American Cinematographer - March 1993 - 18

plish the special effects, senior editor Fred
Raimondi and I did a test early on by taking
a green screen and doing a rough compos¬
ite over a background element. That way,
the agency could see how it would look."
For variety, Griffith flip-flopped a
shot of the alley, giving it a different per¬
spective for one scene. To expedite the
transfer, Griffith used his telecine upgrade,
the Evertz Keycode System, which allowed
him to read the barcode off the film edited

by film editor Chris Kern, giving the team the
of the rough cut.
For compositing, Fred Raimondi

exact ins and outs

used the green screens

of the dogs, the

backplates of the various locations and in¬
termediate elements, including smoke, light
and shadows.
Director Richard

Taylor shot the

five

dogs over green on a rotating gimbled
platform to get contact points. Then
Raimondi inserted the dogs into the back¬
ground, bringing them together in one shot.
In the rough cut, Kern did a preliminary line¬
up of the canines and Raimondi did exten¬
sive dye tracking to make them appear as
though they were leaning, a la a Gene Kelly
Broadway musical.

For information: The Adelaide

Works, Inc., 445 Adelaide Street West,
Toronto, Canada, Phone (416) 941 -9318, Fax

ability to do low-resolution tests like handdrawn animators. We can tweak the image
until everyone is satisfied."
For information: PDI, Phone (213)
960-4051,

Audio Mechanics, a new audio

Soaps ABC

Rebo Studio's Avid

specialist
Basil Pappas has completed a first-of-its
kind project for ABC Entertainment, a 20minute video highlighting last year's TV,
radio and print promotional projects for
ABC's daytime serials. The project was
completed on the Avid and output directly
to tape master as a finished product, and
features the Avid Video Resolution 5 im¬

proved image quality, which is close to 3/
quality.
"With these new capabilities,
we will be able to do many non-broadcast
projects of this type - where videotape
only comes in the process for the final out¬
put," says Rebo vice president Alan Miller.
4" in

"With the use of Avid's new transitions,
such as wipes, dissolves, fades, overlays
and graphic wipes, in addition to the abil¬

postproduction facility, has set up shop next
to the Warner Bros. lot. Their specialized
digital processing can reduce or eliminate
background noise in production dialogue
and

was

vironment."
For information: David Steinberg,
Phone (212) 989-9466, Fax (212) 627-9083.

or

of children's television

in record time.
The series generated 170,000
feet of 16mm motion picture film and spe¬
cial effects sequences created on 35mm
stock. One-light rush transfers of the nega¬
tive to U-matic videotape were done by AAV
programs

Australia in Melbourne, where the OSC/R
was used to log the film keycode
numbers and video time code automatically

System

during the telecine sessions. These telecine
logs were sent to Cinevex on computer dis¬
kette, along with the original film negative.
After offline editing on
Shotlister, OSC/R created film cutting lists
from the video edit lists, allowing Cinevex
to select the required negative and as¬
semble it in show order for a graded
telecine retransfer.

"Transferring only selected takes
in this fashion saved about 25 percent in
grading time," estimates Ian Maycock of
AAV, who points out that the resulting vid¬
eotapes, combined with OSC/R's auto-con-

American

Cinematographer

on-site, typically on a dubbing

For information: Doug
John Polito, (213)874-4422.

Unlike

stop-motion, the com¬
puter animation process affords the chance
to fine-tune an image frame by frame and
add motion blur to make it appear more
natural. Tim Johnson, who previously di¬
rected PDFs 3-D animated spot for Dow

Scrubbing Bubbles, observed that "we re¬
ally work with the best of both worlds. We
have the 3-D look of stop-motion, plus the

Schwartz

Varitel Video's "Film Look"
Varitel Video recently developed

to give videotape the look of film
posting a one-hour public television spe¬
cial, The de Medicis Kitchen-A Culinary
Journey. Editor Dan Hayes used a Kaleido¬
scope digital effects system to alter the
a new way

in

texture and field rate of Beta-SP video im¬

agery so that even experts have trouble dis¬
tinguishing it from celluloid.
The program interweaves mate¬
rial recorded on Beta-SP videotape at the
de Medici estate with 16mm film footage
shot throughout northern Italy. To make this
blend work, the video material was given a
film look through a unique combination of
production and postproduction techniques.
The film illusion

volved.

save

stage.

The

March 1993

Medicine Man to

much of their work here, but are also able

CA 90038, Phone (213) 871-8280.

keycode and time code management sys¬

on

fly-bys, generators, waterfalls and rivers,
from costly and tedious ADR work. Recent
work has included reducing the noise of a
jet flying directly overhead during dialogue
on the TV show Angel Street, eliminating
stage noise from a love scene for Red Shoe
Diaries, and cleaning up noisy dialogue for
the Disney film trailer department.
The new facility features a large
listening room, a separate machine room (to
remove all extraneous noises), offices and
a lounge. Audio Mechanics personnel do
to work

Doughboy in 3-D
Pillsbury has returned the
Pillsbury Doughboy to the small screen in a
new 3-D version created by Pacific Data
Images' Character Animation Group. Previ¬
ously created using stop-motion animation,
the new Doughboy still exudes the charm
and shyness of his old 2-D self.
Computer animation was used to
make the paunchy pitchman saunter across
the screen, displaying subtleties of gesture
that would be very difficult and costly to
achieve with stop-motion animation. In
perfecting his mambo dancing, the com¬
puter animators took mambo lessons to
better understand the body movements in¬

used

about 75% of the lines, which were buried
in location sounds such as insects, airplane

ity to import graphics and high quality Mac
using Bola 32, we will soon be finish¬
ing much of our work in the non-linear en¬

tem to cut a series

(408) 745-6755. *

Tinkering With Noise
Rebo

titles

Cinevex
Laboratories of
Melbourne recently used the OSC/R

or

(416)366-6357.

For information: Planet Blue,
1040 North Las Palmas Ave., Los Angeles,

Editing Down Under

16

form EDLs, "allowed us to finish the onlines
in about 50 percent less time."

pulled off by the

was

in part

producer Michael
Lerner and director of photography Tomas
Tucker shot the video footage at the de
Medici estate. "We used film-style lighting
and filters to soften the image," he said.
"That strategy helped us achieve a filmic
quality, although it didn't take it quite as far
as it needed to go."
The film look Lerner was aiming
way
American Cinematographer - March 1993

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - March 1993
