ROUSH Media’s latest exciting project is “10,000 Days,” an original web series created by Eric Small and shot entirely on the RED camera. With DP Marco Mazzei, Visual Effects by CafeFX, and Sound Design by Tom Myers/Skywalker Sound, “10,000 Days” tells the story of Comet 23 which struck the Pacific Ocean with the magnitude of all the nuclear weapons in the world. The Beck family was among the lucky few who survived the heat blast and firestorms. And then the freezing began…

“10,000 Days” offered a unique challenge for ROUSH Media to provide end to end workflow/finishing solutions on a complex RED Camera project. The file-based footage and our data-centric SAN server infrastructure allowed easy collaboration between the visual effects and editorial companies. Utilizing Digital Vision’s Film Master digital grading and finishing system, Roush Media processed the RED R3D’s for dailies and editorial. Once the editor was finished with the cut, ROUSH Media conformed the shots to be used for VFX from the RED files. 2K DPX files with handles were sent to CafeFX for the VFX creation. As CafeFx finished each shot, they were sent back to ROUSH Media. The DPX files were converted to low res QuickTime files for the editor to replace in the edit. Now with the final edit completed with the new VFX shots, the Film Master was used for the final conform encompassing RED, DPX visual effects, and QuickTime Motion graphics files.

 Creating the look

Director Eric Small and DP Marco Mazzei knew the look they wanted. Roush Media pulled some high resolution stills from the RED footage as references during the dailies process. They used Photoshop to color correct these images and sent them to DI colorist Keith Roush as a starting point for the look. “Since an image is worth a thousand words, once I saw the images and I knew what they wanted, it was kind of like ‘300’ meets ‘The Day After Tomorrow,’” said Keith Roush.

We decided we wanted an ultra sharp image. “I did not want blurry snowflakes on the actor’s face,” said Keith Roush, DI colorist and founder of ROUSH Media. In a process developed by ROUSH Media Using Digital Vision’s DVO algorithms, the Film Master allowed the adjustment of texture as well as color, bypassing the OFPL setting from RED’s debayering and utilizing our own post filter process to control the levels of detail with better results in the image. We were also able to better mix RAW RED footage with DPX visual FX. Creator/Director, Eric Small, was extremely satisfied with the work flow: “I now have the digital bridge from the stories in my head to an online audience. I’m not sure it gets any better than that.”   

Working with the images in unique ways allowed us to remove some of the characteristic RED camera “look” and just create stunning images. At the recent REDucation event, Digital Vision showed the trailer of “10,000 Days” on a Sony SXRD 4K projector to some very excited DPs. One DP came up and asked what lenses we used to get the image to look so sharp!

View the Article Here      View Trailer Here