Pixomondo is set to be wound down, with Sony Pictures Entertainment sharing an intent to eventually close the Pixomondo umbrella and integrate some capabilities into other areas of its business. The VFX operation will close after completion of outstanding projects or contracts. After that, internal VFX efforts will be streamlined to focus on Sony Pictures Imageworks. And this a mere five years after the frantic Covid-Boom.

The virtual production division called Clara will also be wound down after outstanding contracts are fulfilled. There is stated potential for some business initiatives associated with Sony Group Corporation to be transferred over. The specific initiatives and destinations are not detailed. The R&D and innovation segment called PXO Innovation will be absorbed by Sony Group Corporation R&D. Staff were informed of these moves on March 19, 2026. Official channels are silent so far.

Strange New Virtual Production Worlds!

What the studio worked on

The studio specialized in visualization, virtual production and VFX, with credits listed including Hugo, multiple seasons of Game of Thrones, The Boys, and John Wick: Chapter 4 and many more.

Its LED virtual production work is listed as including Star Trek: Discovery & Strange New Worlds, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Reacher and Cada Minuto Cuenta – seven creative studios and four LED volumes (Vancouver, LA, Toronto and Rhyad) across the United States, United Kingdom, Germany and Canada.

What changes

The sequencing matters: the closures are framed to happen after outstanding contracts are fulfilled. That implies current deliveries continue before the doors close, but it does not spell out how teams, supervision, or facilities operate during the runout. On the VFX side, the operational headline is a stated internal consolidation toward Sony Pictures Imageworks. The report does not specify whether that means changes to bidding, staffing, toolchains, or how virtual production handoffs interface with final-shot work.

On the virtual production side, Clara is slated to wind down as well, with only a high-level note that some initiatives tied to Sony Group Corporation could be transferred. It does not clarify whether LED volume capacity is repurposed, reassigned, or closed outright.

Sony Pictures Entertainment akquiriert Pixomondo

Leadership notes

Sony Pictures Entertainment acquired the business in 2022 from Mayfair Equity Partners. CEO Jonny Slow first became global chief executive officer in 2019 and announced his exit from the company in February 2026.

https://www.televisual.com/news/sony-pictures-to-wind-down-pixomondo/

The post Sony to wind down Pixomondo first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Thinkbox Deadline 10, the long-standing render-farm management software from AWS Thinkbox, will enter maintenance mode on 7 November 2025. In this state, the software remains operational, but AWS will limit future development to security updates and critical fixes. All feature development and innovation are being redirected toward Deadline Cloud.

The AWS product page reinforces the transition, stating:

“Notice: On November 7, 2025, AWS Thinkbox Deadline 10 will enter maintenance mode. We recommend exploring AWS Deadline Cloud for render management.”

AWS specifies in its documentation that existing installations will continue to work “exactly as they do today,” assuring studios that their current workflows, scripts, and configurations remain unaffected. The software will continue to be available for download from the Thinkbox product page, although new features will not be added after the transition.

What “maintenance mode” means for studios

According to the official FAQ, studios can keep using Deadline 10 as they do now, including adding render nodes and managing render tasks through AWS Portal, the Spot Event Plugin, and the Render Farm Deployment Kit (RFDK). The documentation confirms that “your existing Deadline 10 implementation, including all your current workflows, scripts, and configurations, will continue to function exactly as they do today.” AWS also notes that its Usage-Based Licensing (UBL) remains available for Deadline 10 customers through Deadline Cloud UBL.

Why this matters for post-production and VFX pipelines

For pipeline engineers, TDs, render supervisors, and system administrators, the change signals the end of active feature development for Deadline 10. While the software continues to operate, AWS will now concentrate its efforts on Deadline Cloud. This means that new integrations, optimisations, and performance enhancements will appear only in the cloud-based version.

Migration considerations

Studios managing in-house render-farms or hybrid setups should begin testing Deadline Cloud alongside their existing Deadline 10 installation to compare workflows, performance, and cost implications. Migration will likely require reviewing custom scripts, integrations, and plugins to ensure compatibility with the newer system.

Since Deadline 10’s UBL system is now linked to Deadline Cloud UBL, pipeline engineers will need to verify how their licence usage transitions under the new framework. Although no immediate migration deadline has been announced, relying indefinitely on a tool in maintenance mode could increase operational risk if future integrations or dependencies demand newer features. Planning a gradual migration, complete with staff training and pipeline validation, will make the transition smoother.

What’s not changing (for now)

Deadline 10 is not being discontinued YET. It will remain available and fully functional after entering maintenance mode, with ongoing support for security patches and critical updates. AWS has not announced any end-of-life date beyond the shift to maintenance mode.

Teams are advised to begin testing Deadline Cloud or alternatives early, document their workflows, and ensure that custom automation scripts port correctly. As with any production software change, test thoroughly before adopting new infrastructure in live projects.

The post Deadline 10 enters maintenance mode for studios first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

by Tobias Lohf

We took on this challenge with the feature film TRUNK – LOCKED IN. Shooting a film in such a small space presented us with enormous challenges, both logistically and creatively.

The idea was born during the lockdown. With Outside the Club, we produce our own feature films and series. Marc Schießer, director and author, wrote the screenplay for TRUNK. Our approach was to create a feature film that could also work under the strictest lockdown conditions. And what is smaller and more reduced than a feature film with a leading actress in a car boot?

A script quickly emerged from this basic idea. We pitched it to Amazon Studios and there was serious interest in the material. After some trepidation and trepidation as to whether they would actually make the script into a film, the official greenlight followed in January 2023. On one condition: will you manage to deliver the film by the end of August?

Whew. That’s going to be tough. Should we take the deal? We were so keen on the project that we said to ourselves: yes, roll up your sleeves and attack. We had to completely ramp up production in a very short space of time.

In addition to the pre-production for the filming, we also began preparations for post-production at the same time. With such a tight schedule, it was absolutely essential to run the processes in parallel and basically start with the first shots before the actual filming took place. But first things first:

The visual concept

Our aim was to make the single-location thriller an intense film experience for genre lovers. The story takes place almost in real time and our approach was to create a tactile, authentic and immediate experience through the images. We wanted it to feel as if we were in the car boot as viewers.

So the camera lens is always physically in the room, placed from a distance as if it were really there. There are no distant telephoto shots that would create a completely different image impression, even if the framing would be similar in a close-up, for example. It was important to us not to give away the premise of the film, a “film in the boot”. Be it through flashbacks or parallel plots.

The real-time abduction story should feel real and so all the flashbacks that the main character can reconstruct using an action cam are actually physically filmed from the screen. No frame-filling, grading-shifted flashbacks, which we would have considered cheating.

In addition, we saw a great danger in being revealed as a studio shoot and thus losing the illusion of the abduction and the real journey. So we had to pay particular attention to the authenticity of the ride. So the studio box was really kept in motion throughout the set by vibrations, cornering, braking and accelerating in order to transfer the vibrations to the camera and the actress.

There are a few moments when we visually leave the boot, namely when it opens. It was important for us to shoot these shots in real life. This enabled us to increase the authenticity, i.e. whenever the boot opens, we were really shooting on location.

We also applied this principle to the visual effects. The effects had to emphasise the story in the best possible way and enable moments that we would otherwise not have been able to shoot in real life for safety reasons. For example, there is a crash that was edited using a mix of real footage and full CG shots to combine the two worlds and make them barely distinguishable.

The technical setup

• Cameras: Sony Venice 2 (main camera) with Rialto extension, Sony Venice 1 (B-Cam), Sony FX3 (C-Cam for particularly small rooms)
• Lenses: Cooke S7i, Angenieux EZ-2 FF, DZOFILM Vespid Primes
• Camera stage: Scorpio 10′ telescopic crane, Varizoom remote head, Fisher dolly, GFM mini-jib
• Lighting: Astera Titan Tubes, Astera Helios Tubes, Astera AX2, Creamsource Vortex 9, DMG Rosco DASH, Aputure LS 600X Pro incl. various spots and lenses, LiteMat, Astera Hydra Panel

Start of shooting

As the shoot took place in the studio in a confined space, but also during driving shots and in numerous stunts and special shots, it was important to put together a flexible technical setup. The basis for this was the Sony Venice 2, which, thanks to the Rialto extension, also made it possible to travel in confined spaces without the camera body and also to be used handheld in some cases. The Venice was often attached to the Scorpio telescopic crane, which was set up around the studio’s body, to enable the camera to change position quickly and at the same time realise complex tracking shots.

The telescopic crane allowed the camera to be positioned freely in the room, which drastically reduced conversion times and at the same time made it possible to move the camera in all axes. Whether semi-circular movements with subsequent ascent into a top shot, 360-degree rotations or other demanding camera movements: The Scorpio represented the right choice for us to have maximum flexibility on set in co-operation with the camera stage.

In addition to the Sony Venice, the Sony FX 30 was also used. Thanks to its extremely compact design, this camera could also be used at very tight angles to shoot special shots and quick inserts. The lighting setup was chosen so that a large bounce surface above the boot could be used to create a “base light”, our “no-light”.

A car boot is usually very dark and it was a huge challenge to offer a wide variation in light and at the same time authentically tell the story of all the light sources. To achieve this, the camera work in terms of light already begins in the script phase. We regularly checked the script for light sources during the writing phase and already provided important impulses here to credibly introduce light sources into the story and thus support the scenes dramaturgically without appearing forced.

Visual concept as a timeline

Our “bible” for the shoot is a complete timeline of the film. The scenes and page numbers serve as the basis. This includes special features such as the foreground emotion of the scene, the light source and light quality, camera features and notes on the driving behaviour of the car. In this way, we were always able to check the respective mood during filming and at the same time visually assess in pre-production whether we were offering enough variation, where we might need to establish new light sources or where we were in danger of repeating ourselves.

We used this tool for the first time and utilised it specifically for TRUNK. Because in this single-location thriller, we have no variations through changing motifs and gigantic outdoor sets; on the contrary: all variations had to be artificially created by us, everything takes place in one place and we only create variation through the things that we specifically create. There is little to no room for “lucky accidents”, which we were often able to experience in previous projects with changing outdoor motifs.

Camera tests and post-production hand-in-hand

We carried out our first camera tests as soon as we started preparing the set design. We placed the final car boot textures, the most common lighting moods and the most important light sources in the image and carried out numerous camera and lens tests together with a double.

We used the material to develop a LUT that accompanied us throughout the entire shoot. This enabled us to maintain a realistic image throughout the entire shoot and get very close to our final look. Later in the grading process, we only had to refine the look, but were able to work “with” and not “against” the material.

The visual effects

The VFX can be divided into different categories. On the one hand, there were some digital walls that we inserted. Some of our camera movements were so complex and changed so many axes that it was physically impossible to have all the walls in the frame at all times. The camera crane needed space to manoeuvre and so individual walls had to be inserted digitally to create the illusion of a completely enclosed space.

We proceeded as follows: Firstly, the car boot walls were already created from the set design. After filming, the entire boot was broken down into its individual parts and each wall was scanned individually as a 3D lidar scan with an iPhone. The apps used were “Polycam” and “Scaniverse”. The digital model was then used as a reference to remodel the boot walls according to this model. One difficulty here was the metallic surface texture of the boot, which meant that the scan could mainly be used as a reference.

High-resolution RAW photos of the original parts were used for the texturing. It was only during the editing process that it became clear which walls needed to be used. We hardly ever set tracking markers, as the boot itself already offers enough tracking points and a clear geometry. In addition, we occasionally moved the camera lens grid into the background to make life easier for the matchmovers.

The 3D walls were then shaded in Redshift and comped in Nuke. With the help of our live integration setup, we were able to integrate the walls seamlessly and also create indirect light without HDRis. There were also several elaborate sequences that we enhanced with effects.

First and foremost, there is a crash that is narrated from the underbody of the vehicle from below. For safety reasons, it was not possible for our main protagonist and her outstretched arm to stab the tyre of a vehicle at full speed with an iron bar and trigger a rollover. Understandable!

That’s why we used a mixture of real plates and full CG shots. The entire build-up of the scene is shot in real life, allowing the viewer’s eye to get used to the visual impression. The material was also an excellent reference for knowing what the CG shots should look like.

When the impact occurs and sparks fly, we opted for a full CG version. But due to the dark lighting, the sparks and the fast cuts, even we could hardly tell which of the shots were real and which were animated. The crash is immediately followed by an underwater scene. Here, too, we used a mixture of real and CG shots.

We actually sank our game vehicle in a diving pool and Sina Martens, our main actress, actually dived completely out of the boot through the interior of the vehicle from the front of the vehicle. We all admire her for this achievement and the film also benefits from the fact that we were able to shoot here without a stunt double.

The diving pool was about 3 metres deep, which means that their diving sequence was shot completely for real. We then used VFX to enhance the effect. We added more air bubbles and shifted the water level to make the dive look much deeper. A “long shot” under water was then created almost full CG, as our diving pool was really too small for this. Only a small plate of Sina was inserted, but the vehicle and the entire surroundings were then created digitally.

Mobile phone screens through screen replacements? Not at all!

When you think of screens, the most obvious thing is of course a screen replacement. Especially if you want to circumvent the rights of the apps used, or if the screen content doesn’t even exist yet.

With TRUNK, however, we have chosen a different approach. Due to the high number of mobile phone shots, this approach was too risky for us, as it has a really significant disadvantage: the actress cannot see what she is doing on the screen! This can lead to difficulties if she taps on the screen wildly and randomly, only to realise later in post-production that the app interface doesn’t match the position of her fingers at all.To get round this and in particular to achieve a level of accuracy that is also suitable for interactions with the screen in the macro range, we developed our own fake operating system.

Using “Protopie”, an app for developing apps, we built a complete interface with all the important functions that we had to use in the script. We created a list of 120 functions and assets, which we then pre-produced in detail.

In this way, Google Maps maps could only be half loaded, battery levels, reception bars and times could be set manually at any moment, keystrokes could be made to the exact letter, videos could be shown and so on. The app could even be controlled remotely, so we had our own mobile phone operator on set who was solely responsible for this activity.

This meant that calls could be made, screens switched off, photos sent, etc. at the command of the director. This ultimately meant that we were able to depict a much greater degree of authenticity and that our leading actress could actually interact with the mobile phone.

VFX timing

Despite the limited set-up, including all the retouching, minor fixes, retiming etc., we ended up with a VFX shot count of around 250, with 1,200 cuts in the film. That’s a considerable amount, at least when you consider the amount of time involved. As a reminder: the shoot was in April, there was a small reshoot in May, the picture lock was at the end of June and the final delivery of the film to Amazon was at the end of August, including all corrections and deliveries. This left only 7 weeks for the VFX. This was only possible because the full CG sequences could already be started parallel to the shoot and many things were already planned and prepared, so that after Picturelock we were able to finalise shot by shot in a very concentrated manner.

Our VFX pipeline is quite simple and streamlined. The main tools are as follows:

• Compositing: Nuke
• Motion graphics, screen content pre-production: After Effects
• 3D/SIM: Houdini
• Modelling: Maya and Blender
• Rendering: Redshift (via Deadline as render manager)
• Renderfarm: In-house The production was implemented in the ACES colour space and we had a consistent EXR workflow for the file transfers.

Colour grading

Our post-production facility was WeFadeToGrey in Cologne, who did an excellent job. We have often worked together on previous productions, so it was an obvious choice for us to use them for our own feature film. The lead colourist was Felix Hüsken, who is also known for grading productions such as How To Sell Drugs Online (Fast), Bad Banks, Sterben, Die Therapie, Blood Red Sky and many more. The additional colourist was Jonas Damm.

We worked in the ACES colour space and delivered an HDR grading at the end. The Sony Venice, the Sony Venice 2 and the Sony FX30 were perfectly matched and the VFX shots also integrate perfectly with each other, so we are extremely satisfied.

Delivery

We delivered both a classic DCP (for festivals and screenings) and an HDR master. The archival deliveries in particular were very extensive, but WeFadeToGrey did a good and structured job here, so fortunately we weren’t too involved in the details. In short, these were versions such as: HDR master, HDR textless, SDR master, SDR textless, HDR and SDR split track master, a 7.1 Dolby Atmos mix, 5.1 mix, nearfield, M&E tracks, DME, accessible version, etc.

Lessons learnt

When we think back to the production, we did a lot of things pretty much right. The short amount of time was both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, we were able to finance, shoot and release a feature film in a very short space of time. On the other hand, the entire project was so tightly planned that we couldn’t afford any missteps.

This full concentration spurred us on to top performance and in the end we delivered successfully. But we have to say: we won’t realise another project in this short space of time. The risk is too great, the stress enormous, there is hardly any room for experimentation. It has to work, right away. And we want this freedom back for our next project.

Conclusion

Trunk – Locked In was one of the biggest creative challenges we have faced so far. There are no “lucky accidents”: with full control, all the image content was deliberately and consciously conceived and created by us. Nothing happens “by chance”, as we often experience.

Nothing “displaces” itself, no production value or variety is created by changing motifs; all variation, all content, all ideas were specifically planned and realised by us. We can’t hide behind great motifs. What counts here is the pure acting, the creative camera work, the targeted use of VFX, an authentic set design and generally the many interfaces with the other departments.

So a huge thank you goes to the entire TRUNK team. Because we must not forget that film-making is teamwork and in the end every single person counts. We would especially like to highlight our VFX supervisor Yannik Heß with his VFX team Jonas Ahlrichs, Robin Odasso, Nick Pantring, Tobias Preuss, producer Melina Pelc, director, writer and editor Marc Schießer, cinematographer Daniel Ernst, colourist Felix Hüsken, but also the team at Amazon Studios, who believed in this crazy and bold idea from the very beginning and actively supported us in making this film possible.

We hope that we were able to make a good contribution to German genre film with our work and are now looking forward to our next projects. For us, we are continuing in the direction of genre feature films. We are always on the lookout for creative challenges and for people who want to join us and become part of the team.

Trunk: The project

Synopsis: 28-year-old medical student Malina wakes up disorientated in a locked car boot and is horrified to discover that she has more than just a memory. With her phone as her only connection to the outside world, the intelligent young woman wages a desperate battle for survival as the vehicle hurtles inexorably towards a terrible secret. Even if she makes it – she will never be the same again.

Amazon Original Feature Film Release: 26.01.2024 on Prime Video Shooting days: 23 days (15 days studio, 8 field shooting days incl. plates) Running time: 95 minutes Format: 2:1, 24 fps, HDR Production company: Outside the Club VFX: Outside the Club Director, writer: Marc Schießer Cinematographer: Tobias Lohf, Daniel Ernst Colourist: Felix Hüsken/WeFadeToGrey VFX Supervisor: Yannik Heß

The post VFX-Shoot in the trunk first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

In nuce: Open 3D Foundation has released version 22.10 of the Open 3D Engine (O3DE). One of the most important new features is the terrain system. Version 22.10 is described as a Quality of Life Improvement, and therefore primarily offers improvements in terms of performance, workflow and user-friendliness. O3DE is based on the Lumberyard engine, is the successor to it and was developed by Amazon Web Services. The engine is aimed at developers of complex gaming productions.

Terrain: Designing Modular Systems in O3DE

In toto: Below are some of the interesting new features of O3DE 22.10. In the video, Amazon’s Software Development Manager Mike Balfour, who previously worked at Electronic Arts and Bioware, explains how the new terrain system works.

• New, experimental terrain system (called Terrain Gem): According to colleague Jim Thacker of cgchannel, who took a closer look at the O3DE 22.10 release note, the new terrain system can handle up to “16km x 16km worlds and more – and at a high framerate”. The release note also states that O3DE is now also suitable for developing larger and open environments – instead of smaller and closed environments, as was previously the case.
• New components for celestial atmosphere and stars: For example, the new so-called Star Component ensures that realistic, resolution-independent, animated stars can be generated.
• According to Jim, who is again following the release notes,workflow improvements can be found in the following areas: Importing animations, root motion extraction and motion matching.

Click further: Digital Production last reported on O3DE on 24 May this year, when version 22.05 was released. Our overview article “Fantastic game engines and where to find them” from DP 05 : 2021 by Alexandra Kaschny provides orientation in the jungle of game engines.

Sources: cgchannel (report by Jim Thacker), o3de.org ( publication reference)

The post Version 22.10 of the Open 3D Engine has been released! first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.

In nuce: travelling expenses for the foreign shoot in Dubai, the IT specialist is working on the equipment, the coffee machine needs to be fed with new capsules – and then spending money on plug-in gadgets? Well, show business isn’t just about show, it’s about business (and that means costs). AWS Thinkbox (Amazon Web Services Thinkbox) has made its software solutions (including Deadline, Draft and Krakatoa) freely available – at no cost to users. The corresponding blog post states that Thinkbox’s tools make the work of VFX studios easier, naming well-known companies such as Framestore, Pixomondo and Scanline among the studios that use Thinkbox tools.

What will change for existing customers? Existing Deadline customers simply continue to use the software until the current licence expires. Users can then continue to use Deadline free of charge – without a licence. The latest versions of Krakatoa, Frost, XMesh and Stoke are also available for free download. Users can also download software licences for Sequoia free of charge – from the so-called floating licence portal.

What can the AWS Thinkbox tools do? An overview of what the software offering can do is provided below.

• Deadline: Allows users to manage render farms and optimise the resources of their computers
• Draft: This is used to perform simple post-render compositing tasks
• Krakatoa: a toolkit for volumetric particle rendering
• XMesh is used for caching meshes
• Frost: This allows users to generate meshes from particles – namely a single mesh
• Stoke: is a tool for particle simulation

Click further: All further information on the free software solutions from AWS Thinkbox in the corresponding blog post by Senior Product Manager Bharathi Muthukrishnan. Interested users can download the desired software from the corresponding AWS Thinkbox download page .

The post AWS Thinkbox makes VFX tools available for free! first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.

In nuce: The Open 3D Foundation releases Open 3D Engine version 22.05. The Open 3D Engine is based on the Lumberyard engine, developed by Amazon Web Services. Open 3D Engine is aimed at developers of complex gaming productions.

New functions of version 22.05: The most princely features in fast-forward below.

• User Defined Properties (UDP): This allows you to read metadata from source assets into the asset processor. Sounds painfully technical? It can also be more practical: UDP allows you to change your assets directly in DCC tools such as Blender or Maya. You can also save user-defined light properties, animation nodes or meshes via UDP. Meta data can also be read in that comes in the usual 3D file formats – for example: FBX or gITF.
• New motion matching system: This allows you to create new animations, even if you are working with faulty motion capturing files. The following tedious work steps should be eliminated: “Prepare motion sequences in an animation graph” or “Create transitions between different types of motion”
• New features for the Atom renderer: This allows you to add user-defined passes to the render pipeline. Also included: Debugging for Scene Lighting – with which you can overwrite certain scene properties. With the release of Open 3D Engine 22.05, Atom was defined as the default renderer in the Animation Editor viewport. This should make rendering as performant as in the in-game
• Cesium & PopcornFX plugins: These third-party plugins bring real-time particle effects and real-time geodata streaming to the Open 3D Engine

Click further: Our feature list is too superficial for you? In the official release note you can read in detail about the range of functions you can enjoy with Open 3D Engine version 22.05. Or click on the video below, which explains what the Open 3D Engine is all about in pictures, sound and colour.

click on (again): If you need a lesson in the Lumberyard engine, we refer you to our large-scale engine safari from DP 06 : 2018, which we put online for free on 9 June 2021 as part of our series of retro articles.

O3DE – What is O3DE?

The post Open 3D Engine 22.05 is released! first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.

When it comes to high-end grading, Baselight soon comes up. Reason enough to ask how it works with HDR material. And since the adverts for the Amazon series “Deutschland 86” are everywhere at the moment, Rotor Film is the perfect choice.

“Deutschland 86” is the second season of the series “Deuschland”, which tells the story of a GDR border soldier who is infiltrated into the Bundeswehr and thus experiences the last years of the GDR. The first season from 2015 was broadcast in the USA by Sundance TV, in England by Channel 4 and in Germany by RTL. Season two will be shown on Amazon Video in DACH.

Rotor was responsible for the picture and sound post-production of “Deutschland 86” and has also done a lot of work for UFA on the audio side. We spoke to Sebastian Göhs(bit.ly/sebastian_goehs) and Petra Lisson(www.petralisson.com).

DP: Can you describe the approximate process? And what material went into the grading suite?

Sebastian Göhs: We realised that the involvement of Amazon and the acquisition in 3.2K would result in quite a decent amount of deliverables – and that this would mean significantly more rendering time for us than for a normal project. Not to mention the VFX deliverables to be delivered.

In the end, we had 239.29 hours of raw material with 73.3 Tbytes over 100 shooting days – around 3 Tbytes of consolidated material per episode. The production team had decided early on to go for ProRes 4:4:4:4 for the acquisition and only use higher data rates for VFX shots.

It was also clear from the start that there would be two different language versions (with and without subtitles) as well as UHD and Full HD in HDR and SDR. It was therefore clear to me that we wouldn’t get very far with a conventional workflow if we wanted to meet the tight deadlines. Since a project like “Deutschland 86” has both budget constraints and hard deadlines, we streamlined the project as much as possible. This includes controlling the sample creation, the look preview on set and the usability of the dailies grade in the final phase.

Since we built our entire infrastructure around our Baselight systems with their dual 10GigE infrastructure, this workflow was very easy to implement using the various Filmlight products, even though a good part of the colour science and features we used were only released with Baselight v5.

We used Filmlight’s new HDR workflow including the new colour pipeline and the new HDR-capable print film simulations for the project directly in practice. Thanks to the very close contact with Filmlight, we were able to use the BLG workflow quite easily to pass on the Kodak film look decided in the look development to the post house in South Africa and the DIT responsible on set, Richard Muller. They were then able to work with the native grading tools in Baselight to quickly and precisely adapt the look to the conditions on set and the lighting situation.

However, it turned out that the vision of the showrunners and the DoPs changed over the course of the project to such an extent that we had to rework large sections in the final. But that’s the way it is with projects of this size. It’s all about getting the best out of the material. And the whole HDR thing was still pretty new territory for everyone involved in terms of acquisition and final colour correction. Another complicating factor was that we didn’t have as much influence on the Dailies software used on the set of the German shoot as we did in South Africa. We therefore had no usable grading metadata for the entire German shoot. This had to be compensated for in the preparation. “Deutschland 83” – the first season – had been graded oldschool without any colour management worth mentioning, which was completely out of the question this time given the sheer mass, the short time and the high editing frequency. There were also fewer episodes in “Deutschland 83”, and there was only one Full HD Rec. 709 delivery.

After various tests, I therefore decided that it was perfectly possible to grade the entire project in T-Log / E-Gamut colour space, working mainly with a target colour space of Rec. 709 at 100 nits. To check the highlights and the equipment on set and during dailies grading, you can switch the cursor colour space and the monitor to the respective HDR standard from time to time to check the effect, but until the final, everyone only sees the colour-managed Rec.709 image, which also went into the edit as DNxHD.

If Filmlight colour management hadn’t worked so incredibly well, we would have pretty much shot ourselves in the foot in the final. But with a little preparation time, we were able to finish grading the episodes in Rec. 709 in a very short time, add and adjust the VFX shots and then get the maximum out of the material shot in Arri LogC with a second grading pass in HDR and thus deliver absolute premium products for all UHD/HDR, UHD/SDR and HD/SDR deliveries, without having to make any compromises in terms of performance or the scope of keys and masks. The new base grade tool in particular has become my new tool of choice, where I was previously an absolute film grade fanboy. I have never been able to work so quickly and precisely as with this tool. I also think it has saved us a lot of grief and work in retrospect – and I have learnt to appreciate our Gen 6 Baselight 2 even more than I already did.

DP: Can you describe your workflow and division of labour?

Sebastian Göhs: The conforming of the finished episodes and the automatic transfer of the dailies grades from the existing timelines from South Africa was the responsibility of my dear colleague Petra. She also abstracted my other looks, which were then defined for the Germany parts in a further session with Matthias Fleischer and Kristian Leschner, with really impressive speed and transferred them to the long stretches without references, giving me an absolutely great starting point for the grading sessions with Matthias and Kristian.

Petra Lisson: We had received a very tidy project from the editing room that could be conformed without any problems for the most part. Smaller effects such as a few very sophisticated split screens were easy to realise in Baselight. Initially I only had problems with a few settings that showed perspective corrections, but these were not apparent from the editing room lists and could not be found in the Avid project. As it turned out later, these were corrections that had already been burnt into the samples in South Africa but were not documented.

DP: And what tools did you use apart from Baselight?

Sebastian Göhs: There were of course various tools that interacted with each other in the workflow. Starting with the absolute standard in editing, the Media Composer, Filmlight Prelight, Daylight and Baselight were used, whereby we initially worked with a patched 4.4m1, which was given the necessary colour management features by Filmlight in the pre-release stage, and then on the official release v5 in the final.

The large number of new tools in v5 were also extensively tested and used by Matthias Fleischer to adjust perspective, sharpness and contrast ratios in the material. Of course, this also includes the obligatory retouching, for which you no longer have to use a VFXer in Baselight. I do things like this during grading if it can be done quickly. Saves time and nerves for everyone involved.

DP: And what did the grading suite look like for a project like this?

Sebastian Göhs: We finished the project on a Sony X300 – and of course did various tests with consumer hardware in a parallel setup beforehand, but then decided that the quality of the X300 was more likely to indicate problems than the poorer picture of a consumer TV. We only checked the entire project with the Baselight’s internal scopes.

DP: Did you have to upgrade your hardware?

Sebastian Göhs: Apart from the X300 and the obligatory v5 upgrade for our Baselights, no upgrades were necessary. As we had planned the storage and network infrastructure (Baselights, network and storage) for 4K real-time finishing at the time, we were well positioned for the job. We were able to work directly from our large NAS storage in real time on the original LogC QuickTimes from the camera in full resolution.

DP: What subtleties did you underestimate in the preparation?

Sebastian Göhs: The fact that we couldn’t control the on-set solution of the German shoot as much as we would have liked meant that we weren’t provided with any usable metadata. As a result, a large part of the material ended up in the timeline without dailies grading, which we then had to adapt to the rest of the state by first determining the look with the DoPs and then using classic colourist work. Petra really excelled at this. Monochromatic artificial light sources are still a problem with footage, as they address the Alexa’s sensor in a way that generates values in the LogC, which are sometimes mapped into very extreme colours by the colour management. This must then be fixed with keys, masks or the new gamut compression tool.

DP: And which subtleties did you expect to be more difficult than they were during preparation?

Sebastian Göhs: Surprisingly, overexposures were rarely a problem, as they end up in the highlight compression in SDR and are so bright in HDR that you no longer notice them. If a lamp should be visible somewhere, it was quickly dealt with using a blur mask.

DP: How did you have to change your viewing habits for the new look?

Sebastian Göhs: Oddly enough, hardly at all. Thanks to Filmlight’s colour management, the look defined in SDR is reproduced extremely well in HDR, despite the much higher contrast. Curiously, HDR even looks better and richer with the look than SDR. After 5 minutes of watching HDR and switching back to SDR, we always had the effect of “What a pity”. HDR is definitely the future, I have no doubt about that.

DP: How do you explain the difference between SDR and HDR to someone if you don’t have a setup to show them directly?

Sebastian Göhs: Without being able to show HDR, it quickly degenerates into techno-babble and reading out numbers. Let me put it this way: in HDR, I have ten times the dynamic range and a much larger colour palette available at 1,000 nits to display the same image. This doesn’t mean that everything has to be much brighter and more contrasty, but rather that very brilliant highlights can now be much brighter than diffuse ones.

The same image can contain very rich and bright colours alongside very matt and barely saturated colours, and these differences are much clearer than in SDR. The whole picture appears more vivid and deeper, as if our brain were interpolating depth information from the higher resolution, colour and brightness, which does not actually exist in a 2D picture. It’s a much more realistic viewing experience and takes the image out of the abstract level that an SDR image on TV has. It’s just a picture on television. On a good HDR monitor, especially with HDR and HFR, you get the impression that you are looking through a pane of glass and the images come to life. This effect is a much clearer technological leap than from HD to UHD / DCI 4K, but of course it is much easier to demonstrate with a suitable setup. We show 5 minutes of graded material in UHD and SDR, sunny outdoor shots with blue skies and rich colours, water with brilliant highlights, cars with reflective surfaces, rather mottled images with low colour dynamics, dark night images with brightly sparkling city panoramas, explosions and then the same sequence in HDR. After the viewer has calmed down and sat down again after his dance of joy, we show the sequence again in SDR and say calmly in response to the “Ohhhhh … that doesn’t look … not so nice now” calmly and understandingly say: “And that’s the difference between SDR and HDR.”

DP: Let’s look at the delivery – how did you play out the master and how many variants did you make?

Petra Lisson: We mastered “Deutschland 86” completely in Baselight due to the HDR deliveries. Amazon had ordered HDR10, so we created a max. 1,000 nits HDR master with the PQ curve (SMPTE ST 2084) and a Rec. 2020 colour space container. Unfortunately, Baselight is not yet able to analyse the static metadata MaxFall and MaxCLL, which is why we had to use an external application for this.

We ended up with around eight BaselightScenes / timelines per episode, i.e. a total of 80 timelines. And these 10 episodes in UHD-SDR/UHD-HDR10, each in English/German/clean, plus recaps and textless reels, which had to be maintained and updated at the same time, especially during QC (quality control).

DP: If you were to make “Deutschland 87” – i.e. a third season – what would you do differently?

Sebastian Göhs: I would vehemently insist that the metadata-supported workflow be adhered to everywhere. Furthermore, it would be a very high priority to use Filmlight systems on set for pre-visualisation and dailies creation. If that’s not possible, I would at least make sure that we can work with the grading data from the dailies system. A lone ranger or “we’ve always done it this way, so I’m going to do it this way” mentality has only ever led to problems for everyone else at the back of the chain for as long as I can remember. I would also like to bring editing, VFX, grading and on-set even closer together. Keywords here could be BLG, remote grading and remote editing. On the audio side in particular, there is still a lot of room for development in terms of several departments working in parallel and synchronising their work.

At the time, I had developed a basic concept that was supposed to address these problems, based on available technologies and systems. However, it’s like all great plans and concepts: when they meet reality, they collapse – except for the grading part, which went great! (laughs)

However, the answer to these problems cannot lie in installing a Media Composer on a virtual machine in the data centre, streaming the GUI via remote desktop and believing that this will change the world. That’s a start, but in itself it’s just the old concept, which has only been put into the cloud by a trick. I’m talking about a real integration of the different departments of editing, sound design, VFX, mixing and grading in a framework that is database-based and provides every creative with the tools and view of the project that they need, thus virtualising administration and project management. It makes no sense to want to do everything with the same application. In my opinion, this only leads to lazy compromises and, on the software side, to an absolute development nightmare. So far, there is nothing that actually goes radically enough in this direction – but the topic is also anything but trivial. Adobe may have started the whole thing with its CC Suite, but the whole thing isn’t really well rounded either – apart from the fact that the internal tools from Premiere or AE don’t come close to the expertise, quality and performance of Filmlight, especially when it comes to colour correction.

DP: With the experience of what it can look like: What would your perfect home cinema for HDR movies look like?

Sebastian Göhs: I would go for a Sony X300 if it was available in a large size. Plus a nice Dolby surround setup in a black room with optimal acoustics.

Petra Lisson: Watching the final-graded episodes on the Sony X300 was very impressive. I really suffered at times, because I had the feeling that nobody apart from Sebastian and me would be able to watch all the episodes in this quality. The consumer HDR devices have not yet been able to keep up, especially when it comes to black levels.

However, I’ve heard that the new Sony HX310 is supposed to be even better than the X300, so I remain optimistic that things are progressing on the consumer side.

The post Germany in Baselight first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

The 3D engine Lumberyard from Amazon is now open source. The open source runs under an Apache 2.0 licence. According to the developer, Lumberyard is geared towards the development of AAA games and the creation of 3D worlds in cinema quality.

In DP 06 : 2018 , our author Alexandra Kaschny commented on Lumberyard as part of our engine safari : “It will probably be in beta for all eternity, but with Amazon it has a big name behind it – maybe it will make it to the actual release at some point. The engine is based on the well-known Cryengine, but has been further developed and modified during the course of development. The main trump card here is the excellent interaction with Amazon’s other services and Twitch functions. The source code can also be used by end users, at least to a limited extent. It may be customised for the game, but not released publicly. It is also not allowed to write your own engine. True to the motto: Look, but don’t touch!” (as of 27 July 2018)

Further information: However, as Lumberyard has evolved since 2018, we recommend that today’s and tomorrow’s game developers try out Lumberyard under their own guidance. You can find the Amazon own-brand game engine here.

The post Lumberyard | Release first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.

The Expanse

In the latest VFX breakdown from Spine VFX for the sci-fi series The Expanse, based on the book series of the same name by Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, things are visually banging – with intergalactic explosive force. The Amazon Prime series takes you into a speculative 24th century in which a dysfunctional group of people must avert a threat that threatens the entire solar system.

No material for a relaxed Sunday afternoon stroll on the beach.

The Expanse S1-5 VFX Breakdown Reel

The post The Expanse | VFX-Breakdown first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.

In the latest VFX Breakdown by the Rodeo FX Company, robots stomp through the scenery, buildings are dismantled and prosthetic arms are attached. The FX studio created over 700 shots for the futuristic anthology series. The art direction of the series was inspired by the paintings of Swedish artist Simon Stålenhag.

The post Tales From The Loop: VFX-Breakdown von Rodeo FX first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.