Baselight on the frontline
Frontline Battle Machines is a show of stunning visuals, and the grade has to do it justice. We aren’t merely fi xing and correcting shots; we are pushing the footage to make it as dramatic as possible.
With as many as 1500 shots per episode, it’s also essential to work quickly. We can’t afford to stop and render. Even using multiple layers of grades with shapes, keys and blurs, Baselight is solid. I can set a look for a particular scene or location and apply the whole grading stack to a series of shots. The grade can then be adjusted whilst maintaining the overall look.
Another great thing about Baselight is its ability to work natively with Avid®
media. We cut everything
for Frontline Battle Machines at full HD resolution in the Avid, so there is no “offl ine” stage as such. Once a cut is fi nished, we send the sequence and media to Baselight for grading.
If we were performing a conventional pre- grade online, the process would be a lot more complicated: we’d have to deconstruct the sequence and play it out to tape, then grade it and play it out to tape again. Lastly, we’d have to rebuild elements in the online—essentially redoing work that was done in the edit.
In our case, we simply open the Avid timeline within Baselight with handles and layers intact. Once the grade is completed, we send the timeline to Avid DS for fi nishing—again with effects and handles preserved. As a result, we spend more of our time doing creative work, rather than rebuilding effects and transitions. Tape is only used for fi nal delivery.
Given all the advantages of a tapeless shoot, it would be a shame to introduce tape at the point of post-production. The Baselight|Avid workfl ow avoids that outcome.
Chris Rodgers | Senior Colourist | Splice Ungraded
London +44 20 7292 0400 | LA +1 323 785 1630 | Chicago +1 312 638 9066 | Singapore +65 9 670 3283 |
Auckland +64 9 294 9152 Graded
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