Master control for Studio A.

by Erik Arneson

SPEED, Fox Cable’s motor sports and automotive cable television network, decided to make the transition to HD last year. “We knew our viewers’ appetite for HD programming was rabid,” said Rick Miner, SPEED SVP of Production & Network Operations. “A lot of our guys are early adopters of new technology — these are cutting edge technology guys.”

So the first thing the SPEED team, led by Miner, SPEED VP of Finance Francois McGillicuddy, FOX Network Engineering & Operations and an outside architect, did was determine what the new facility needed to be able to do – How would SPEED operate? How many studios? How many edit rooms? How would workflow be structured?

SPEED, now in 78 million homes in North America, decided up front that it was not going to invest a single dime in linear, tape-driven architecture. The result was the innovative re-purposing of a 78,000-squarefoot facility, with more than 56,000 square feet operational in six months. The Charlotte, N.C.-based facility, which opened for business on Dec. 15, 2008, includes two major studios (3,600 square feet and 2,400 square feet) along with a smaller flash studio.

SPEED Studio B is 2,400 square feet and home to the weekly motor sports news program The SPEED Report.

In that same six-month window, Miner and the FOX team explored workflow systems. “We evaluated what systems were out there, asking, ‘Are there any that are turnkey to accomplish this or would we ultimately have to design one ourselves?’ The decision was that there was no single system that would provide what we wanted. So we went with open architecture, where we could interface various proprietary software packages to make all the different pieces work together.”

“Our parent company, News Corporation, was inclined to allow us to do things the right way and the folks at FOX NEO have an invaluable scope of knowledge,” Miner added. “We were able to take our very specific workflow needs and their general knowledge and meld the two and through talking to each other, figure out the best approach. As with any business, we had to answer, ‘What are the costs involved? What are the ongoing costs? How long will the technology survive?’ They looked at this project very much as a lab to study how they would build production facilities moving forward.”

It was decided that SPEED would be a Final Cut Pro facility. For the studio equipment decisions — the cameras, switchers, audio boards — anything that would pass an HD signal to the standards we wanted was considered,” said Miner.

Ingest - Quality control and point of entry and encoding for all video to SPEED servers regardless of the source.

The last remaining decisions included the engineering architecture and how SPEED would store, move and edit video throughout the plant. “We believe we have a ‘best of breed’ system, where we integrate multiple manufacturers’ equipment to achieve the flexibility, reliability and level of performance we want,” Miner said. “That includes a Dalet Digital Media Systems’ Enterprise Edition, which is the overlaying control software through our IBM LTOs for near-line storage of digital content that is fully accessible and restorable in an automated fashion. Along the way the system includes a wide array of additional components, be it Omneon servers for playout and encoding of video, Front Porch DIVArchive software for the management of the digital archive, and DataDirect Networks SAN storage and a Quantum StoreNext SAN file system.” All have been designed to integrate together to accomplish the work.

“There is good and bad in this obviously,” Miner added. “The good is you have the best of breed. The bad is when anybody does software upgrades. They have to be vetted across every platform with which they will interact.” It looks good so far, but time will tell if this “open architecture” model does the job for SPEED.

A revival of the Techniscope format is gaining traction in the realm of independent filmmaking. Techniscope traces it’s roots to the mid-1960s when Sergio Leone directed A Fistful of Dollars, Once Upon a Time in the West, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly and other “Spaghetti Westerns” on two-perf 35 mm film. The format was developed by Technicolor in Italy. It enabled Leone and other directors who were working with sparse budgets to slash negative and front-end lab costs by 50 percent. The edited negative was optically copied onto four-perforation color intermediate film that was used to generate release prints for distribution to cinemas.

Henner Hofmann, ASC, AMC sparked the revival when he collaborated with director Andrew Goth on the production of Gallowwalker. The independent film features Wesley Snipes in the role of a gunman in the Old West. It was produced in Namibia, Africa, where the landscapes and pristine environment provided ideal settings. “Andrew wanted to emulate the aesthetics of Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Westerns,” Hofmann says, “so I suggested shooting in Techniscope format.”

Panavision modified a couple of 35 mm G2 cameras with two-perforation movements. Hofmann and Goth composed images in 2.4:1 aspect ratio. Panavision Vice President Phil Radin reports that eight other filmmakers had followed the trail blazed by Goth and Hofmann by mid-2009. The common denominators are that Techniscope was an affordable option for producing very low budget movies in wide screen 35 mm format with post production done at HDCAM SR 4:4:4 resolution.

Curve of Earth written by director Lee Madsen is another. Madsen explains that the title is a metaphor for how people who live in parallel worlds flow into each other’s lives.

“During our first meeting, Lee described his vision for producing Curve of Earth in anamorphic format,” cinematographer Ben Kufrin recalls. “Curve of Earth is a drama that takes place in the main character’s home and other interior settings. Lee envisioned things happening in backgrounds and foregrounds with characters on the edges of frames.”

There was a very modest budget, and an ambitious 24-day production schedule. Jim Roudebush, at Panavision, suggested shooting in Techniscope format using G2 cameras with spherical lenses. After Madsen and Kufrin shot a test, they decided to follow that route. Kufrin had KODAK VISION2 5218, a 500T emulsion on his palette for interior and night sequences, and KODAK VISION2 5205, a 250-speed negative for daylight exteriors. “We generally used one camera, usually with Primo lenses and naturalistic lighting,” he says. “Staging was designed for fluid movement rather than cut-aways to shots at different angles. The latitude and resolution film offers was a big advantage.”

Post production was done at Deluxe Digital Media. The processed negative was scanned with a Spirit DataCine and transferred to a HDCAM SR 4:4:4 digital master file. Kufrin provided colorist Sean Lawrence with digital stills that he used as a reference for timing dailies. Some flashback sequences were shot in Super 8 format with cameras, film and processing provided by Pro8MM and Spectra Film & Video in Burbank. The processed negative was transferred to an HDCAM SR 4:4:4 at Modern VideoFilm in Burbank.

At a Techniscope seminar at the 2009 Cine Gear Expo, cinematographer Jim Chressanthis discussed a test he designed and shot to determine if Techniscope was a viable option for producing television dramas which will air in HD format. “We set up a scene with things happening in bright sunlight and dark shadows that called for the full dynamic range that film offers,” Chressanthis said. “We shot it with both two- and threeperf 35 mm film. I knew that two-perf is a viable option, but didn’t realize how close the look would come to three-perf film. The differences are practically transparent on an HD screen. Two-perf is a viable option on a tight budget.”