Post Production Artists Are Hitting the Road
Nice Shoe's Dominic Pandolfino describes how his New York-based studio is address changes in post production workflow by extending its reach into other markets.
Nice Shoes' Post Production Artists Are Hitting the Road
The New York-based post production company is using technology
and partnerships to service clients in a wider range of markets.
How is digital production changing the role of the post-production artist? Among many things, it's having a major impact on their ability to work remotely, either in person or more often these days in a virtual environment.
Once stationary figures glued to computer terminals, post production artists are bringing their talents to bear on projects in vastly different ways, either by attending to clients on-set, contributing to the final product earlier in the production process or work across multiple formats.
Numerous trends are behind this shift. In recent years, post tools have become more versatile and render faster. Previewing 2K and 4K resolution footage in real-time, previously unheard of, has become the norm. Clients can now see running footage just as it will appear when finished.
But with new changes come new challenges. Budgets for color grading and VFX are increasingly becoming a best-guess process. As production companies shooting on digital will capture more footage than they would when working with film, more footage needs to be graded, especially dailies. Also, some new cameras don't have a developed post pipeline, so prep time, import time and budgets all go up.
Outside major US production centers, this can get more expensive very quickly. Time and budget constraints often preclude travel for post work, and the remote viewing solutions in other cities tend to be slow and unreliable.
One studio working to address these concerns is New York-based Nice Shoes. While the company has hired new talent and upgraded to the latest technological advances, it also added two services to address these new challenges: on-set supervision and work done from New York via a remote setup.
"The industry we're looking at today looks nothing like the industry when we launched this studio 15 years ago," says Nice Shoes CEO/Partner Dominic Pandolfino. "And it will look vastly different tomorrow and next year and 15 years from now. So Nice Shoes is determined to innovate at the same pace as the industry itself. We feel our best move is to adapt to an increasingly mobile and connected world by making ourselves available to clients when and where they need us."
Nice Shoes' first initiative was to partner with Engine Room Edit this past fall to offer remote viewing in the Boston area. Nice Shoes established a remote suite at Engine Room to provide clients with the same experience they'd get doing a session in New York. The service provides a live IP video feed of the session and supports HD on a studio-calibrated display.
"We needed a solution that met our clients' needs remotely without sacrificing production value or client experience," Pandolfino explains. "Since technology that meets our quality requirements is now available, all we needed was to find the right partner. Engine Room has been a leading editorial company in Boston for years, and we've developed a solid working relationship, so the decision to partner with them was easy. We're looking forward to finding strong partners in other cities with the client base and facilities to support a similar setup."
Agencies are the primary beneficiaries of services such as this, Pandolfino notes. To date, Nice Shoes has carried out remote sessions with such Boston shops as Hill Holliday, Mullen, and Arnold. "It's great to have more local options without having to take a plane or train to New York," observes Bill Goodell, Arnold Worldwide's Executive Vice President and Director of Integrated Production.
The remote studio launched concurrently with Nice Shoes' efforts last year to provide on-set supervision from pre-production onward. One notable effort saw colorist Ron Sudul working on set of a tabletop shoot for Moe's Southwest Grill directed by Jerry Simpson of Simpson Films, New York for agency Focus Brands.
Having Sudul on-set meant that the director, DP, DIT and the client would know they captured the necessary data to maximize the overall production investment – and on top of that, their food would look delicious and natural. For example, Sudul constantly reviewed material for any data clipping caused by on-set lighting conditions.
Simpson, working with Sudul on the Baselight platform, established the look of the footage up front, so that only minimal tweaking was needed by the time the clients arrived for the color session during post.
"The advances in digital technology have so drastically changed post-production work-flow, and Nice Shoes has always been out in front of that, providing state-of-the-art solutions and expertise," says Sandy M. Tyler, who produced the spot for Focus Brands.
"This was our first experience working with the Phantom," Tyler continues. "We had concerns about getting the look we wanted from that technology. Having on-set color supervision really put us at ease about the look of the final product, and also helped us make the most of our final color-grading session, allowing us to color correct all the footage from two long shoot days in one session."
"We want to deliver the best, most complete outcome, and color grading is a crucial element in that chain," says Dante Piacenza, Executive Producer at Simpson Films. "Our goal ultimately is to streamline the process of working in digital cinema, and this is a further step in that direction."
Nice Shoes' efforts are part of a larger initiative on the studio's part to establish new ways of its expertise to clients in all forms of production work, not just commercials. For example, the studio recently entered into a strategic relationship with MTI Film in Hollywood. Dubbed Control Dailies at Nice Shoes, it's designed to offer entertainment producers a digital dailies service for episodic TV shows originating in New York and finishing on either coast.
Nor do their efforts to work in new ways end with color grading. Any division of Nice Shoes can have work viewed remotely, or provide assistance and expertise on set. Recently, VFX Artist and Partner Rich Schreck was part of a team that provided supervision for a Chico's spot created by the clothing retailer's in-house agency. It was produced by Supply & Demand Integrated and directed by Ondrea Barbe.
Titled "Step Out," the spot features the pages of a giant-sized fashion magazine and two models who literally step out of the pages wearing various outfits. Because the VFX work was needed to bring the concept to life, the Nice Shoes team was invited to be on hand for the live shoot, which was based around the pre-built giant magazine and another miniature version, which was used for the page-flipping shots.
The team made sure that all the necessary tracking markers were in order and helped deal with such issues as sagging pages, which had to be specially clipped to stay upright. Thanks to their experience dealing with on-set production for visual effects, the studio's crew reported that the post process went smoothly.
Schreck points out that there are lots of benefits to working in this manner. "On the Chico's job, the crew was very helpful with the tracking marks, but there's always a shot that the client or the agency decides to use in editorial that doesn't have the tracking marker you planned for," he points out. "By making sure we've had an opportunity to contribute post production insight and expertise during all points of the process, it lets you just roll with it."
Published 30 November, 2011
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