Digital Video - October 2008 - (Page 32)

UNREST IN PEACE I’VE BECOME A HUGE FAN OF THE P2 WORKFLOW. IN FACT, I THINK I’M GOING TO GET A P2 TATTOO. Director of photography Scott Winig (left) and Hall plot a shot. — ROBERT HALL on the shoot that we cycled through more than five cards per camera, so, of course, on that day, we had to format them early.” After the media was downloaded to a hard drive and duplicated, Anderson would, using his own Final Cut Pro workstation, transcode the AVC-I media into Apple’s ProRes 422 and then duplicate those files, handing off one copy of the transcoded media to Bentler, who would incorporate that into his edit. “We backed up the MXF files off of the cards, so we had two copies of that, and then we also backed up the transcoded media,” Bentler says. “That way, if we lost a drive of transcoded media while we were working, we wouldn’t lose the time to re-transcode the MXF files as we’d have a backup to run with right away.” The production ended up with 15 1TB drives to hold the entire completed project, including backups, renders, visual effects and outputs. All of the drives were FireWire 800 daisy-chained together and were a mixed bag of brands. “It wasn’t the best solution, but it worked,” Bentler recalls. “We were sort of adding on as we went. One of the great things was, with the P2 media, we could just get add-on drives. In Annapolis, Maryland, it isn’t very easy to find a FireWire 800 drive, let alone a specific brand, so more often than not we wound up with Western Digital MyBook drives, which work fantastic for backups with no problems at all.” The Laid to Rest team shot for 24 days in Maryland. By the time they wrapped, with Bentler cutting throughout principal photography, they had a nearly complete rough cut of the movie. “We basically had an assembly when we got back to Los Angeles,” concludes Hall. “There’s no way, if you were shooting film, that you could do that. Even if we were shooting tape, we could possibly have achieved this, but the decks are nowhere near as portable and compact and it would have been a struggle. Shooting completely digital knocked a lot off the production cost. For a film that is under a million dollars, and totally self-financed, that’s a significant factor. “With this technology, you can really have ‘budgetless’ films because the quality is so fantastic that no one can tell what you spent,” Hall explains. “It means every dollar ends up on the screen rather than on film, lab and telecine costs. I’ve become a huge fan of the P2 workflow. In fact, I think I’m going to get a P2 tattoo!” DV www.dv.com with the images,” continues the director. “Everyone has been jumping on the RED ONE, but I’ve worked on films with that camera and I’m a little scared of it. I don’t think it’s there yet. I don’t like the proprietary hard drives, don’t like having to have a tech on set who is the only one who knows about the camera I’m much happier being able to buy hard drives at Best Buy, if necessary.” Laid to Rest was photographed by cinematographer Scott Winig, who also operated one of the dueling HPX3000s used on the project. The decision was made to shoot it in the AVC-Intra codec, which, in April of 2008, when the film went into production, was a move not without risk. “The codec was just being released, so that was a little scary,” attests Hall. But any worries were soon forgotten. Laid to Rest was largely shot on location in Annapolis, Maryland, and Hall traveled with his editor, Andrew Bentler, who worked on set with Hall all the way through production. Hall explains, “We also had Charlie Anderson, who was basically half camera assistant and half editorial assistant. He would get the P2 cards from set, bring them back to the edit room, download them and transcode the media and hand it off to Andrew, who would then be cutting the material we just shot that same day.” Bentler set up shop on location in Maryland in a room with Anderson, who would download the media from the P2 cards through a Panasonic P2 Mobile AJ-HPM100 and then make a duplicate backup copy. “The P2 Mobile is really a nifty deck,” says Bentler. “You can download two cards at once in about 12 minutes, review the material right away without transcoding and not tie up a computer system with simple downloads — it’s a great tool.” The production carried 10 16GB P2 cards, five for each camera, but whenever possible Bentler and Anderson did not delete the cards, but rather kept media on them until the end of the day. “We’d format cards at the start of each day and give the cameras clean cards every morning, but when we could we kept the media on the cards all day long in case Rob wanted to see something right away,” Bentler says. “Then we could put the P2 card in the Mobile deck and he’d have instant access to anything — even stuff they just shot. Otherwise he’d have to wait for a transcode. We also kept the media on the P2 cards as a third backup just in case. There was just one day 32 dv october 2008 http://www.dv.com

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Digital Video - October 2008 Contents First Look: Creative Suite 4 D800 Raid Edirol F-1 Video Field Recorder Universal Dolly BT-LH1760 Monitor Bench Test: XDCAM EX PMW-EX1 Camcorder The Dead Can Dance Cutting Crew Unrest In Peace DV101 Production Diary

Digital Video - October 2008

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