Hasta La Motion!

This is my first post so please go easy on me 😉

I’m primarily a motion graphics artist but the editing facility I work at is being asked to do more and more Vfx work.

The situation I have is as follows:

A program the facility is working on has some greenscreen effects stuff in it that has been Shot on RED camera. The program output its 1080 and the greenscreen has been shot at Either 2k or 4k resolutions. The RED footage was originally conformed into the avid at 1080 and one of our Online editors has attempted to do the key and composite. However he’s had some real struggles with spill etc so it has been suggested that we in Gfx now do the vfx. We’ve
Successfully got the original RED media into Premiere using an .aaf from the avid with links to the original media. So I now have the 2k & 4K r3d files on my premiere timeline, which is great however I’m now ready to begin the keying and am wandering what the best approach would be.

I know you can alter the source settings of the RED media and this is where my knowledge especially regarding colour spaces etc comes to an end. The red media as it comes on to my timeline is at the settings shown in the attached file. As you can see the footage is really quite bleached out and I was wandering if
There was anything I can do at a source level to help overall before keying in after effects / Nuke?

Also, I’ve been scouring fourms etc looking for tips and help and some suggestions I’ve seen is to work on dpx File sequences as opposed to the red files. Any thoughts or advice on that? Any performance gains on working
on dpx as opposed to r3d file? If so how can anyone suggest I get the dpx sequence out and at what settings as when i’ve tried thus far the greenscreen file sequence looks remarkably different to r3d file?

Any help or advice on this would be greatly appreciated. I’d really like to get this right with regards to the colour Space etc as its not something that we deal with often but are likely to have to do more of in the future.

is rendering one view in a 3d-application and using the z-buffer to generate the second view in compositing a common workflow? this could save hours of rendering time…

but from my experience using the z-buffer for displacement leads to rather “dirty” results…are there any better workflows or does anyone have experience with this kind of work?

thanks

I work for a (very) small VFX company that started by taking overflow work from other studios that needed help. These studios did primarily Television Broadcasting VFX and not Movie VFX.

I think we fell out of favor because the vfx studios we were working for felt we were over charging and taking advantage of the situation. Need less to say… the work has stopped coming :confused: 🙁

Well, we have worked on shows for all the major studios (ABC, NBC, etc). And we’d like to approach the studios directly to do the work.

1. What steps do you think we should take?
2. What will increase our chances of getting our foot in the door?
3. Also, do the vfx studios working on a show have the rights to all the vfx work. For example, when ABC makes a show (like Grey’s Anatomy), is the post production work awarded to a single company or multiple companies? And if multiple companies, then how is the work awarded? is it bid per shot?

look forward to your thoughts!

Thought I’d post this as here today I was contacted by an 25 man Indian “Roto Crew” with their showreel asking if there is work. Turns out good friend of mine and excellent artist James Pina is having shots stolen from his demo reel!
James’ latest reel:
http://vimeo.com/26184790

Thief’s:
http://vimeo.com/24981689.

In the video they listed the following contact information too. So hopefully you can avoid them. I’m sure they’ll change info if needed though.

vathilak@gmail.com
+919789855744

Their original posting to me:

The company told me I’ve to do it on my own.

Thanks in advance.

ps: FYI, I’m currently living in Belgium and it will be my first contract in the UK.