Founded in the fall of 2005, HD Pictures & Post, maintains a 7,500-square-foot production and post facility in Santa Monica, Calif. that specializes in HD online finishing, color-correction and DI services for feature-film distribution and television. Bergeron has been shooting and producing in HD exclusively since 2001 and online editing on Avid DS Nitris and Symphony systems and offlining in Avid's Express Pro NLE software. The company uses dedicated storage, about 2 TB per workstation. The company also uses Apple‘s Final Cut Pro software for some projects.
Bergeron's company-which will produce its own independent features under the Rainmaker Pictures name-recently finished 2K conforming work on 14 trailers for Oliver Stone's new film World Trade Center. They also did the HD online editing and color correction work for the new home DVD releases of three television series in the CSI franchise, and screener copies for Sony Pictures' Hostel and HD digital paint work for ABC's airing of Legally Blonde II.
Q: Many people talk about how producing a feature in HD saves money. Do you find this to be true?
A: I have never agreed that the reason to produce in HD was to save money. If you look at why digital production was developed in the first place, and used by people like George Lucas, Robert Rodriguez and James Cameron, the primary reason was the workflow advantages. Especially if you are working on a project that has a lot of digital effects in it, there's an obvious workflow and time savings [because you can see what you are getting on set]. For me, the money is not the primary reason to produce in HD.
Q: When setting up an HD edit suite, how much storage will someone need to get started
A: It depends on what frame rate and format you are working on. You probably want about 50 to 100 percent more storage than you'll need for the final product. About 2 TB is sufficient to do a two-hour feature. For an uncompressed, 1080 feature, you need about 400 GB per hour. So, 800 GB will get you a two-hour feature, but by the time you factor in the head room you might need to process files and accommodate different versions, a terabyte and a half is a basic requirement.
Q: What's your preferred deliverable format when a client comes in the door?
A: We always prefer a digital file as opposed to videotape, because it saves digitizing time, maintains quality and eliminates the need to buy a digital deck for every format out there. It's also ideal to have a client come to us at the beginning of a project, rather than at the end after they have shot the whole thing. This way we can head off a lot of the problems in the beginning and together develop a workflow that will be cost-effective, reliable and efficient for our clients.
Also, I prefer getting an editor's project files and final sequence or bin, as opposed to a simple EDL. Then we can have an assistant digitize their HD tapes and the process is smooth for everyone. The EDL is always a last resort.
Q: Is it practical to edit and finish an entire feature film in HD on Final Cut Pro?
A: You can produce an entire uncompressed feature in Final Cut Pro, and I have done it, but you have to be prepared for certain things. The main difference between finishing stuff in FCP and on an Avid, for example, is speed. Rendering is going to take a lot longer [with FCP] because you are working on a system that's dependent on the host processors. As computers get faster, this will get better, but there's still no comparison in terms of time.
There's also a lot more rendering involved, and that's why I use systems like Avid's DS Nitris. With Nitris, all rendering is done in real time and does not need processing, even when I output to tape. So I can do two or three effects, I can color-correct clips and have a transition between them and it doesn't need to process to lay off to tape, like FCP does. In FCP, I have to process even to playback work I have completed.
Once I'm done with an uncompressed 1080 project on the DS system, I can show it to the client or lay it off to tape immediately. If I finished an uncompressed HD feature in FCP, it could need anywhere from 24 to 48 hours of rendering before I can play the whole thing back and output it to tape.
Reliability is also a major differentiating factor. For a company like ours, that might use multiple FCP systems in tandem, you are going to have some downtime. With a previous company I worked on Star Wars: Episode III and worked for weeks, cranking the Avid DS system 24/7 with no crashes. We also had a bunch of Symphony and Media Composers all hooked up to Unity, with maybe a couple of minutes of downtime in those six weeks.
Finally, the maturity of the tool set you get with an Avid DS Nitris is much more advanced that what you get with the $1,000 Final Cut Pro application. You get what you pay for.
Finally, the maturity of the tool set you get with an Avid DS Nitris is much more advanced that what you get with the $1,000 Final Cut Pro application. You get what you pay for.