Stargate Studios Gets Streamlined with Colorista Free and LUT Buddy

 

Three Hollywood series that have recently hit your television are ABC’s Pan Am, ABC’s Revenge, and AMC’s The Walking Dead. What do these new TV series have in common? They are all edited by Stargate Studios, an internationally renowned company that provides state-of-the-art production and post-production services for film and television. For advanced color grading on all of these TV series, Stargate Studios uses our Magic Bullet tools, Colorista Free and LUT Buddy, as an essential part of their workflow.

 

ABC’s ‘Pan Am’ footage, before Stargate Studios goes to work.

ABC’s ‘Pan Am’ scene, after post-production and color correction.

 

Pan Am is a prime example of a current Hollywood trend: Using feature film production technology to create television series. Chris Martin, a Visual Effects Supervisor at Stargate Studios, has seen a huge increase in the number of TV shows that are doing this by working in non-linear color space. These productions are shooting with new digital camera systems like the Arri Alexa, and are mastering in the camera's native logarithmic color space.

For the pilot episode of ABC’s Pan Am, Stargate Studios had to make sure their VFX and color pipeline could quickly and efficiently handle the sequences sent to them from the studio. To help manage their different networks and camera footage, Stargate Studios used Magic Bullet Colorista Free and Magic Bullet LUT Buddy to create a color correction workflow. These two products instantly filled a gap in their workflow and allowed Stargate Studios to seamlessly integrate Look Up Tables (LUTs) from multiple sources such as camera manufacturers, Directors of Photography and Colorists into their After Effects workflow.

VFX Supervisor Chris Martin explained, “For us this is really a utility that fills a gap in reading LUTs and CDL information. It's... about efficient and deployable tools that fill a niche in our workflow.”

The Pan Am footage is shot with the ARRI ALEXA, which captures Log-C for the most dynamic color space for flexible color grading. Color decisions are made in a color bay with high end grading tools such as DaVinci. The challenge for Stargate Studios is their ability to match the ‘look’ set by the high end system from within an After Effects pipeline. Typically, this information is sent as a 3D LUT or a CDL, two formats that are fully supported in Colorista Free and LUT Buddy.

Chris Martin gave us the background. “The sequences we receive from the set come to us with very precise color specifications pre-approved by the directors. In the case of Pan Am, we had to recreate the rich, saturated Kodachrome look that captures the essence of the show, and we have to do it quickly and within budget. As much of our VFX and post work is done in After Effects, we needed a solution that filled an important gap – something that could read the sophisticated color data while integrating with our After Effects workflow. Red Giant’s Colorista and LUT Buddy filled that gap. They are so powerful, in fact, our artists have become accustomed to working in an uncompressed log color space with very high end results.”

ABC’s ‘Pan Am’ footage, before Stargate Studios goes to work.

ABC’s ‘Pan Am’ scene, after post-production and color correction.

Because the color correction pipeline, integrated with Colorista and LUT Buddy, was so successful, Stargate Studios implemented it studio-wide. The Stargate post team is now empowered with Colorista and LUT Buddy on every desktop, and the pipeline is used on all the projects coming out of the studio. Artists are able to quickly and easily see LUTs generated by the client, and recreate each look with precision and quality using Colorista.

“The color pipeline we created for the Pan Am pilot was so successful, we’ve implemented it studio-wide and it is now a critical component for all the projects we’re working on today, including ABC’s Revenge and AMC’s The Walking Dead,” said Chris Martin. “Color is such an important part of the post production workflow, and Red Giant’s support has been invaluable. They understand our needs and have delivered a tool set that provides our artists a plethora of color utensils and options, so much so that we’re now using it on every show in our line-up!”

Below are before/after images from AMC’s The Walking Dead, which premiered on Sunday, October 16th.

For more information about Stargate Studios and their capabilities, please visit their site.

To learn more about Red Giant’s color production pipeline tools, please visit Red Giant

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