The hottest film at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival
By Todd Sali, Editor and Founder, thesandbox
Onlined using the Multibridge Pro and the Workgroup Videohub, ‘Fields of Fuel’ was a labor of love by Todd Sali of thesandbox and Darius Fischer of Digital Neural Axis (DNA). Both editors are tremendous advocates of renewable resources and environmentally responsible behavior, collaborating as co-editors on Fields of Fuel, winner in the category of Documentary at Sundance Film Festival this year. This show-stopping documentary film has garnered worldwide attention as oil prices skyrocket and concerns grow over environmental pollution.
Darius and I were fortunate enough to have worked with Josh Tickell, environmental activist and director of Fields of Fuel, on several projects. When he approached us to work on Fields of Fuel, we were excited to be part of this incredible film and opportunity.
Fields of Fuel is a feature length HD documentary about one man's search for an alternative to America's dependence on foreign oil. Shot in the United States, Australia, Germany, Sweden and Brazil, the film unveils a curtain of deception covering America's crippling dependence on foreign oil as it explores one possible solution to the coming energy crisis. The film is being taken across the USA as part of a national community action and educational campaign to transform American cities and towns to green energy and make energy independence a priority issue. Josh grew up in Australia until the age of nine, when he and his brother moved to Louisiana with their mother. He was affected by the oil pollution surrounding him in his new home, which led to his interest in environmental issues and Fields of Fuel.
The collaborative online editing between thesandbox and DNA was done at thesandbox office, with color correction and motion graphics being done at the DNA office nearby. Darius and I are experienced post production supervisors and online editors, and we did just about everything in the online process -- up-rezzed, conformed, fine cut, and even brought in music.
We were excited to work on a project so close to our hearts – we are passionate about the environment. When we were asked to co-produce Fields of Fuel, we had barely two months to finish the film for Sundance, and we couldn’t afford to lose a second of time. Since Darius already had the basic Blackmagic Design online workflow in place, we knew we could depend on their tools to work as hard as we were working. We put on all of our hats (editing, producing, cinematography, graphics design, etc), locked our arms together, and hit the ground running. But the biggest challenge was dealing with the huge number of different video formats that had to be onlined and turned into 1080 ProRes HQ at 24 frames per second.
We had an incredibly short period of time in which to pull off a massive non-traditional online. Instead of working with beautifully clean and reliable EDLs with all tape sources properly logged like a traditional online, we were handed video in about a dozen different formats – everything from SD video, including Beta SP, D-Beta, HI-8 tapes to lots of HDCAM, P2, and DV, YouTube, and anything else with different framerates and pulldown – and it all had to be conformed into 24p 1080 ProRes HQ. Using a top-of-the-line Teranex and the Multibridge Pro, we were able to quickly and easily convert all the different formats into ProRes HQ, checking the Teranex settings were correct thanks to the Multibridge Pro monitoring. The final result came from a 23.98PsF Final Cut Pro timeline laid off to tape by the Multibridge Pro adding 3.2 pulldown on the fly, creating the final 1080i/59.94 festival screening version in HDCAM for Sundance.
Blackmagic Design products enabled the highest quality capture, layback, monitoring and deck control, and easiest hardware switching in the challenging final online phase for the film’s final post production phase. We were excited to use the Multibridge Pro with all its new options and because it works with just about a wide range of analog and digital video hardware out there and can convert, if need be, every format to HD/SDI or HDMI, something we thought would be crucial with all the different video formats we were using. It performed extremely well, giving us the highest quality pixel for pixel realtime monitoring of all the material that we were upconverting into our 1080p online. Seeing mistakes as they occurred helped minimize mistakes. There was hardly any time to re-do anything a second time.
We worked on MacPro 3.0 Ghz systems at thesandbox, using the Multibridge Pro for capture and layback. Additionally, we used a Boland 42” LCD and a Teranex VC300 x4-fc-2 converter. The brain of the Xsan was a G5 and we used a G-Speed XL to handle the large storage requirements of the wide variety of video formats. Color correction and motion graphics were done at the DNA facility on a MacPro with another Boland 26” LCD running Apple’s ‘Color’. All the hardware -- computers, drives, monitors – were routed through the Workgroup Videohub which easily enabled either of us to switch control of any decks or the Teranex or our output to the 42” LCD monitor or to a Sony 20” CRT.
The Blackmagic Design Multibridge Pro instantly switches between SD, HD and 2K, in 4:2:2 or 4:4:4 video quality, connecting to PC or Mac computers with high speed 10 Gb/s PCI Express for the world's highest quality editing system, or use independently as a bi-directional SDI video converter. It is compatible with a wide range of video software including Final Cut Pro, Premiere Pro, After Effects®, Fusion™, Photoshop® and many others for both Mac and Windows-based PCs.
The Workgroup Videohub is an industrial strength routing switcher that easily eliminates complicated manual cable patching by connecting everyone together into a fully featured professional routing switcher. It automatically switches between standard definition SDI and high definition SDI with full 12x24 routing and deck control.
About “Fields of Fuel”
Produced by Greg Reitman, Dale Rosenbloom & Daniel Assael
Directed by Josh Tickell Written by Johnny O’hara
Executive Producers Robbie Little, Stephen Nemeth, & John Goldsmith
For more information, visit www.fieldsoffuel.com
About DNA
DNA is a visual effects, design & digital post-production boutique with facilities in Venice, California, and London, England. DNA offers a broad range of visual communication services including feature film visual effects (The Aviator, Superman Returns and Apocalypto), as well as trailers, co-producing and post-production on award winning feature length documentaries. DNA, is carbon neutral, offsetting carbon with native energy since 2004. For more information, visit www.dnacorp.com
