THE 3RD DIMENSION Stereoscopic production & exhibition
Sponsored by
www.3d-day.tv
Middle Earth Takes on New Dimensions Offline Editing for The Hobbit By Phil Sandberg
SIR PETER JACKSON has returned to Middle Earth with shooting commencing on The Hobbit earlier this year. A two-part project, the first film is due out around December 2012 with part two out around a year later. There will be both 2D and 3D versions of the films. Dan Best is First Assistant Editor on the Hobbit 1 and 2, and was previously First Assistant Editor on the Adventures of Tintin and District 9. Goblin’ up that data. Dan Best, First Assistant Editor on the Hobbit.
Involved in the off-line editing of The Hobbit, Best has a one-eyed view of 3D – literally.
means that when we are handing shots to the VFX vendor we can provide them with all the information directly from the Avid.
The films are being shot with the RED Epic, which is the new RED camera, shooting with 3ality 3D rigs, and so they’re shooting two eyes.
C+T: Now, there’s quite an extensive network you’re using which allows you to work from various sites.
The footage is being recorded, processed by Park Road Post, and delivered to us. At the moment we’re choosing only to take one eye of the footage, so we have one eye, which is the right eye, which is the eye that’s going through the mirror rather than bouncing off the mirror in the 3D rig, and doing our initial cut in 2D, and then what we’re anticipating doing is having the ability to go 3D at some point by having both eyes.
DB: Why we chose the Avid is the ISIS solution essentially allows us to have a central storage and be within about 120kms of the storage just as long as we have singlemode fibre between the ISIS and there.
C+T: Are they using are mirror rigs exclusively? DB: They’re not exclusively mirror rigs. I believe they have some side-byside as well, but predominantly they’re using mirror rigs. C+T: There must be a lot of metadata involved, so what sort of information are you using and how are you managing it?
THE 3RD DIMENSION
DB: One of the key things that we’re having to keep is, of course, the other eye metadata, and the eye that we have so that we can conform to the other eye easily.
18
We want to be able to conform on the Avid, so we’re essentially tracking the time code and the tape name of the other eye in our metadata so that we can produce an EDL for the other eye and re-conform. It helps with any discrepancies and if there’s any discrepancies between time code between the two cameras or anything like that, then we’ve got a robust system to re-conform to the other eye, which enables us to do a stereo conform on the Avid. We’re carrying a lot of information for visual effects in the way of camera names, which way the cameras are oriented on the rig, seeing if they’re bouncing off a mirror where the image is flopped, essentially, etc. So we’re carrying as much of that information as we can get in through the pipeline is coming and being carried in the metadata on the files, and that
So, there’s a fairly substantial fibre network around the group, around the sets, and so we can have access to the ISIS from essentially wherever there’s fibre. The other main reason for getting the ISIS was file count because it’s a digital shoot and we’re shooting with digital files instead of a traditional film shoot where you’d have a 20-minute lab roll, which is just one file, and then you separate it out in the edit. For this one, every single take is a file and then every single eye of that take is a file and then every single audio track for that take is a separate file as well. Very quickly, especially doing two movies at once, it just becomes too much file storage for some of the older products, so that’s why we went for the ISIS. We can plug into the ISIS wherever there’s fibre and we’re utilising that as much as we can. Park Road Post, who are delivering us rushes, basically dump them straight onto the ISIS for us, and they’re 2km down the road. And, then we have the ability to connect directly on set. C+T: So, could you talk me through your workflow? DB: We prep all the rushes. We’re doing the audio sync ourselves. It’s a traditional thing here in New Zealand is to do the sync with editorial, so we’re doing that and then we’re providing it to the cutting room, essentially, to the editor to cut. C+T: And, how are you receiving the audio files? DB: The sound recordist is giving us a whole bunch of WAVs, one for every take. We bring them in and convert them to MXF on the Avid and bring in all