Technical Supervisor: Clark Graff
Restoration Artist: Urban Olsson
Director: Sam Schwier
Feature Film: Captain Abu Raed
Client: Gigapix (Graff Network Services)

If the eyes of a nation are watching expectantly for the arrival of its first feature film for almost half a century, the last thing you need is to find that footage of important scenes you simply cannot reshoot has somehow been seriously damaged. No youre not dreaming, this really has happened. Naturally you curse a lot, try a few ideas to try to fix the problem, but to no avail. Then it comes to your attention that a UK developer called The Pixel Farm has just the thing to repair the damage and deliver the flawless footage you thought you had all along. You try it and it works like a dream. Happy endings all round, and even an award or two.

This was the predicament technical supervisor Clark Graff (Graff Network Services) working for Gigapix Studios found himself in during the production of the successful new Jordanian feature Captain Abu Raed. Filmed entirely in Jordan the film includes location sequences reflecting an authentic feel of normal Jordanian life, some of which threw up unexpected problems. Apart from the obvious difficulties of logistics and the constraints of a low budget, the harsh elemental conditions also proved problematic, so that the searing daytime temperatures had a strange effect on the cameras.

A strong visual narative is key to the movie

Shot with Arri D-20 cameras at 1080-25p. The footage was recorded uncompressed to a custom built system called GNS-DFR or (Graff Network Services Digital Film Recorder) which utilized AJA Xena 2ke cards to down convert to SDI for input into Avid 9000XL Media Composer systems. Though this set up combined the practical necessities of cost effectiveness and reliability it was not invulnerable to adverse conditions. Shooting in the Jordanian desert and in Amman International Airport on a flat bed a glitch in the system occurred. Clark Graff explains, The cameras became quite hot and we believe that the imager spat out frames with spurious miscoloured pixels, from between 2000 and 4000 per frame.

Shooting Digitally doesn't solve every issue! The heat can be a killer.

With over 1000 frames affected this way the problem was compounded by the fact that these frames fell in the middle of longer sequences, which simply couldnt be re-shot, so it was left to Graff to try and find a satisfactory solution. Asking around for helpful suggestions to save the footage he was told about a restoration application called PFClean from UK developer The Pixel Farm, and wondered whether this could provide the high quality fix to repair the footage. Urban Olssen, the assistant technical director learned the software and repaired the footage perfectly. It was amazing - It was frightening how good it worked, says Graff.

PFClean provided an ideal solution to repair multiple frames very quickly

PFClean features the most advanced optical flow and image analysis algorithms currently in the VFX industry combined with industry leading workflow design so that despite being a powerful high-end DI tool its intuitive interface helps make it easy to learn and use. So much so that despite the very short time GNS had spent with the application they were able to go on and use more of its functions to solve a few other problems. We used Paint to repair the pixel damage, but we also used the Rig Removal function to remove a sound blimp which encroached into a shot from above, and the Stabilize effect to fix some VERY shaky helicopter footage. It all worked incredibly well. Graff says.

All operations that are applied to a clip in PFClean are generated using Effects. A clip can have multiple effects applied to it, and each effect is stored in the clips Effect Stack, the detail of which is displayed as an overlay on the Cinema window. Effects are created by selecting one of the many available and adding it to the effects stack. Each of the Effects provides comprehensive options and sensitive controls so that they can be employed precisely as the user or clip requires. For example the Stabilize Effect can remove high frequency fluctuations in frame position, or lock-off all frame motion throughout the clip. In addition the user can specify the type of motion to be removed while further options allows the stabilize effect to be restricted to the red, green and/or blue channels.

The first Jordanian feature to be exported and the first at all in a very long time, Captain Abu Raed is a Pen and Paper Films production in association with Gigapix Studios and David Pritchard Productions. Critically well received the film is a sentimental melodrama with real backbone. The emotive storyline never becomes sickly sweet or otherwise unpalatable, but is aided by some fascinating glimpses of contemporary Amman from street level and some commendable performances from the cast. The story tells of Abu Raed an elderly janitor at Ammans International airport. Finding a discarded Captains hat in the trash at work one day, he is followed by a neighbourhood boy who spots him wearing it as he walks home. The next morning he wakes up to find a group of neighbourhood children at his door, believing him to be an airline pilot. And thus the friendship begins.

It is all about story in the end!

UK based Jordanian actor Nadim Sawalha plays Abu Raed. Father of English actress Julia Sawalha he has also been seen in Syriana opposite George Clooney and alongside James Bond on couple of occasions. Here he lends subtle nuances to the role making the character tangibly sympathetic, an accomplishment for which he was awarded best actor in Dubai. Hastily made ready for entry into this years Sundance festival the film itself subsequently won the audience award for best world cinema.

Though Graff himself has worked on movies such as Lord of the Rings, I-Robot and The Matrix, this much small production provided just as worrying a glitch as any Neo or Morpheus had to deal with. Together with difficult budget restraints and impossible deadlines it presented just as much of a challenge as those bigger productions and taught the whole technical post crew plenty about digital film capture and post production, and also about the excellent support available to help round up those rogue pixels should disaster strike. Thats just what Pixel Farmers do.

More information about Graff here:

www.4nr.com

Words: Martin Southwood