Altered Carbon (Netflix), produced by Skydance Television, envisions a grim future where technology has enabled humans to transfer their consciousness from one body to another–effectively giving eternal life to a privileged few as they move through a steady stream of cloned host bodies. The high-concept series is also pushing the boundaries of traditional TV technology.
Altered Carbon becomes one of the first episodic shows to be shot on the ARRI Alexa 65, and finished in Dolby Vision HDR. Deluxe’s global postproduction teams worked closely with Skydance Television’s production team to develop a highly collaborative and forward-thinking workflow to handle the massive file sizes from the Alexa 65–bringing feature-quality visuals to the small screen on an advanced level.
“We were in a unique position from the beginning because our DPs Martin Ahlgren and Neville Kidd loved the look of the Alexa 65, which at that point had only been used to shoot features,” said Dieter Ismagil, VP of post production at Skydance Television. “I’ve worked with Deluxe on TV projects for over a decade, so right away I went to them to brainstorm on how to handle these intimidating file sizes–how do you manage the dailies? How do you do VFX pulls? How do you get everything done on time and control costs? There was a lot to figure out initially just to make sure we could pull this off.”
Deluxe teams at Encore in Vancouver and Hollywood, EFILM, and Company 3 tackled these workflow challenges with a number of approaches, including their proprietary service, Synapse Portal. This service simplifies ingest and automates distribution of original camera plates to VFX vendors with the desired specs, dramatically reducing turnaround times and eliminating the potential for human error.
Traditionally used for features, Synapse Portal for TV was first deployed by Encore and Company 3 on 2017’s American Gods, to great success. Knowing the speed and flexibility of the Synapse Portal would be crucial for the VFX schedule, Deluxe worked with production to develop a workflow to keep costs down using downrezzed 4K ProRes XQ files for mastering the show rather than the massive ARRI RAW files.
Encore Vancouver handled dailies, EFILM handled VFX data management, Company 3’s Jill Bogdanowicz colored the series, and Encore Hollywood managed the finish and final delivery–-all in close collaboration with Altered Carbon post producer Allen Marshall Palmer and the DPs.
Full Lineup Set For AFI Fest; Official Selections Span 44 Countries, Include 9 Best International Feature Oscar Submissions
The American Film Institute (AFI) has unveiled the full lineup for this year’s AFI Fest, taking place in Los Angeles from October 23-27. Rounding out the slate of already announced titles are such highlights as September 5 directed by Tim Fehlbaum, All We Imagine As Light directed by Payal Kapadia, The Luckiest Man in America directed by Samir Oliveros (AFI Class of 2019), Zurawski v. Texas from executive producers Hillary Clinton, Chelsea Clinton and Jennifer Lawrence and directors Maisie Crow and Abbie Perrault, and Oh, Canada directed by Paul Schrader (AFI Class of 1969). A total of 158 films are set to screen at the 38th edition of AFI Fest.
Of the official selections, 48% are directed by women and non-binary filmmakers and 26% are directed by BIPOC filmmakers.
Additional festival highlights include documentaries Architecton directed by Victor Kossakovsky; Cheech & Chong’s Last Movie directed by David Bushell; Devo directed by Chris Smith about the legendary new wave provocateurs; Gaucho Gaucho directed by Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw; Group Therapy directed by Neil Berkeley with Emmy® winner Neil Patrick Harris and Tig Notaro; No Other Land directed by a Palestinian-Israeli team comprised of Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor and Hamdan Ballal; Pavements directed by Alex Ross Perry; and Separated directed by Errol Morris. Notable narrative titles include Black Dog (Gou Zen) directed by Guan Hu; Bonjour Tristesse directed by Durga Chew-Bose with Academy Award® nominee Chloë Sevigny; Caught By The Tides directed by Jia Zhangke; Hard Truths directed by Mike Leigh with... Read More