In the clearest indication yet that the era of 4K may have arrived, Post Logic Studios recently used FilmLight’s Baselight EIGHT colour grading system to grade and conform Reach for Me, the first feature to be shot and posted entirely in 4K resolution. Baselight was an integral part of an unprecedented end-to-end 4K workflow developed by Post Logic Studios and Dalsa, whose Origin II camera was used to shoot the feature. Directed by LeVar Burton and starring Seymour Cassel and Alfre Woodard, the feature was recently screened in Los Angeles using Sony’s SXRD projector to the delight of a packed house of film industry notables.
Representatives of Post Logic’s Image Science Division were on hand during the production of the feature and used a Codex unit to collect the 4K data from the Origin camera (as much as two terabytes per day). The Codex was used to generate 2K ProRes files for dailies and editorial purposes. Concurrently, the full resolution data was offloaded onto a Ciprico Media Vault for transport to Post Logic’s Hollywood facility where it was catalogued and backed up to 400GB LTO3 tapes. Once editorial was complete, the EDL was loaded onto Baselight and matched to the 4K media for final grading and conforming.
Posting features in 4K has been a possibility for several years, but the migration to 4K has been held back, in part, by the medium’s outsized requirements in terms of storage, network bandwidth and processing speed. (A 4K image, it should be remembered, contains four times the information of a 2K image.) Despite the obvious improvement in quality, working in 4K simply took too long and cost too much.
Baselight, however, is a key reason that the thinking about 4K post has begun to change. With its forty processor cores and parallel streaming architecture, Baselight EIGHT offers the horsepower to grade 4K imagery in real-time, even when performing complex operations such as grading scenes with multiple windows. Additional system improvements looming on the horizon – Parallel GPU – promise to diminish the barriers to 4K post further still.
Baselight’s advantages as a 4K platform were manifestly apparent during the grading of Reach for Me. “It was extremely fast and we always had playback when we needed it,” said DI Colourist Corinne Bogdanowicz, who performed the grade in Post Logic’s DI Theatre. “We simply loaded the EDL and it was all right there.”
Reach for Me is a realistic, character-driven drama and much of the feature occurs in a single location. The production, of course, stretched over many days resulting in variations in colour and light. With the added clarity of the 4K images, the need to smooth out those variations was critically important. “The DP shot everything with a specific look in mind and sometimes we pushed it in Baselight to make it warmer or cooler,” said Bogdanowicz. “It was beautifully shot, but we definitely enhanced it.”
It’s hard to know if Reach for Me will spark a trend towards more 4K feature production, but it certainly proved that it can be done. By eliminating the laboratory costs while delivering a look virtually indistinguishable from 35mm film, shooting in 4K offers obvious advantages to filmmakers. And with Baselight helping to reduce the impediments to 4K post work, it’s likely that more productions will make the leap to 4K.
Contact – Deepa Parbhoo ([email protected]) +44 20 7292 0400
About Post Logic Studios
With technologically advanced facilities in Los Angeles and New York, Post Logic Studios has distinguished itself as a leader in digital intermediate and feature film restoration, and continues to expand into new and emerging arenas within the post-production realm. The company provides unmatched digital intermediate, digital mastering, editorial assembly, restoration, visual effects and audio postproduction services to feature film and television clients from its flagship Hollywood facility and Manhattan-based satellite, Post Logic Studios N.Y. Encompassing a team of the feature film and television community’s most talented digital artists and a 1,500-square-foot digital cinema-enabled theater, Post Logic Studios continues to lead and innovate.
For more information, please visit www.postlogic.com or call 323-461-7887.
