Discovery goes back to the Future with Steam Power
Scott Bryant, co-founder of L.A.-based motion graphics house STEAM, may be all about digital today, but before he discovered pixels he worked in wood. That’s about as analog as it gets.
In the late ’80s, when QuickTime™ was still just a curiosity, Scott Bryant was in the IATSE Local 33 in Los Angeles--the set construction union for motion pictures and television. Bryant was busy with a tool belt and hammer, building sets for The Tonight Show, the Academy Awards, the Country Music Association Awards, and many other programs. Bryant liked the work, but was beginning to realize that he was more interested in design than construction. After a few years he enrolled in the art direction program at CalArts. Bryant enjoyed learning to use a computer for set design, but was not happy with the selection of projects that were typical of student films at the time. As Bryant put it, “I realized I had to create my own projects to find the kind of visual challenges that interested me as a designer. I quickly discovered that I liked producing as much as designing.”
Bryant graduated from CalArts in 1992 and formed Banderlog, a set design and construction company with warehouse space in Valencia, CA. “We knew we needed a reel to promote our work, and that was the impetus for exploring motion graphics work as a service. I had already been using After Effects™ and Final Cut Pro™ a little, so this was a logical step. At the time, we were beginning to get set design assignments, including work on a Warner Brothers theme park.” Bryant had been dabbling in motion graphics back in school, and when Disney needed a video pitch for a project, Bryant accepted the job and jumped in with both feet. “It was all done with AE 3.0 and scanned art. It took four days and we made $60K. You couldn’t do that in set design. I used the money to start STEAM.”
This was the mid-’90s and the desktop revolution was well underway. Over the next few years, STEAM built its studio and reel with corporate work, broadcast commercials, film work, and promos for features. These were the growth years and STEAM followed the evolution of all digital outsiders, investing in DigiBeta decks and more sophisticated infrastructure until eventually it was challenging traditional post production facilities in the big markets.
By 2000, high-definition video was touted as the format that would save the big post houses from extinction. But the transition to HD posed problems. How could a Mac or PC handle the data rates of the new formats without a huge investment? The answer was uncompressed video, which became a solution for broadcast while hardware for video processing and storage came down in price dramatically. The inevitable progress of desktop video leveled the playing field for HD just as it had for standard definition video.
STEAM’s solution for HD I/O processing was the DeckLink card on PCs. Bryant had been using Premiere Pro™ on the editorial side and had just switched to the Blackmagic Design card. “Basically, the BMD card has more features at a lower price,” Bryant says. “But what really kicked it for me was the extension of the product line beyond just I/O. Things like the DeckLink HD and the Multibridge really extend what we are able to offer clients.”
Bryant recently found the opportunity to use this gear on two high profile spots for Discovery on The Learning Channel. “We had been working on a TLC show called While You Were Out about the same time TLC was about to launch their new micro-network, Discovery HD Theater,” Bryant says. For the last few seasons, hit shows like Monster Garage, American Chopper, and HD Getaways have been broadcast in HD on cable. Discovery decided to aggregate the content under the HD Theater brand and began looking for a design studio to do promos. STEAM was chosen.
While it was a given that the spots were going to be shot and delivered in HD, Discovery wanted the promos to be aimed at traditional viewers as well as early HD adopters. The network’s goal was to turn SD viewers on to its HD programming. This made for an interesting design challenge, Bryant says. “Our HD spots would be seen by most of the Discovery viewers on standard-definition televisions. The creative mission was to convey the experience of HD in the SD realm.”
Bryant and his partner came up with an idea to bring the concept of HD home to SD viewers. “I think the hook was that HD is as good as being there,” Bryant says. “So we came up with spots that have normal viewers at home and the HD brings the world of the program into the living room.”
The final promo shows a stylized family room that is represented by a red leather chair in a white seamless environment. Discovery’s target audience is represented by a man, a woman, and a couple of teen-agers, each seen in their own segment of the main 60-second spot. This is the nuclear family that doesn’t watch TV together, but seeks out age- and gender-specific programming. The spot’s opening voiceover states: “Imagine the power of watching your favorite show with breathtaking clarity.”
Bryant chose to illustrate the concept by having the first viewer, Dad, “draw” a window/TV in space right in front of the chair. A dotted line represents the window, and armed with a remote and seated comfortably in the red chair, Dad chooses to watch American Chopper. The camera switches to a low angle shot of a motorcycle rolling into the seamless environment, but on the opposite side of the hand-drawn window from Dad. The camera does a slow counter move, returning to Dad’s side of the window, where he’s watching American Chopper as the live, full-size chopper disappears from view. The shot then dissolves to full-screen takes from the actual program.
This concept is repeated again for the Mom character, who is watching a home improvement show, and in the closing segment with the teen-agers as they watch a travel show. The spots include flying text, effects, and footage from TLC’s HD programs seamlessly blended with live action.
Although the spots were storyboarded in advance, STEAM approached the on-set shooting as a hybrid film and “switched” television show. This allowed STEAM to preview sequences of shots for the clients on set. There was still much work to be done to the captured HD footage after the shoot, but the basic flow of images was switched on set using multiple monitors to help refine the camera angles and the performances. Typically, live switching would have required a sophisticated switcher and router of the kind used in broadcast television, but Bryant found a more cost-effective solution by using the Blackmagic Workgroup Videohub.
Two Sony HDW-F900 HD cameras were routed through the Videohub. One camera covered the action performed in front of a green screen while the second camera covered the action performed in the red chair set. Each of the F900s had an onboard HD-SDI monitor, an add-on that sits at the back of the camera. This allowed the operators to see the image framed by the other camera while they checked the viewfinder of their own shot. The Videohub is actually capable of 12x24 routing and automatically switches between SDI and HD-SDI. While STEAM used just HD input and output, the Videohub easily works in a mixed environment, including those using Digital Betacam, HD D-5, HDCAM (including SR), and DVCPRO HD. The Videohub also offers real-time video processing, such as a keying frame store and high-quality downconversions.
STEAM’s Videohub was controlled via a tricked out Boxx 8200 workstation with an internal disk array. However, Videohub also operates just fine under Windows XP or OS X on smaller workstations, allowing an editor to simultaneously edit and control the router from the same system. The Boxx 8200 used to control the cameras and monitors was fitted with a DeckLink HD Pro 4:4:4 card to process the HD-SDI camera feeds with uncompressed video. With this configuration, a single workstation served as the command center and capture system for the entire production. STEAM editors were able to perform rough edits and even preview effects on a single workstation.
The Videohub also managed and converted signals from more than eight monitors on the project. This included a Sony 20-inch standard-definition SDI reference monitor to let the clients see what viewers would see in the final spot. There were also two 23-inch LCD monitors connected to a HDLink, which converted SDI camera feeds from the Videohub into standard DVI signals at 1920x1200 pixels. While STEAM did not record sound on set, the HDLink also converts any incoming audio feeds when stereo monitor feeds are necessary. Finally, STEAM also used a Sony J3/902 multiformat player on set to show video dailies.
Bryant acknowledges the critical importance of Blackmagic in making his complex shoot come together. “There really wasn’t an alternative system or product pipeline to make this happen. Between Blackmagic Design and Adobe software, we turned a stage into a broadcast studio. The unique preview system built around the Videohub saved a lot of time and money, and let the client pre-approve many of the shots.”
It’s appropriate that spots announcing Discovery’s envelope-pushing HD micro-network were themselves created with the latest technology employed in a novel way. STEAM is now looking for the next opportunity to reconfigure software and hardware to set itself apart from the post production competition. Although the name STEAM is a bit of a joke, it’s one Bryant thinks the facility can afford. Having been a high-profile presenter for Adobe at several NABs and with spots like those for Discovery HD Theater on its reel, no one is likely to confuse STEAM power with 19th century technology.
