilting the monitor, or getting fingerprints on the screen. Navigating through the on-screen menus on the Canon display was slightly more sluggish than one may be used to, and the lack of physical weight to the controller bar and its dials make it feel a little on the cheap side. With 10 programmable buttons, Canon missed an opportunity to include the customizable LED displays often seen on Wacom tablets for labeling each function. As it stands, the controller bar lends itself to the all-too-common covering with post-it notes and hand-scrawled letters to

remember what each preset is configured for. Nonetheless, the functionality is there to cater to DPs on-set, who can install their own LUTs in advance, quickly toggle them on and off while shooting, and create new LUTs on the fly and export them for dailies all without touching a PC. These refinements can be made anytime, even when viewing with the preset color settings from ACESproxy. At the Japan press unveiling, Canon positioned two DP-V3010 units in their new digital cinema studio, flanking a synced 4K Christie CP4220 DLP projection on a 250-inch Stewart SnoMatte Filmscreen, all calibrated with a Minolta CA310 color analyzer. Comparing some beautiful 4K EOS C500 footage of European landscapes and Victorian-era models, the displays appeared to be a spot-on match to the projection in terms of luminance range, hue and the visible detail in the darkest of shadow areas was also remarkably similar, though the actual black level on the projection appeared slightly washed out

“The price at launch in the first quarter of 2014 will be $40,000. While this puts the DP-V3010 directly in line with the competition from Dolby, it’s also nearly double the cost of what a filmmaker would spend on the 4K C500 camera housing to shoot their movie. This pricing strategy will greatly limit its audience to the highest level of productions: more screening rooms, less artist bullpens.”

compared to the strong, dense blacks seen on the displays. Any concerns from the lack of movement in the first demo footage were squelched at the InterBEE Convention in Tokyo the next morning, when Mr. Komatsu and the lead engineers of the display were happy to switch on some Formula 1 racing footage at Post’s request. None of the tearing, streaking, or other motion artifacts that can plague many LCDs were apparent. Motion blur looked completely smooth and natural to the photography. It’s simply beautiful to look at. The busy Canon booth at InterBEE showcased a trio of DP-V3010s with identical looking imagery. Mr. Komatsu was proud to say these were straight out of the box, without any additional work to get them to visually match — a testament to Canon’s rigorous in-house quality checks for uniformity. While this can help with transparency from one office location to another, and even allow for the sharing of monitor settings throughout a facility, I’m surprised that Canon is currently not planning to involve themselves in the calibration of the displays once they are installed on site? The 30-inch display has an 89 degree viewing angle horizontally as well as vertically off-center, while still maintaining uniform color. This will come into play during those unannounced visits from directors or VFX supervisors, as four or five sets of eyes can stare at an artist’s desk and each of them will be presented with the same imagery. Canon likes to note that the display could be a space- and moneysaver by eliminating a studio’s need for a largescreen review theater. While this may be true in the

practical sense of image accuracy, best of luck trying to sell that concept to directors or producers who are used to lounging in posh screening rooms. As a VFX compositing supervisor myself, I’ve felt the pains of struggling to work on a display that simply can’t show the artist exactly what they’re creating. Especially when working on darkly-lit plates, adding super-subtle effects like cold breath enhancements requires a display that won’t introduce banding at any range of the color space. This removing of any rose-colored glasses opens up communication between artists and streamlines post production, allowing for less time spent on logistics and more time spent on creativity. The Canon DPV3010 is going to be the monitor that every artist, whether they’re working in 2K or 4K, is going to want on their desk. So of course there has to be a catch, right? The price at launch in the first quarter of 2014 will be $40,000. While this puts the DP-V3010 directly in line with the competition from Dolby, it’s also nearly double the cost of what a filmmaker would spend on the 4K C500 camera housing to shoot their movie. This pricing strategy will greatly limit its audience to the highest level of productions: more screening rooms, less artist bullpens. After the phenomenal success of the DSLR put highquality filmmaking within the grasp of the common man, I’m surprised that Canon is not also offering a more affordable alternative as their entry into the display market? Needless to say, I’m anxious to see how the DP-V3010 is received next year, and what Canon has next up their sleeve.

BEN CAMPANARO Ben Campanaro is an Emmy award-nominated VFX composting supervisor based in Los Angeles. His list of works include television’s Sleepy Hollow and Terra Nova, and the features Spring Breakers and Mission: Impossible 4 — Ghost Protocol. He can be reached by email at: bengraphics@yahoo.com