Australia’s Digital Pictures acquires Mistika finishing system
for film, television, commercials and Stereo 3D projects
“Mistika is incredible, it has a stereoscopic toolset years ahead of the competition, and without it, the public audience wouldn’t get to experience as much of the incredible journey undertaken by James Cameron and his team.”
Nic Smith, Technical Director, Digital Pictures
Melbourne, Australia, 26 July 2012 –
Australia’s premier film and TV post production specialist, Digital Pictures has invested in an SGO Mistika and SAN system from SGO’s Australasian Reseller Partner, Mojo Media Solutions. Following a decision made at NAB 2012, Digital Pictures will use SGO’s Mistika technology as the centrepiece of its service offering for film, television and advertising projects, bringing with it significant performance and productivity advantages, which will help the company keep pace with a rapidly growing high-profile project list.
Stuart Monksfield, Managing Director of Mojo Media Solutions states: “Digital Pictures have a strong brand and enviable technical and creative reputation that is justifiably world-class. I am delighted they have chosen Mistika as their finishing system of choice for the future; it’s a clear leader in the market with a unique toolset and a simple, yet revolutionary metadata-based workflow. Digital Pictures were quick to recognise these workflow advantages the first time they saw it at NAB last year, advantages that are not always obvious to everyone first time around.”
Mistika has been thrown into the deep end in more ways than one, immediately being put to work on James Cameron’s DEEPSEA CHALLENGE documentary film project being post produced at Digital Pictures in Melbourne. The post production team at Digital Pictures face the most technically challenging stereoscopic imagery you could ever imagine, a challenge only Mistika with its motion compensated pixel-based stereoscopic toolset is capable of handling.
The documentary film depicts how James Cameron, Academy award-winning director of Titanic and Avatar, plunged to the deepest known point in the world’s oceans, a 2,400km long scar located 11km below the surface of the Pacific Ocean called the Mariana Trench. A journey to the deepest location known to man that took place in a purpose built one-man submersible named “DEEPSEA CHALLENGER”. To document the journey, the submersible was equipped with multiple stereoscopic 3D camera systems recording to a variety of digital file formats. Cameron successfully completed the dive on 26th March this year, making history as the first person to reach full ocean depth in a solo-manned vehicle, spending up to three hours on the sea floor and documenting his experience in stereoscopic 3D.
DEEPSEA CHALLENGER had to protect the pilot from the extreme water pressure excerpted at 11km below the surface. The pilot was housed in a chamber measuring only 106cm across internally, so by the time they squeezed in the pilot plus all the navigation and safety systems required, there was scarcely space left for full sized stereo 3D camera rigs. Despite the lack of space, one miniature 3D rig using custom built cameras recorded the pilot’s activities at all times. In addition to this, another set of custom 3D cameras were mounted outside the submersible on a robotic boom arm in their own pressure-proof chamber, and was used to record any strange life-forms and dramatic geology.
“Post producing stereoscopic content captured under such extreme environmental circumstances was always going to present a unique set of challenges to us.” states Digital Pictures’ Technical Director, Nic Smith. “Having already completed the DI on the 3D feature Sanctum in 2010, also an underwater based project, we had a good idea of what image issues we might be faced with. But no one could have predicted the scale of the technical challenges presented to us on the DEEPSEA CHALLENGE project. We have already successfully put shots through Mistika that you would never think could make it off the cutting room floor. Mistika is incredible, it has a stereoscopic toolset years ahead of the competition, and without it, the public audience wouldn’t get to experience as much of the incredible journey undertaken by James Cameron and his team.”
Camera crews followed the DEEPSEA CHALLENGE team from the start of the project, recording over a thousand hours of behind the scenes footage including design meetings, construction of the submersible, dive testing as well as the expedition and main dive itself. In all, Digital Pictures are holding approximately 220TB of stereoscopic footage on their robotically controlled DAM system. A total of ten different types of cameras were used throughout the project, recording to a mix of R3D, mp4, mov, siv and other video file formats at resolutions ranging from HD to 5K. Owing to Mistika’s ability to work natively with all these camera files, in any mix of resolutions on the same timeline and in real time stereo, there has been no need to transcode the footage to another format before use. This helps prevent the already significant amount of data from ballooning unnecessarily, as well as saving transcoding time during post production.
Various 2D and 3D deliverables have been specified, including a 3D IMAX version of the film, all of which are being post produced at Digital Pictures using Mistika. Stuart at Mojo reveals: “The SGO SAN is only 4RU in size and has been specified with the ability to run five concurrent streams of uncompressed 2K from a single volume, which we can further expanded in the future as required. We are in the process of configuring the SAN to be visible by other client systems within the facility, so they can all work off the same media volume. The blistering speed of the SAN has enabled Digital Pictures to perform real-time Stereo 3D adjustments such as stereo hand-offs and depth grading, which results in a more comfortable and more engaging Stereo 3D experience.”
Sarah Cloutier, General Manager at Digital Pictures adds: “Australia will always be seen as a platform for prominent creative talent in the film and television industry. By introducing a flexible, world-leading system such as Mistika to our workflow makes great investment sense. Mistika will enable us to maintain our position as a leading technical and creative film-making collaborator.” Sarah continues: “Having successfully managed the introduction of a Mistika based pipeline into UK satellite broadcaster BSkyB, I have enormous faith in the product and the future of SGO’s development focus. Its efficiencies will save us huge amounts of time and speed-up our workflow processes considerably. We plan to integrate Mistika into our future workflow, ensuring our clients make the most of their time in the high-end finishing suites as we explore other challenging projects.”
With over thirty-five years of experience and with facilities in Melbourne and Sydney, Digital Pictures also partners with local and international producers and content creators to complete and deliver their projects to the very highest standard. Digital Pictures has been owned by Omnilab Media since 2005 and is located in an iconic Art Deco studio facility that also houses Iloura Film, Iloura Advertising, Flagstaff Studios and Dubsat, all complementary media services businesses owned by Omnilab Media. To find out more about the other amazing projects Digital Pictures have completed, please visit http://www.digitalpictures.com.au/our-work/film
The film will feature the intensive technological and scientific efforts behind the dive and will be broadcast on the National Geographic Channel and documented in the National Geographic magazine. To find out more about the project, please visit www.deepseachallenge.com
About Digital Pictures
www.digitalpictures.com.au
About Mojo Media Solutions
Based in Sydney, Australia, Mojo Media Solutions is an experienced and trusted supplier to the Post Production industry for Feature Films, TV Commercials and Broadcast markets. With over 25 years engineering, operational and managerial experience, including multiple feature film credits for Digital Intermediate, the company offers some of the most advanced technologies currently available, backed by industry based technical and operational know how. Mojo Media also offers a range of Consultancy Services; covering Display Calibration, Colour Management, Post Production / DI, Stereoscopic 3D. www.mojomediasolutions.com
About SGO
SGO is an established leading developer of high-end solutions including its flagship DI and Stereo 3D system Mistika, and on-set application Mistika Live, for post production in the broadcast and film industries. A global company, SGO continues to expand with offices and reseller partners across the world. The company prides itself in establishing close and long term relationships with its customers, providing an effective personal service by a dedicated team.
About Mistika
As a complete post production system, Mistika has highly developed tools which include editing, conforming, image restoration, compositing, colour grading, multi mastering and DCP deliverables for both 2D and stereo 3D. History was made with the world’s first live Stereo3D BSkyB sports broadcast where Mistika played a significant role in the launch of Sky 3D TV. Mistika was also used for Stereo 3D post of BAFTA award-winning “Flying Monsters 3D with David Attenborough” for Sky 3D TV and 3D IMAX, for which the project also won an IBC 2011 Special Award with Atlantic Productions, ONSIGHT and Sky3D as supporting partners for remarkable post production.