ACES
Anyone familiar with ACES yet? It stands for Academy Color Encoding Standard. The idea (is it an idea, or a dream?) is that it standardizes colors between all devices and software in the entire pipeline, from the camera, all through post & VFX, all the way to the final screen it’s viewed on. Wow – that would be amazing, right?
a quick summary here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_Color_Encoding_System
So far, most of the folks I’ve met and talked with that have tried it have said, it’s a great idea – but so far it hasn’t quite worked out properly for them.
However, I attended a workshop by Andrea Chlebak & Digital Film Central, the colorist of the Matt Damon sci-fi film Elysium, and was quite impressed with what they were able to do with ACES and Baselight Color Grading.
If you haven’t seen the film – it’s a big Hollywood sci-fi futuristic thing – probably 800+ VFX shots, lots of CG, etc – done by 6 different shops in Vancouver.
They developed a unique workflow – bringing the colorist into the process during production, and keeping them on thoughout the editorial and VFX process – using the colorist as the hub for managing of all VFX shots.
First step was to get all of the VFX shops on board with ACES workflow, and DFC calibrated all of their screens. During production, the colorist would create a one-light look for editorial dailies from the Red Raw files, and then when shots were chosen for VFX, the colorist would create all of the plates for VFX, rendered out in EXR 16bit floating point Linear Light (ACES) and sent to the VFX shops with a LUT for the grade. So the VFX artists can be working in scene linear space, with a director approved grade during the comps. After compositing, they’d render out EXRs (without the LUT), send them back to color – where they would automatically get the grade applied to them, based on the sequence EDL. (This did require some custom scripting for the Baselight grading system – but wasn’t too elaborate.)
Andrea called this a “shadow conform”, a timeline of high res graded footage that was continuously updated with new EDLs from editorial, and new VFX shots as they came in.
This workflow allowed Neill Blomkamp, the Director, to bounce all over town, to 6 VFX shops, and back to color/conform, with maintaining color integrity at every screen he was viewing things on – and a conform of the current cut was only a few hours behind the VFX renders. When he had color grade changes to a shot, Andrea would redo those and send out new LUTs to the VFX shops.
This allowed for a remarkably flexible and efficient workflow – they were able to ship the film literally 3 days after the picture was locked.
My initial thought was, “Yeah – sounds great – but in this era of shrinking VFX budgets, how much more expensive was it to have the colorist on board that whole time?” The answer was surprising.
For comparison, they referenced Pacific Rim – another big sci-fi film of similar scope. In that workflow, all of the different VFX elements were prepped and rendered out by different shops, and when it came time for grading, they had to pull all of those together into a unified look. They billed 450 hours, and used over 3000 mattes from VFX in the grade.
On Elysium, Andrea billed 120 hours, and needed only 8 mattes. Because all of the VFX shops were all working with the color grade transform at the end of their pipeline – this meant the director (and the VFX artists) was able to see everything in context, and the final comps needed only minor tweaks in final grade. (No idea how many hours were billed by assistants and techs doing the shadow conforming, though.)
Andrea said after doing the dailies, she spent only a few hours per week grading and managing the VFX as the edit was refined, and then the final pass only took a week or so – and no 14 hour days, ever. Amazing! More here:
Ok – on to the toys in the toy chest…
You must be logged in to post a comment.