Visual Effects: LipSync Production: Cashback 2006 Director: Sean Ellis Agency: Ugly Duckling Films One of London’s top independent post-production houses, Lipsync Post has recently provided comprehensive digital intermediate (DI) solutions including a number of FX shots for new feature “Cashback”, with the help of The Pixel Farm’s PFTrack and PFPlay. Written and Directed by Sean Ellis and featuring Emila Fox (The Pianist) and Sean Biggerstaff (Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets) “Cashback” is the full length version of Ellis’ multi award winning and 2006 Oscar nominated short film of the same name. The film centres on insomniac art student Ben Willis. His insomnia leads him not to a fight club however, but to a job working late nights at a local supermarket. Like the characters he meets there who all have their own ‘art’ in distraction from the boredom of their jobs, Ben’s ‘art’ is to imagine himself stopping time still, so that he might more closely examine this suspended world at his leisure. One of the principal scenes involved a composite of suspended falling snow. As characters walk through it and the camera moves around the scene a sort of tunnel is revealed where the characters movement has dislodged the ‘frozen in time’ snow. Lipsync Post creative director, Howard Watkins explains, “The scene involved around 20 shots, (including moving crane shots) all of which had to be tracked. Because the snow is filling the whole 3D space, any slightest movement will be picked up because snow appears in the foreground and background all along the Z-axis. This was made more of a problem”, Watkins goes on “because the sequence was a night shoot, and although the contrast seemed adequate at the time it was less than ideal for tracking” In addition to this the shot had been planned to rely more on physical elements in the scene than on markers for tracking purposes, which only served to compound the contrast issue. Shot on the Super 35mm format the digitally transferred 2K plates were imported into PFTrack on a Mac platform. Having experimented with other tracking software last year, with very mixed results, Lipsync Post invested in The Pixel Farm’s very powerful, multi-purpose tracking tool because of it’s intuitive ease of use, it’s seamless integration into a cross-platform workflow environment and the great results it gave them, on shots for Neil Marshall’s hit move “The Descent”. Using the native facility within PFTrack to quickly set up an animated matte to exclude the moving characters in the scene from the track, Watkins says they were pleasantly surprised to find that some shots were solved simply using PFTrack’s default auto settings. Because the application’s auto track element is so uniquely adept the absence of markers in the scene didn’t stop PFTrack from doing what it does best – solving for a camera. This particular sequence was passed on to 3D Studio Max on Windows XP, and this simple integration into other applications is something Lipsync point out as being a big plus. For those shots, which did need some hands on attention, PFTrack’s comprehensive functionality was able to supply the means and simple methods of access for real user control over track data. Fully editable f-curves within a graph editor in the time line make cleaning up individual properties of the camera a quick and painless process. Direct interactive editing of the visible f-curve display means the solver will rapidly produce a new camera without the need to re-solve every parameter. “Despite the difficulties, PFTrack worked very well, and we couldn’t have done the sequence without it”, says Watkins. A recurring theme across the industry is the level of support offered by various software publishers. An issue commonly cited as being a deciding factor at the point of purchase, as Lipsync’s Howard Watkins emphasizes, “The thing which impresses us most about The Pixel Farm is their support and ability to understand our problems from our side of the business as it were. They’re always very willing and very keen to try and solve problems”. Already a main player in film and television post-production Lipsync Post is also undergoing an expansion of its services aiming to become a one stop digital intermediate (DI) facility. This has meant an investment in both people and kit, including scanners, two new Quantel iQ systems and The Pixel Farm’s resolution independent, film pre-visualization system, PFPlay. Able to deliver up to 4K real-time playback PFPlay can be installed into a network to act as facility wide resource, and be set to automatically conform timelines for hi-res playback and review, with automatic updates of new sequence renders. Howard Watkins explains that PFPlay saves a huge amount of time and has dramatically improved the workflow at Lipsync. “What’s really nice about it” he says “is you can set it up to update at a certain point, so that your previews are all ready to view at that designated time, and your seeing a hi-res version. It’s nice and simple to use, with great functionality” www.lipsyncpost.co.uk Words: Martin Southwood