feature post production Feature sponsored by
It’s a challenging time to be in post production. The talk is all of being 3D-ready, though the actual work is sporadic. Financial conditions are still shaky, making it hard to persuade banks to lend. And broadcasters want ever higher quality images with budgets that don’t always correspond. So how do we deal with these issues in Soho? Peter Hampden, MD of The LipSync Group, reports.
talks of with misty eyes, but the crash and slow recovery of the last few years has contributed greatly to sweeping changes in the post landscape. Some smaller facilities have been absorbed into ‘super-facilities’ while others have gone under due to bad debts, overstretching themselves on high volume/low budget projects or simply falling victim to budgets that have made it impossible to continue. Even larger, well established facilities like Pepper, that have produced great work, have not made it. While many of us have diversified
into new services or new markets - for instance, LipSync now has a successful division that invests in film and TV projects such as The Crimson Petal and the White and Made in Dagenham - a large part of the issue is the constant and growing pressure to do more for less. This also makes it harder for post facilities to justify the financial outlay for new equipment - banks and other financiers hear about other facilities closing down and it makes them nervous about investing in the sector. It would be nice if producers were more sympathetic to the economics of running a facility and producing consistently high quality work - but we also know that they are under their own pressures. Pressures like requiring increasingly
more elaborate VFX work for TV. Despite soaring production values on prime-time series and one-off dramas,
22 l ibe l september/october 2011 l
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Postmodern A
s with many things in life, it’s all about the money. Even before the current recession things were far from ‘the good old days’ of post that everyone
Peter Hampden, MD of The LipSync Group.
Quantel has really blazed a path in terms of DI for 3D: [the company] has put a lot of resources into it and is way ahead of the field.
the budgets and timescales rarely grow at the same rate. The best way to deal with this and still create great looking TV is to get the VFX team involved as early as possible in the pre-production stages. With productions such as United, the recent BBC dramatisation of the tragic Munich Air Crash of 1958, our VFX team was able to work closely with the production team very early on to advise on how to make the most of the available budget. Several elements were built while the shoot was going on to save time, and many were re- used in more scenes than originally planned which added value both to the story and the budget. Most notably LipSync built a fully CG aeroplane exterior which was used in scenes both before and after the crash, and a faithful reproduction of Old Trafford stadium as it looked in 1958, which was used in several shots under different lighting and weather conditions. Having this collaborative approach
at the planning stages - which we also applied to the BBC’s recent Italian detective series Zen, and to Birdsong which is currently in production - really helps to stretch budgets further and put the money on screen where it counts. Whilst getting on with the here-and-
now work, we are also constantly paying attention to what is around the corner - which leads us to the all- prevailing 3D chatter. As one of the largest independent full-service post facilities in Soho, it is important that we remain at the forefront of technological changes and advances, so we began investing in 3D both for
market to do large scale 2D-3D post- conversion; having researched many conversion processes we feel that the best results are gained from projects that are shot properly in native stereo 3D, which then allows us to use our powerful toolset to best advantage. We are happy to let other facilities with large offshore back-ends tackle this particularly labour intensive process. We have won some native
stereoscopic 3D DI work based on our
film and broadcast a few years ago. With the format and technology in its nascent stage, we approached it with caution but have been making gradual steps to become 3D capable across the facility. Quantel has really blazed a path in
terms of Digital Intermediate (DI) for 3D, they have put a lot of resources into it and are way ahead of the field. We have two Quantel Pablo 4K systems, and one Quantel 4K iQ, which have great 3D capabilities, though currently they are used more frequently for 2D feature films, as well as producing high-end HD material for broadcast projects. We also have 3D monitors and are in the process of upgrading our two main grading theatres so that we can view 3D material on larger screens. Whilst we are currently servicing
stereoscopic 3D versioning for studios including Universal and have ensured all our DI suites are stereo-ready, our next major foray into stereo will be in VFX, as the current predictions see approximately 75% of large Hollywood feature films requiring a stereo 3D finish. We have decided not to pursue the
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