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Archive notice: This article was originally published on November 1, 2017. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
At the beginning of the project, the creative agency Brave developed a treatment in which a woman travels through several genres that demonstrate the quality of the Panasonic HDR 4K TV. In dialogue with the directors duo, the scenes were refined and two were heavily modified. In the end, the customer opted for the genres “historical film” to show natural colours, “film noir / thriller” with strong contrasts, shadows and light, “science fiction” because of the fine details and high dynamic range, and “superheroine” to present vivid, strong colours.
Shooting in Cape Town
The production team filmed for three days in Cape Town because the desired environments for all four scenes were available there, as well as an experienced top crew. As the shoot took place before the peak season, it was possible to book renowned artists such as DOP Paul Gilpin and art director Mike Berg, who has already worked on films such as “District 9”. The service production company Ground Glass supported the organisation of the shoot, with a total crew of around 56 people on set.
The film was shot with a Panasonic Varicam (4,096 x 2,160, 4K DCI, 10-12 bit, 25p & 50p), the LUT for the Varicam was downloaded by the team from Panasonic (HDR Rec. 2020). The Varicam settings were made by a Panasonic technician on set using an Atomos HDR monitor.
The team used the camera in high ISO mode at ISO 5,000, with negative gain to adjust the exposure back to the 800 ISO equivalent. The colourist used the DNxHD transcodes to grade and create the LUTs, which were also used to generate ProRes files for post.
After shooting, the 4K footage was converted to Avid DNxHD for post-production in DaVinci Resolve and standard LUTs were used to represent the Rec. 709 colour space.
Futuristic, bombastic, historical & dark
For the historical film sequence, the team booked a real Venetian villa, which was brought to life with chandeliers, armchairs and various other details. Apart from clean-ups of the fire alarms, the electronic cables and the modern lighting elements, no digital set extensions were used here.
The glitter particles in the shots with the Venetian masked ball were captured on camera. In addition, Framestore filmed golden confetti in front of greenery, which was mixed with the real confetti in post and placed over the shots as required. The high-speed shot of the dancing crowd was created with several layers shot. To multiply the crowd, the team filmed the performers individually in two different costumes using a split-screen process with green screen.
For the thriller scenario, the set department prepared an alleyway to resemble New York City in the 1960s: the team placed neon lights, street lamps and converted police cars to lend the set authenticity. Apart from the digital posters on the brick walls and additional digital fire, everything was filmed in-camera, including the rain, which trickled onto the set via various rain machines and sprinkler systems.
The team shot the science fiction scenario in a disused building pit, the floor of which, with its furrows and light-coloured limestone, corresponded to our idea of an extraterrestrial planet. Large pieces of spaceship wreckage were placed in the set, and the set team darkened craters with coal to represent the traces of comet impacts. Some explosive devices placed in the set provided SFX explosions. As a second camera unit, Framestore used a Phantom Flex 4K (Cineraw, 4,096 x 2,160 px, up to 1,000 fps) to film burning fragments, stone bridges, pyro effects and fire in front of green, black and blue skies.
Using FX dirt, smoke and fire explosions simulated in Houdini, the team enhanced the look of the live action footage in post. The planetary atmosphere and the comets are matte paintings, the crashing CG spaceship was realised with Maya and Arnold.
The superheroine sequence was filmed on the roof of a real building. For the jump from the roof, a stunt girl jumped over a replica roof edge into a mat. Framestore later changed the background completely and replaced it with a matte painting similar to a NY backdrop. The falling chunks of stone made of foam and cork material during the superhero landing were filmed together with the actress in front of a green screen.
Avid editing
Guy Savin from Marshall Street Editors in London edited the film on Avid. The material was converted to Avid-compliant Full HD MXF to ensure smooth playback. For the quality check and review, the artist used DaVinci Resolve with a Dell 4K monitor equipped with an Nvidia GPU in 12-bit colour. The servers were able to process the 4K material at up to 10x real time, so there were no bottlenecks or other limitations when playing back and processing the 4K camera masters. The software always ran stably without any dropouts. The Phantom Flex is fast when using a 10 Gbyte connection, and the Panasonic P2 card readers ran flawlessly once the necessary drivers were installed.
HDR colour grading
The colour grading of the HDR pipeline was carried out by a specialist Panasonic colourist, who adapted the material to the customer’s requirements and graded an online version and an in-store version that runs on the Panasonic 4K HDR TV in electronics shops. One of these models was also available as a reference monitor for the colour correction. The only difficulties in this post-production phase were the different colour gamut of Rec. 2020.
Framestore worked in 16-bit floating point colour space throughout in order to retain as much information as possible until grading. This prevented problems from occurring due to the additional luminance range of HDR.
However, the extended colour gamut of Rec. 2020 led to an unexpected colour shift in elements that were added to the scenes. It was therefore always necessary to check that the correct LUT was being used so that the team could preview the work and react to the colour shift in compositing. HDR TVs are capable of displaying incredible brightness levels – sometimes it felt like you had to wear sunglasses.
Biggest challenge
Generally speaking, time was the biggest challenge of the project. The pre-production period in Cape Town was very tight in order to complete all tasks before the start of filming – from cast to location scout to sourcing the rare, authentic costumes for the historical and thriller scenes. The team therefore tried to shoot as much of the film as possible in real life in order to make the post-production team’s work easier and not overstretch the manageable post-production budget. Four weeks is a very short time to realise a job of this scale, so Framestore had to streamline its working process as effectively as possible. The client wanted to show the film on the new TV in the store in “demo mode”, where all settings are turned up to the maximum to demonstrate the TV’s capabilities. This meant: bright colours, high contrast, maximum edge and motion sharpness, which had to be taken into account during compositing, which was primarily implemented using Flame with support from Nuke.
About the Directors Duo
The aim of the directors duo Benjamin Kratzin and Christopher Schlierf is to add something special and extraordinary to every project. To achieve this, they like to go the extra mile and try to push the boundaries of their visual imagery in every film so that the end product has that certain “something more”. The team’s heart beats for action-heavy genre pieces and epic, cinematic, visual storytelling. With Framestore Pictures representing the team exclusively in the UK since this year, exciting pitches for hybrid, full CG and live action gametrailers are currently in the pipeline.
For more information visit: www.directorsduo.com
