Search for lenses, articles and help
The last Tuesday of June saw Cooke’s London Gallery and Test Space play host to an insightful talk from David Stump ASC, BVK. David led an invited audience through the on-set and post VFX workflow of ‘Comandante’ (dir. Edoardo de Angelis, cine. Ferran Paredes Rubio) which he served as the workflow supervisor for. The feature was shot on Cooke’s Anamorphic /i FF Lenses and made strong use of Cooke’s /i Technology to empower smart VFX workflows.
David’s talk touched on themes that are important to everyone involved in production: quality, creativity, efficiency and budget viability. All hot topics in the post-strike world of 2024. The heart of the ‘Comandante’ workflow is the intelligent use of production metadata to provide on-set feedback, secure the vision of the director and cinematographer all whilst accelerating the workflow of the production’s VFX teams.
“Near-real-time compresses the iterative process of finishing a film. Before, we used to edit the entire movie and then plug in VFX. That interactivity is less creative than the immediacy of this workflow that gets you closer on set to what you are going to have in final. If you build the interaction into the editorial process, then it’s all one big creative blend.”
For ‘Comandante’ Cooke Optics partnered with Miraxyz to blur the line between production and post-production, allowing film makers to merge images from on-set cameras with high-quality computer-generated elements in near real time with anamorphic lenses. An integral aspect of the project was Cooke’s /i Technology sub-pixel accurate distortion workflow which meant footage could be corrected for distortion quickly, CG elements added to the undistorted image, and then the image can be re-distorted, so the CG element is matched to how the lens sees it. A task not often undertaken with anamorphic lenses for VFX let alone in a near real-time workflow.
What is clear from David’s presentation is the value of the production metadata and the direct impact on VFX efficiency and quality this often-underutilised aspect of shooting can have. Watch David’s talk to learn from a veteran of both the VFX and cinematography disciplines to see why you too should value and protect the capture of production metadata for post-workflows.
