The amazing "Lopez Tonight" set and Sweetwater facility

by John Ankwicz - Executive Vice President Telepictures Productions

Our challenge was to build a facility that was at least the equal of the other long established late night talk shows, while balancing economic realities. We had to design a streamlined workflow that could handle the demands of a nightly day and date show. It was paramount in our minds not to over build or over design. This is the 3rd HD def facility that we have built. We took what we learned building the TMZ and the Ellen facilities and designed an efficient and reliable HD facility to support our unique production needs.

A bonus for us has been our ability to work with Chuck Dages – EVP of Warner Brothers Emerging Technology. Chuck and his team are on the leading edge of all current technologies and industry trends. Their expertise and resources were extremely valuable in helping us make the best equipment and workflow choices.

Lopez Tonight is produced nightly from Stage 29 at Warner Brothers. This is a four wall stage that heretofore had been used exclusively for film production. We had less than two months to build it out for a nightly multi- camera HD production. We built a spacious production compound in trailers adjacent to the stage, rather than working in the tight confines of a mobile unit. Our postproduction facility was built next to the control room. Initially done for ease of connectivity, this proximity proved to be very efficient for the producers to make last minute changes in the edit bays right up to show time. We deliver the show nightly from our post production facility to exacting technical standards of our partners at TBS in Atlanta. Media Extreme provides the redundant connectivity.

At every critical juncture we used trusted vendors from our prior production experiences. Joe Shackelford of Sweetwater Video and Chris Genereaux of Avid are our valued partners. Their team’s dedication and expertise were invaluable under the pressure of an extremely tight construction schedule. We were shooting test shows and editing field pieces six weeks after construction began.

Key members of our Telepictures team include:

Chris J Circosta Telepictures VP of Production

DJ Birnbaum Telepictures Director of Production

Jason Schroeder Telepictures Engineer

Pat Brennan – Telepictures Engineer

Gustavo Covarrubias – Telepictures Engineer

Telepictures Productions is an industry-leading and Emmy Award-winning producer of television programming for the first-run syndicated marketplace, as well as original digital content for broadband and wireless.  

Sweetwater Digital Productions' Control Room at work

by Robert Wilson

Sweetwater Digital Productions, a well-established leader in partnered production facilities and mobile production units, teamed with Telepictures to deliver the new premiere standard for stage installations industry-wide. By starting with their unique portable production trailer design, and crafting it to the specifications of Tele-Pictures’ John Ankwicz, Sweetwater was able to deliver a functional, budget-conscious – and stunning – production and control room facility.

In July 2009, Sweetwater set out to create a complete production facility out of two custom 60’ x 40’ trailers provided by Telepictures – one to serve as control for the production of Lopez Tonight, the other to be used as a post facility.

Sweetwater carefully selected equipment, with price and flexibility in mind, utilizing long-standing relationships with vendors such as Grass Valley, Ikegami, and Studer among others.

Inside the Production Trailer, there are four custom rooms serving Production Audio, Music Mix Audio, Control Room and Tape, and Video Control and Engineering, all designed to spec by Sweetwater’s head engineers Stephen Sharp and Mark Hale, together with Ankwicz. Custom production consoles were made to house the switcher head for the TD area, and provide monitoring and communications for the production staff.

The system uses a Grass Valley Kayak switcher, and the monitor wall consisting of Boland 55” & 32” LCD monitors and a Harris Centrio multiviewer/router. Each show is recorded on Sony XDCam decks for archive, while the Post Trailer uses Avid Multistream for instant editing. Ikegami CMOS cameras outfitted with Fujinon lenses are used to shoot the show, while the video engineer uses Ikegami glass monitors to shade with a Boland LCD monitor as a second reference. The Lighting designer also uses an Ikegami glass monitor for continuity.

The show’s playback is done via Grass Valley K2 Summit Server with a direct connection to the Post trailer so as to send content directly. Sweetwater also provides an Avid Deko 3000 for all of the on air graphics.

On the audio side, Sweetwater provided a Studer Vista 5 audio console and two Yamaha O2R96 Audio consoles for the production mix and two Yamaha DM2000 audio consoles for the Music Mix. A Tascam X48 was provided for the Music Mix. The stage audio system consists of 2 Yamaha PM1D audio consoles with JBL Control 5 speakers in the audience for distributed sound. A Riedel system was installed for all communications with RTS 2 wire speaker stations and belt backs for the stage.  

Sweetwater Digital Productions is located in Van Nuys, California. Phone: 818.902.9500

"Lopez Tonight" is carefully watched to make sure everything is right.

by Jason Schroeder – Telepictures’ Engineer

Lopez Tonight was a unique challenge for Telepictures. Post-Production systems as a whole, industry wide, are becoming more complex – and because of this – more expensive. The single most prohibitive factor to any project is cost, but HD television in Los Angeles sometimes comes up against a production paradox: How do you meet the bottom line and provide your team with the tools necessary to start the first season of a new HD production off properly? How do you launch a brand new show in this decade without breaking the bank?

In our case, we had committed both to XDCAM as our primary master recording format. We went with their new product, the Avid MultiStream, to gang-roll our production feeds into the centralized ISIS storage. Avid ISOSync allows us to treat both AMS machines as one 8 channel unit, and provides our operator with a simple interface to record with. In addition, the AMS system records in 50 megabit XDCAM, so the media generated on both sides of the workflow were identical in format.

We use Interplay as our primary source for organizing show media, but the XDCAM format allowed us choices when it came to long term storage, proxy viewing, and producer interaction. Using a combination of ISIS, Interplay, OS X Server, XDCAM and its file structure, we were able to put together a workflow that had significant advantages in HD. Between the two resources, we had everything a solid startup needs to give the producers as much as possible to create the show.

Lopez Tonight is classified as a “Day of Air” show. On top of that, it has one of the tightest turnaround times of any Telepictures production. Approximately 90 minutes after the show finishes recording, we have to send a feed to TBS for national distribution. Using the Avid MultiStream product allowed our editors to literally watch the recorded production hit the ISIS as it happened, adding their notes along the way.

To accomplish the challenge of providing such a tight turn around, the staff came up with a plan to meet the deadline. As the show records, two editors swap acts, editing each in succession. The show blocks were edited twice as fast as normal with this process, allowing us to finish the whole show with only four avid bays. Not only did this work very well for the editors, but it gave us flexibility during the edit day as every editor is keen to the tasks of the others. Without the ability to collaborate in this manner, this short turnaround time would have proved insurmountable.

The Avid Transfer Manager, which runs locally on each edit station, is able to send sequences directly to Grass Valley’s K2 Summit over FTP, from inside Media Composer. This one feature alone saved us massive amounts of time, not to mention media costs.

The Lopez Tonight web team utilizes the Interplay system to its full capacity, working along side the show editors in order to deliver day of air content also to the Lopez Tonight website. During production, the web team examines the same clips, same notes, and same information as everyone else working on the system.

The flexibility that both the Interplay system and the XDCAM format provided us allowed us to meet cost targets, while at the same time improving the edit process for everyone involved. We are extremely happy with the end result – a lean, mean editing workflow capable of meeting the demands of Lopez Tonight.  

An editor puts the final touches on "Lopez Tonight"

by William Conrad

Telepictures Productions, the producers of TBS’ Lopez Tonight, needed a reliable workflow and collaborative environment that would support the production demands of a nationally syndicated program, and ultimately selected four Avid Media Composer Nitris DX systems for video editing, Avid AirSpeed Multi Stream ingest and playout servers, an Interplay production asset management system, Interplay Assist and Interplay Access systems, all connected to an Avid Unity ISIS (32 TB) shared storage system.

Avid worked closely with Lopez Tonight from initial engagement through implementation and ongoing support to create a workflow that met their stringent demands of post production.

“With current budgets as tight as they are, production teams are constantly rethinking their workflows. Companies like Telepictures Productions have to modify their workflows to eliminate the need to go back to tape and keep all their show’s assets digital. This frees resources to spend time on being creative, and not on the technical aspects of a workflow – like capturing at a higher resolution for the online edit or creating different versions for multiple outlets,” said Vincent Maza, marketing manager of post production at Avid.

He continued, “Avid recognized that this facility needed full-service solutions that facilitate the connections between the artists and technical systems, process the necessary metadata, manage tracking between offline and online, and maximize the power of communication between everyone involved in the workflow process.” With that in mind, Avid provided a turnkey solution for the team behind Lopez Tonight.

Chris Genereaux, sales representative at Avid, added, “TBS’ Lopez Tonight show is a near-live production effort. From the time recording ends to feed out, the post team has an hour to an hour and a half – at most – to turn the show around. Avid’s solutions delivered a truly collaborative environment critical to the show’s success.”

“The ISIS-based workflow allowed the show’s editors to simultaneously access all media content, at any time during the creative process to ensure on-time network delivery.”

“The Lopez Tonight team needed a fast and efficient way to get XDCAM 50 material into the ISIS workflow. We executed a close comparison of cost between using the AirSpeed Multi Stream and Interplay systems, versus other industry solutions. The Avid workflow proved to be the most cost-effective, and was the only workflow at that time that would allow the team to work natively with XDCAM material, the same format used for recording the show.”

The show is recorded on six channels with four to five cameras rolling. Once a segment finishes, the XDCAM 50 material is transferred to the ISIS shared storage system automatically via AirSpeed clients. The post team can begin editing immediately with Media Composer systems, leveraging the seamless high-definition, multi-camera editing capabilities, while the show is still being recorded. At the same time, the production team watches the segment, replaying content on the Assist client in order to add relevant show notes. Editors see the show notes right away and incorporate feedback during the editing process to alleviate additional back and forth with production, ensuring on-point content and on-time network delivery.  

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The Sony PME-EX3 Camcorder.

by Robert Primes, ASC

During the past few months I’ve had the pleasure of demonstrating or speaking about 3 different cameras from 3 different companies, Canon’s 5D Mark II, Panasonic’s Varicam 3700 and Sony’s EX-1/EX-3. I happen to love all three cameras so I felt no conflict of interest. But I’m impressed that all three of these major companies trusted me to present their cameras and allowed me to remain an objective voice speaking from my real world experience.

I believe this ecumenical spirit comes from the many years competing vendors of cinematography products shared a stage speaking to the American Society of Cinematographers as educators rather than rivals. There is something noble about the way competing cinematographers share their secrets and wish each other success. Miraculously, the higher purpose of advancing the art form seems to supersede individual ambition. The manufacturers seem to have caught the same bug. Hallelujah! But I’ve been asked to write this article about the EXes. So here goes.

Sony’s EX-1 and EX-3 are cameras that I might never have considered. They’re small and at first glance look like fancy consumer cameras. Most of my life’s work has been shot in 35mm and when the EX-1 came out I had recently shot a movie with the excellent Sony F-23, a camera system that cost over a quarter million dollars.

A team from Sony came to the American film Institute, where I was teaching, in the winter of 2007/2008 to show us one of their first EX-1 cameras. The lights were out in the classroom and a weathered multi colored brick wall stood perpendicular to a large exterior window. The monitor was at about the same color temperature as the daylight coming through the window. The little EX-1 was aimed roughly toward the brick wall. It looked like a toy to me until they turned it on. Man, did that little camera make those bricks rock!

I kept looking back and forth between the monitor and the brick wall and the density and color tonalities were reproduced exactly the way I was seeing them with my eyes. That’s not at all what I had expected. Further, when we backlit a subject against the hot window and then had them turn to allow the window light to gradually flow into their profile, it was stunning! Lush blacks and gorgeous shadow detail . . . like a Dutch master! No one there knew the ISO of the camera or how it was set up. We just saw those gorgeous images and totally flipped out. This wasn’t supposed to happen in this price range!

The Sony PMW-EX1 Camcorder.

Shortly after our AFI experience, Sam Nicholson of Stargate did a series of exhaustive tests comparing most of the high-end cameras of the day. He threw in an EX-1 seemingly as a wild card. When the results were shown, it seemed like every geek in town was prattling about the quality of the EX-1 images. At the 2008 NAB show, the EX-3 was introduced and it was the essence of the Ex-1 with a highly expert makeover that included interchangeable lenses, a hooded, magnified LCD finder with controls attached rather than buried in the menus, better ergonomics, external paint-box connections, Genlock, a more user-friendly speed control etc. Love at first sight! We ordered a bunch of EX-3s for AFI and Sony lent me one of each camera to test and generate some diverse footage.

Since then I’ve shot quite a few production with the EXes. I learned the menu system while shooting time-lapse clouds and sunsets in British Columbia. Then we shot a little drama called ‘Etude in Black’ in San Francisco. We used the Picture Profiles, particularly the various preset Gamma curves. All the paint or image manipulation tools are found conveniently in the ‘Picture Profiles’ menus. You can store 6 completely different looks in the camera at a time. We could walk into a hotel ballroom or sunlit interior or night exterior and quickly find the stop and specific gamma curve that would best hold the highlight and the shadow detail. The cameras have roughly 11 stops of exposure latitude and are so quiet they look pretty damn good at an ISO 0f 1000, so you can capture almost any ambiance. Instead of having to light a room from scratch or having to treat all the practical light sources or finding a place to hide fill light, generally all we had to do was either find or create a space for the action and add or take away a little light for portraiture and we were done!

An example is a night exterior walk and talk we shot at the end of a very long pier jutting out into San Francisco Bay. Two characters would walk and talk in a hand-held two-shot master and then we’d shoot matching singles. The shot began with the Bay Bridge in the background and showed a lot of dark bay water. Of course we wanted to see details in the water so it wouldn’t look like black velvet. Then as the couple continued to walk, the San Francisco skyline would come into frame along with the long row of Sodium Vapor luminaries lighting the long pier. We didn’t want to distract from the quiet mood of the scene by blowing out those luminaries. We chose the softest gamma curve of the EX-3: Cine 1, and opened the lens to f/1.9, set the shutter speed to 1/32 sec (about 240°) and added 6 db of gain, netting roughly 1000 ISO. Now the dark water had reflection and life, the city lights were brilliant and the eye of the pier luminaries showed a lovely orange color. We had turned off the Sodium Vapors at our end of the pier because their light was butt ugly. I auditioned a large Chinese lantern with a 150-watt globe. Too bright! We dimmed it down. Too orange! We switched to a 75-watt globe. Aah! Perfecto Garcia! We fish-poled the Chinese lantern to create a soft flattering ¾ light that followed the couple around and it was flat out gorgeous. I asked San Francisco’s finest lighting and grip crew if they’d ever shot on that pier using only 75 watts of light. They laughed.

If you have to run and gun and those nasty people you’re shooting for take away your calibrated picture and waveform monitors, don’t sulk. There is a way. Turn on the color bars, put your eye to the finder, reach behind the LCD and set the contrast almost all the way up, set the brightness to see only one pluge (picture line up generation equipment – grayscale test pattern), kill the bars, frame up, set the iris where you like the picture, press the Go button and shoot the sucker!

A reasonable question is whether all this sophisticated technology and opportunity for instant gratification makes for better or for worse cinematographers. I don’t really know, but at AFI we hedge our bets by teaching arduous control of film gamma, density, printer lights etc. along with complete and deep excursions into the digital image manipulation tools available in camera. Hopefully the rigorous craft discipline will add gravitas to the newly more bearable lightness of shooting.

On location with Robert Primes, ASC.

Another new widget that extends the EX’s power even farther is the brilliant Jon Thorn designed AJA Ki-Pro box. This little battery-powered box can ride along under your camera and convert almost anything to almost anything else in real time. I’ve used it with both the Canon 5D Mark II and the EX-3. It can handle HD/SDI, HDMI, Component, etc and convert to almost anything including down-converted SD and Apple’s mighty ProRes 422 HQ compression. It includes a removable 250G hard drive cartridge and 2 SxS card readers that will be actuated when Sony finally agrees to their use. The greatest benefit is that instead of being limited to the EX’s excellent looking 8 bit 4:2:0 long GOP compression, you now have Apple’s far better 10 bit 4:2:2 compression, an improvement you might not notice on the tube but you’ll almost certainly be affected by on the silver screen.

Now the specially designed 14:1 and 8:1 Fujinon lenses are excellent, especially for the remarkably low price, but when you put really good (read expen$ive) glass on the camera and then tap its uncompressed 10 bit 4:2:2 output, O Lordy does that baby sing!

And it is this song that I hope is heard by more and more people. I hope this because I want to kvetch about two troubling trends. The first is the trend toward using media as a way of passing time rather than as an enlightening experience. The ipod and iphone are decent enough music players but to my spoiled eye they’re far too tiny for you to experience the visual textures of a well-made drama. And unless you’re in Kobe’s league, gaming and interactivity are an unsatisfying substitute for the immersive experience of a huge screen reflecting the profound work of master storytellers. I want to be touched deeply and made more aware of the glories of our universe and the mysteries of the human condition. I want the full power of Cinema!

The second trend is for entertainment corporations to try to feed us junk food. There are great films made every year but they seem harder and harder to finance. It seems to be financially safer for many networks and studios to feed us crowd pleasers than to challenge our intellects.

And this is where the EX-3 comes in. Here is a device capable of providing big screen visual immersion, yet can also help smaller film makers afford to bring their ideas and values to the screen. With commercially sponsored messages bombarding us everywhere, our very ability to rise above junk thought may depend on the effectiveness of thought-provoking, independently produced media.  

Marc Levin, James Adolphus, and Forest Whitaker sit for an interview in the Mayor's office.

by Tom Davidson

A documentary that premiered recently on The Sundance Channel was shot entirely with Sony XDCAM EX series cameras (the PMW-EX1 and PMW-EX3). Brick City, the nickname for Newark, N.J., is about the fight by Mayor Cory Booker and other city leaders against gang wars, corruption and poverty. In the five one-hour episodes, Booker and Police Director Garry McCarthy work with “Jayda”, a Blood gang member turned youth mentor, who lives with her Crip boyfriend “Creep.”

The movie was executive-produced by Oscar®-winning actor and producer Forest Whitaker. Filmmakers Mark Benjamin and Marc Levin and their director of photography James Adolphus chose the EX cameras for their size, image quality and HD resolution, as well as the use of ExpressCard-based SxS PRO™ recording media, which presented the team with the perfect solution in the field.

Like many documentaries, they were shooting with a low light “run-and-gun” style. The team shot more than 600 hours of EX-1 and EX-3 footage, and did not use a tripod or a light during a year of shooting.

Mark Benjamin said, “We were on the move constantly, from bright sunlight to extreme low-light at night. I didn’t want to ruin a mood with too many lights. With this camera, you can achieve very interesting moods.” He added that the camera’s memory-based recording format – specifically the SxS PRO™ cards – significantly enhanced his work on location.

Marc Levin and crew conduct an impromptu interview on the street.

“The production would not have turned out the way it did without this camcorder,” Benjamin said. “We were able to discreetly capture even the smallest details that make the footage come alive on the screen.”

Benjamin noted that Peter Abel, of New York City-based dealer Abel Cine Tech, played an invaluable role in helping him and his team choose the right cameras. “He got us the first EX cameras that were ever available in New York, and worked with us to determine the right workflow.”  

Ki Pro Portable Disc Recorder from AJA Video.

by Leslie Parks

Everyone know, from broadcasters to indie filmmakers, how daunting the possible choices for image acquisition can be. Various cameras, formats, recording media and compression schemes can be confusing even to veteran video pros, leading many of them to ask, “Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way to simplify acquisition so that virtually any camera could record the same format and resolution?”

First introduced at NAB 2009, the Ki Pro portable disc recorder from AJA Video may just be the answer, attracting a lot of attention among HD professionals and winning five major industry awards, as well as endorsements from camera manufacturers including Arri, Canon, JVC and RED. AJA also conducted a 24-city global tour in support of Ki Pro’s launch this past summer, which kicked off in Paris in May, and traveled throughout Europe, Asia and the Americas, ending in Sao Paulo in July.

Ki Pro is a portable tapeless video recording device that records files to the Apple ProRes 422 codec directly from camera, providing a new way of connecting production and post. With its extensive analog and digital connectivity, virtually any video and audio source can be fed into Ki Pro to record pristine 10-bit ProRes 422 media that is then immediately available to edit within Apple’s Final Cut Studio. Because Ki Pro features SD/HD-SDI, HDMI, and analog inputs, users can interface with virtually any type of camera, and numerous simultaneous outputs provide flexible monitoring options, connecting to both professional and consumer monitors.

Core Ki Pro features include the ability to record hours of pristine Apple ProRes 422 QuickTime media to a removable storage module that offers built-in FireWire 800 for immediate editing and file access on OS X, as well as bridging proprietary compression schemes by recording to the edit-friendly Apple ProRes 422 codec. Ki Pro can connect to any digital camera via SDI or HDMI, or any analog camera with multiple input options, and can convert real time from SD to HD, or 720 to/from 1080, in full 10-bit quality.

The Ki Pro Exoskeleton for mounting between camera and tripod is also available.

With simultaneous recording to camera and the device, Ki Pro also extends client review capabilities, and can prolong the productive life of existing cameras while embracing future workflows with powerful conversion capabilities. Even better, Ki Pro has built-in 802.11 wireless and Ethernet for complete control via web browser or iPhone.

Developed in conjunction with longtime AJA partner Apple, Ki Pro marks the company’s first foray into the acquisition side of video production, bridging the gap between lens and post. The device, which provides significant workflow efficiencies for everyone from cinematographers and filmmakers to editors and post professionals, began shipping in September, and will continue to receive regular firmware updates with increased features and support for new ProRes formats.

Ki Pro allows filmmakers, broadcasters, video professionals and prosumers to skip the process of re-rendering to an editing codec by giving immediate access to full raster edit-ready Apple ProRes 422 files directly from camera. Ki Pro records hours of media to a removable storage module. The device is a small, portable unit that can sit on a table, in a bay or mounted between a camera and tripod. Ki Pro is also ideal for on-set monitoring, providing instant access to multiple display devices simultaneously.

Priced at $3,995 US MSRP, the standalone unit includes the Ki Pro recorder, HDD Storage Module and an AC adapter. Also available is the Ki Pro Exoskeleton made from aircraft-grade aluminum for mounting between camera and tripod, SSD Storage Modules, a Rod Accessory Kit which adds endplates to the exoskeleton, and an AJA Lens Tap Cable Accessory allowing Ki Pro to connect between a camera body and the lens tap control connector.  

Lee Lusby’s E.T. 3D Rig Time Lapse video from Keslow Camera on Vimeo.

by B. Sean Fairburn, SOC

I had the chance to get trained on the new series of 3D Rigs from Element Technica intended for sale in the exploding 3D market. They manufacture three sizes. “QUASAR,” the largest, for full size Sony F23-F35, 1500, F900R or the Red One, and Phantom cameras equipped with prime or zoom lenses. The mid-sized rig, “PROTON,” mounts box-style Scarlet, Epic and the SI-2K. The small rig, “NEUTRON,” is for the tiny 2/3” or 1/3” imager cameras sporting C-mount lenses such as the SI-2K MINI, Iconix and Cunima. All three incorporate a lightweight rugged frame with user ease of operation.

The Technica 3D rigs are now available for purchase or they can be rented from Keslow in LA, OffHollywood in NYC, and Panavision UK. The companies provide the opportunity to rent fully functional 3D Rigs to Shoot live action 3D projects.

B. Sean Fairburn, SOC and Element Technica's 3D Rig.

T3D Rigs easily change over from the “beamsplitter” configuration to “side by side,” keeping all the same patented user controls. Element Technica has also developed a series of intuitive hardware/software tools to automate stereo calculation. These tools will be available as add-in modules for the core systems to enable the director or DP to intuitively control how much or how little the subject comes off of the screen. IO, CONV and standard lens zoom, focus and iris control can be coordinated through the company’s patented Stereo Assist feature.

I predict that just as HD had a strong impact with significant penetration in the market, 3D will follow a similar path at a much faster rate of speed. I highly advise training on these systems to insure you are ready when the time comes. 

For more information about these groundbreaking 3D tools or to learn about Element Technica’s 1-day camera assistant training for the Technica 3D, please contact Joey Romero at Element Technica
TEL: 323.641.7327
joey@elementtechnica.com
www.elementtechnica.com.

Claire Danes (in overalls), Ivan Strasburg, BSC (far right) and Steve Shearer (center) prepare to shoot a scene.

by Bob Fisher

Temple Grandin is the story of a real-life heroine by the same name who has made a difference in the world. Born in Boston, she was diagnosed as brain damaged at 2 years old, but it turned out she was autistic. Grandin didn’t speak until she was 4 years old. She was subsequently mercilessly teased by her middle and high school classmates who thought that she was retarded. Grandin went on to overcome seemingly impossible obstacles, earning a doctorate degree, and becoming a professor of animal science at Colorado State University.

The HBO movie tracks Grandin, played by Claire Danes, from the age of 15 through her early 60s. The project was a collaboration between cinematographer Ivan Strasburg, BSC and director Mick Jackson. Originally planning to only shoot flashbacks in Super 16, the two decided to use it to capture the entire film and then transfer to HD.

Cinematographer Ivan Strasburg, BSC and Director Mick Jackson confer and review a scene for Temple Grandin.

Temple Grandin was mainly produced at practical locations in Texas with just a few scenes filmed on sets in empty buildings. Strasburg generally covered scenes with two ARRI 416 cameras and a range Zeiss Ultra Prime and Canon zoom lenses. The cameras were usually handheld to create a “slight” feeling of visual tension.

Images were primarily recorded on KODAK VISION2 100T 7212 film, which Strasburg occasionally overexposed in glaring sunlit scenes in order to render a lush look. KODAK VISION3 500T 7219 stock was used for night scenes and in darker interiors.

Front-end lab work was done at FotoKem in Burbank, California. Postproduction was done at Deluxe Digital Media in the Sherman Oaks suburbs of Los Angeles. The film was scanned and converted to a digital file at HDCAM SR 4:4:4 resolution in 16:9 aspect ratio. Strasburg kept dailies timer Sam Tirado apprised of his intensions for different scenes. For instance, the cinematographer wanted “a slightly desaturated” look for scenes where Grandin is visiting her aunt on a ranch in Arizona. Painterly touches were added during timing sessions with colorist Kevin O’Connor.