Wherever Hugo, cineSync's there

Tuesday, 06 December 2011

The new film "Hugo" from Martin Scorsese, which is currently receiving rave reviews around the world, was a giant project for all involved. It was shot and post produced in stereo 3D and had over 1000 VFX shots - which of course all had to be done twice, once for each eye.

The VFX facilities were also spread across the globe, from California (Lola VFX, Matte World Digital, Uncharted Territory, New Deal Studios, Legend 3D) to Illinois (With a Twist) to London (Nvizage) to Bangkok (Yannix) to Stuttgart, where the main VFX house Pixomondo has its head office. Pixomondo also had half a dozen other offices around the world working on the show, making a total of 14 facilities across 5 countries.

Pixomondo VFX Supervisor Ben Grossmann said that at the peak of the show, he was spending 4-6 hours every day in cineSync sessions with all the other facilities, utilising cineSync Pro's 3D Stereoscopic functionality, 3D LUT support and Shotgun integration.

He was also interviewed, along with overall VFX Supervisor Rob Legato, for an article by Post Magazine which details the challenges and successes of the post production process, including how the massive workflow was co-ordinated with the assistance of cineSync Pro.

From Post Magazine:

All of Pixomondo’s offices around the world took part in Hugo in order to meet the demands of the schedule. “We needed a 24-hour workday,” says Grossmann. “As one office went offline, two more came online. If Marty [Scorsese] or Rob gave us a note in the afternoon, we had a new version of the shot for him when he woke up.”

It was no mean feat to choreograph the workflow and “move sequences around the world to stay ahead of the time zones and take advantage of certain facilities’ strengths,” he notes. “It was a huge engineering accomplishment to get everything working quickly and seamlessly.”

Pixomondo’s team of pipeline engineers and programmers customized Shotgun’s database management tool for worldwide deployment. “I could take dailies from Stuttgart and send a certain playlist of shots for review in LA, and Shotgun would initiate the file transfer to the screening room in LA,” he explains. “Then I’d click and get a cineSync review with Stuttgart. Or I could get Shotgun to make Avid MXF media files with metadata and Avid bin transfers for Marty and [editor] Thelma [Schoonmaker] in New York.”

The sheer amount of stereo 3D added to the complexity of the workflow. “When you’re creating left and right eye versions of every shot you’re doubling the amount of render time and doing something like four times the amount of work to produce a seamless composite or VFX shot,” says Legato. “It’s hard to be as nimble as a 2D movie because 3D affects your throughput: You have to devote more people and horsepower to it.”

You can read the rest of the extensive and informative article at the website of Post Magazine.

To read more about how the combination of cineSync Pro and Shotgun could work for you, check out this link.

The official site for Hugo is here.