Can Communicate Goes Wild With Quantel Pablo

It has been an incredibly busy couple of months for Can Communicate, one of Europe's leading 3D production companies. From working on Alice Cooper's infamous fright show, 'The Night of Fear', to Sky3D's recent ten part observational documentary, 'Safari Park Adventure', Can Communicate has pushed the boundaries of 3D television content. The company operates on two Quantel Pablos, sharing workflow via a GenePool, assisted by its recent investment in a Neo grading panel. 'Safari Park Adventure', filmed at Woburn Safari Park, follows the day-to-day activities of the park's keepers and animals. The series was shot on Sony P1s with Canon HJ22 lenses, producing over 300 hours of footage for the ten part documentary.
Production Director at Can Communicate, David Wooster said: "Safari Park Adventure' was a huge challenge, particularly as we had to deliver the first six, one hour episodes weekly, so we were working two systems 24/7. Our Pablos and Neo panel held up really well throughout the process. The key thing for us is that we couldn't afford a technical failure in the first phase, reliability was crucial in this project - there just wasn't time for problems! We had upgraded all of our systems to the latest software prior to doing all the fixing which really helped. We could not have graded the series without the Neo panel and the overall quality of what we were able to produce in such a short time is something that we are very proud of. Our Quantel systems bring reliability and a good set of 3D tools that ensure we can deliver great results. We have pushed this system on a number of jobs now and it has always delivered.:
"Safari Park Adventure' was a first for us in terms of length and timescale, pushing the team and systems to new levels. If we are thrown a challenge we always look to find ways to achieve it. I remember Alan Hayling, the Executive Producer for Renegade on 'Safari Park Adventure' saying we have a 'can do' attitude and that is probably our ethos. In every 3D project we have worked on so far we have been required to find new solutions We have a fantastic team who have a wide range of 3D experience in feature films, live OB's, commercials, promos and documentaries. The most important thing is to aim for the highest standard possible with each project. 3D is not particularly forgiving so delivering high quality content is important to us. We also have our own 3D filming kit and our own post facilities. This means we can manage entire projects and guarantee a level of quality which importantly is cost-effective. We are also fun to work with, a combination that builds good long standing relationships.
"Our Pablos were workhorses, working 24/7 over four months. I couldn't have asked the systems to do any more on 'Safari Park Adventure'. Pablo has many features that make it ideal for us. Firstly, having a dual-stream timeline allows us to treat left and right eye clips independently and so flexibly. Given the sheer amount of rushes we were looking at handling for 'Safari Park Adventure', we needed to be able to handle a manageable amount of data. So we used 100Mb per second for both offline and online, and due to costs we only had a limited recording capacity. Only the left eye was provided to the offline, so we needed to be able to conform the eyes independently using the EDL. We certainly wouldn't have been able to use Cineform clips, even at a lower resolution. As we only had a week to online each episode, importing clips one by one and creating stereo pairs, as in other systems, would have taken far too long. Pablo is a massively intuitive system to learn, compared to its competitors, which is very handy for training assistants for large projects such as 'Safari Park Adventure'. Secondly, we love the Stereo Tab. It's so handy that we can auto balance and fix all stereo clips in one tab. The fact that as a stereo fixer you can see what you are doing in 3D as you are doing it is brilliant. Thirdly the text tab allows us to overlay text on a 3D clip which is a great time saver.
"Having the Quantel systems allows us to do what we need to do. If someone wants a ten hour 3D series within a short period of time, we have very capable staff and very capable systems. The Quantel systems mean we can deliver it. We are also using the Quantel Neo grading panel at our facility. The Neo has a very slick interface, it's very easy to work with, and is again intuitive. It may seem superficial, but the effect it has on the client's eyes also helps. While you could probably customise it to your heart's content, it has everything you need right away."
(CD)