Time-Slice Films Chooses Grass Valley Infinity For Challenging Composite Shots

Faced with a challenging CGI sequence - keying Justin Lee Collins, famous for his wild hair, into a mockup of the bridge of Star Trek's Enterprise - visual FX &motion graphics company Time-Slice Films selected the Grass Valley Infinity Digital Media Camcorder (DMC) for the HD green screen shot.
The camcorder's very high quality acquisition gave an extremely clean key, and because it records onto IT-standard hard disks post was simple and very fast.
Production company So Television has now created a number of Bring back... programs, in which comedian Collins tries to reunite the cast of a classic television series.
The latest, Bring Back Star Trek, was shown on Channel 4 in the UK on May 8. As well as tracking down the original cast, Collins recreates key scenes from the program, and for this the producer needed to put him on the bridge of the USS Enterprise. Rather than go to the expense of building a real set, So Television called in Time Slice Films to do it in CGI.
The Grass Valley Infinity DMC includes a range of codecs which allow the operator to select the most appropriate balance between storage capacity and resolution. On this project it allowed Time-Slice Films to choose to capture 10-bit 4:2:2 high definition video at 1080i, ensuring great detail and precise color rendering.
That meant that chromakeying the image turned out to be extremely successful.
The second great benefit of using Infinity is that it records files to a REV PRO disk, which can be directly accessed by Mac or PC-based editing and graphics systems, greatly speeding up ingest times.
In this case, Time-Slice Films transcoded using Cineform's NeoHD ReMaster application, which seamlessly converts the content from JPEG2K to ProRes 4:2:2 files. The footage was then immediately available to their preferred post tool, Adobe After Effects at the highest resolution and in the best color space.
Graham Clarkin of Time-Slice Films said: "The Grass Valley technology meant we were able to take test shots first thing and ingest them directly into After Effects on set.
"This enabled us to check how well the chroma would key in post, giving us the flexibility to correct any issues on set.
"We found this an invaluable tool for both director and compositor, smoothing the way for an extremely efficient shoot day.
The footage from the Infinity camcorder was an absolute pleasure to work with, not least due to the clarity and crispness of the 1080i HD which was very easy to key, left little or no artifacts when using just a simple Keylight effect in After Effects, and was a very quick process to achieve a working cutout of Justin, even with his big bouncy hair, which keyed beautifully."
Clarkin concluded: "The end results pleased both us and the production team. This was our first experience with the Grass Valley Infinity and it is rare to find a system which allows such control and smooth transition from each section of the production process."
Jeff Rosica, Senior Vice President of Grass Valley, said: "When we were designing the Infinity digital media camcorder, it was very clear to us that there is no 'standard application' for camcorders, and trying to force every user to work around a compromise solution is the wrong answer.
"We designed a system that put the choice - video resolution, compression algorithm, storage media - into the hands of the operator who can make the right choice for every single job.
"his project was a classic example of this - no other recording medium can go straight from camcorder to post tool without ingest or expensive proprietary player and no other camcorder in this price range has the high quality codec to enable you to pull a clean key without time-consuming retouching."
Further information is available at: www.grassvalley.com.
(KMcA/BMcC)