The Post Group and iO Film: Tapeless from Dailies to DI, Door to Door
When The Post Group and iO Film came together under the Cooper Brothers’ Post Start 2 Finish family of companies last year, the opportunities to streamline processes were significant. By standardizing on a Digital Vision workflow across both facilities they took the efficiency of tapeless finishing-from SD television to studio features-to a whole new level.

iO Film, pioneers in digital filmmaking services, had three of Digital Vision’s Film Master digital grading/finishing systems and two of the company’s Film Cutter systems in house.  As one of the system’s earliest adopters back in 2004, their experience handling DI for films including the Oscar-winning Crash, box office hit Resident Evil: Extinction, Stephen King thriller, The Mist and many others had proven that the Film Master had the creative features and performance required for high-end digital finishing.

Looking half a block away at The Post Group’s finishing services, the companies realized that they could offer clients efficiency and cost savings by using a Film Master system to grade from 2k data when delivering HD or SD masters —and then remaster at 2k without having to re-transfer the film if the project demanded it . 

In October, The Post Group opened its first Film Master DI suite, implementing the system on the SAN it shares with iO Film and opened up the new tapeless pipeline between the facilities.

Post Group CEO Stephen Buchsbaum said, “Film Master gives us the opportunity to offer clients full digital grading for HD TV and theatrical mastering, and for home video/DVD.  With Film Master at both The Post Group and iO Film we’re able to integrate our services. We can grade for previews and HD/SD, and if a client comes back for a DI, those corrections can be tracked from SD right up to 2K, so the look is maintained without any need to re-transfer the film. It’s incredibly efficient.” 

The implementation also gives the companies added flexibility to have colorists from either facility work on projects at either location.

From Promise to Proof on a PSA Campaign
The two companies put their unified grading process to work on a series of public service announcements for the 2007 “Thanks and Giving” campaign – an annual fundraising event for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.  By utilizing the same digital grade on versions mastered for both HD broadcast and 2k theatrical, The Post Group was able to eliminate the need for a second grading session, saving the client’s time and budget.

“When we did the PSAs last year we took the DI output and did a separate grading session for the HD master,” said Paul Westerbeck, The Post Group’s Director of Telecine and the colorist on the PSAs. “This year we had Film Master at both The Post Group and iO Film, so we could do the grade once and just move the project from the video color correction suite to the DI theatre.”

The spots (a 30-second version and two 60-second versions) were shot on film, scanned at 2k and conformed in the Film Master by iO Film, who then made the project and media, along with the look-up table (LUT) for their grading theatre, available on the shared SAN. Westerbeck accessed the project at The Post Group and performed the grade through iO's Film's LOG to Linear 3D LUT for the HD master for director approval. When the project was loaded at iO Film they removed the LUT, which put the color grade in LOG color space for the film out. iO Film colorist Adam Hawkey screened the spots back in the 2k grading theatre for final tweaking and approval.  

“Both Richard Davies, our client, and producer Tony Thomas were really pleased with the quality of the work and the ease of the process,” said Post Group Executive Vice President, Mike Levy. “We envision doing a lot more of this to eliminate re-work in the grading process for projects that start in 2k and are down-rezzed for video or vice-versa.”

Digital Vision president and COO, Simon Cuff, said, “Digital grading has crossed from a DI-only capability into the HD/SD realm for both TV and film mastering work. With the file-based workflows that Film Master enables, The Post Group and iO Film can now take a customer’s project from dailies to DI, preserving color corrections across the pipeline to eliminate unproductive cycles while providing broader access to high-end creative tools at any point in the process.”

Digital Vision is a premier supplier of picture enhancement systems for film and television post-production. www.digitalvision.se.

Digital Vision’s Film Master enables a unified grading workflow across The Post Group and iO Film. 
Shown to the right is the Film Master color grading suite at iO Fil

Contacts:
Julie Miller, Bubble & Squeak PR
310.379.2163 (office) 310.259.5834 (mobile)  Julia@bubblesqueak.com

Alexa Chollet, Marketing Communication Manager, Digital Vision
151 Wardour Street, London, W1F 8WE, UK
Tel +44 (0) 20 7734 8282  |  Fax +44 (0) 20 7292 6969 Alexa.chollet@digitalvision.se

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