LOS ANGELES (Top40 Charts/ Media Distributors) - Media Distributors, a leading provider of services, systems, and products for professional audio and video production today announced that its Rental Station division has provided the technical production services and facilities for the post production of the recently released epic
Smashing Pumpkins two-disc live DVD documentary and concert film, 'If All Goes Wrong.'
Distributed by Coming Home Studios and Blue Rider Pictures on November 11, 2008, the project was produced by veteran concert director Jack Gulick, Coming Home Media's James Salkind, who acted as post supervisor, and the technical production services and facilities of The Rental Station @ Media Distributors, with Media Distributors' Nathan Adams acting as lead technical consultant. Joe Faissal performed color correction at the Rental Station, and both Justin Coloma and Chris Lovett handled editing duties there as well.
The production, shot in July, 2007, is perhaps the most ambitious use of HD for an Apple Final Cut Pro production, and was completed using every component of Final Cut Studio, enabling the crew to save tremendous costs for shoots that included almost 24/7 access to Corgan and his band, which had been reconstituted (with bassist Ginger Reyes and guitarist Jeff Schroeder) for the reunion. The final package - a two-hour concert (culled from five nights of shoots at San Francisco's Fillmore) and a 90-minute feature documentary - incorporates multiple cameras, color stocks, picture-in-picture, and creative titles (including historic stereoscopic images of Asheville, North Carolina that are flown during a montage of the city, underneath Corgan's voice-over).
The project pulled elements from 12 terabytes of media, which included a two-hour concert; 90- minute documentary; an eleven-minute Pete Townshend interview, and an eleven-minute series of fan interviews ('Voices of the Ghost Children'), as well as a bonus rehearsal session.
'We couldn't have afforded this production without the tool-set that we had. Each Final Cut Pro, each Motion station; we were afforded the ability to have an inexpensive FTP site. All of these features, separately, wouldn't have worked for us,' said Gulick. 'Media Distributors was a key component to this project. We had affordable (Panasonic Varicam) cameras that would import cleanly a multi-format handling. We were able to manage affordable editing systems with a huge array of graphics tools. And we could go to Media Distributors and color-correct in Apple Final Cut Pro Studio's Color application. We spread out our budget judiciously across the entire span of the project, and the results - I think - speak for themselves.'
The documentary and the concert were shot in a wide variety of formats - from SD to HD, 23.98, 29.97, and PAL. Apple Compressor was used to convert most of the footage to DVCProHD, at 720p/23.98. A combination of XServe RAIDs Promise V-Trak RAIDs, and Apple's XSan were used, and the project was cut in Final Cut Pro 6, using RT Extreme to perform the complicated, multi-layer effects in real-time. Viewing out to various monitors was enabled using AJA KONA 3 and AJA IO-HD products.
The two-disc set is unique not only for its efficient distillation of 21 concert dates and more than 600 hundred hours of documentary and concert footage, but for a new type of 'collective' approach to the massive documentary and live-concert essay on the band's return. A tight-knit crew performed multiple tasks, from camera operation to post to sound to graphics design (keyboardist/singer Linda Strawberry provided some of the graphics).
Gulick, who had worked with Salkind on concert projects including the Steve Miller Band and the Dave Mathews Band's 2003 Central Park show, quickly formed a team that would take his famously meticulous planning to a new level, spurred by even greater technical efficiency. The concert and documentary would successfully meld his vision, inspired by Andy Warhol's 'Chelsea Girls,' of capturing multiple events through split-screen, hand-held cameras, and text-on-screen titling to capture a communal 'event' that far transcended the 'rock concert' ethic.
One of the most respected Apple Certified Final Cut Pro trainers in the U.S., Salkind was able to leverage his vast knowledge and contacts within the Apple community to deliver new tricks for the production. One of those connections was Media Distributors' Nathan Adams, who acted as technical supervisor on the project, coordinating color correction and final delivery of the project's HDcamSR masters.
'We have had strong response from the Hollywood community to our Rental Station division, which provides Apple Final Cut Pro and Mac Pro products and services, but the Smashing Pumpkins project fully leveraged our editing suites and our team's resources fully,' said Steve Klein, CEO of Media Distributors. 'We helped achieve a vision for Coming Home Studios that - even well after its completion - is astonishing for its depth, quality, and the cost at which it was finalized.'
The production was able to leverage the Open Timeline feature in Final Cut Pro 6, and Salkind consulted with Adams on how best to deliver a massive multi-format project through the application.
'We trusted what we had heard from Apple about this feature at NAB 2007; we knew that it was feasible to essentially run all of our multiple media types through this,' said Salkind. 'So, if you're editing, you can put 1080i HD and mini DV and something shot on someone's still camera and you know that you can throw it all into the timeline, a pure editing decision, decide on what's going to stay, and what is the essence of the moment. Nathan's suggestion to use Compressor to convert the formats was great advice. This process saved us countless hours in production, and the result looked perfect. We would still be sitting here rendering if it wasn't for that feature.
'James, as a post supervisor, was on set from day one, and that's how we needed to make this project happen. Post starts in pre-production for me, and we discussed our choices for Media Distributors before we had anything in the can,' said Gulick. 'We went through sixty days of documentary shooting and concert shooting with a fully integrated workflow plan.'
'We knew that we could go and take our QuickTime files or our sequence from Final Cut Pro and bring it to Media Distributors and have (color correction artist) Joe Faissal work on it. We created a new model for how people can work very efficiently and cost-effectively in their post facilities or apartments. You will know that there's somebody at the end of the line who you can bring your project up on the RAID, the proper calibrated monitor with scopes and you know that they're working cost-effectively,' said Salkind.
Continued Salkind, 'The highest level of color correction was brought to a whole level of production where the decision is basically 'well, I could spend a thousand dollars an hour in DaVinci, and that's a huge gulf -what we have now is something that fills that middle ground.'
Adams and Salkind worked closely to ensure that the project achieved the visual style that Gulick wanted without destroying the budget.
'James and I talk about new technology all the time. I remember when we talked originally about this project, Jack's vision was to shoot in various formats, and I tried to talk him out of it. I tried to figure out a way to keep the frame rate universal,' said Adams. "Bringing the color correction in was a breeze. We opened their project, blew it up to 1080/23.98 at 10-bit. Jumped it to Color, did the color grading in a very short period of time, back to Final Cut Pro and off to tape. It was an extremely complicated edit that Final Cut handled like a champ.'
The combination of Media Distributors and the Apple community enabled Salkind to get the right answers to the most complex questions in a timely manner.
'If Jack asked me a question, the people behind me would ask something else, and I would say instantly, 'let's go talk to Nathan.'' Nathan would get back to us within 24 hours, and sometimes these questions went to the FCP-Apple community -- there's this bigger group that helps each other. That's kind of amazing.'
Continued Salkind, 'For us, this was all about the convergence and the coincidence of the Media Distributors business model and feeling confident that it's all there. We had to take advantage of it. Most other shows we do -- usually, we work on bigger documentaries -- all come together through color correction, and that's where you really need to know what you're doing. It is a technically and artistically demanding feat, and there aren't many Joe Faissals who can pull that off. He worked pretty quickly; I mean, he was color-correcting a four-hour piece.'
Faissal, of igloo Editorial, completed what became a massive color correction job at Media Distributors in three and-a-half weeks, including a week-long break between his work on the documentary and the concert disc.
'We worked with the XSAN storage solution, which save us a lot of time. We used multiple rooms, and I had complete trust. It's very rare that I can work with a technical staff that I can completely trust,' said Faissal. 'I had 24-hour access and remote access to the system that I was working on. I could kick off renders in the middle of the night. The overall service was amazing.'
'If All Goes Wrong' Technical Specs:
- Compressor was used to convert the footage to a universal frame size and frame rate
- Live Type was used to create lower thirds and end credits, as well as the opening credit sequence
- Final Cut Pro was used to edit the entire project in HD
- Soundtrack Pro was used to do audio cut downs for the documentary, essentially the first step in prepping for an edit
- Color was used for all of the color grading for completion
- Motion was used for creating motion graphics in the DVD menus
- DVD Studio Pro was used for previz of the DVD
