Following closely on the heels of the purchase of BEAN, which brought ace Colorist Ben Eagleton into the fold, Smoke & Mirrors has launched two new state-of-the-art color grading suites and processes for both film and digital transfers, as well as a massive centralized storage system that has vastly sped up the entire grading process. The pair of new systems - the only ones of their kind in the world - are the brainchild of Eagleton, who helped develop the world's first purely data-centric grading facility utilizing the best DI tools available, practically making the old methods obsolete. Smoke & Mirrors is touting the new technique as revolutionary, immediately setting them apart from the competition by scanning all the footage from a job - rather than just selected takes - with the added ability to permanently archive and retrieve the material in faster than real time.
"When Ben opened BEAN, it literally transformed the industry in Australia," noted Smoke & Mirrors CD/Founder Sean Broughton. "This pair of new color grading suites, with their distinct advantages in speed, flexibility, accuracy, cleanliness, and cost over all of our competitors, will similarly set us apart and cement Ben's reputation as one of the most innovative minds in post production today."
The new system, which will offer improved workflow in a variety of formats, including film, RED, and other digital files, will offer Smoke & Mirrors' clients advantages in five distinct areas:
Speed: Rather than going through the typical cumbersome process of interpreting an EDL, loading it into a film scanner, selecting handle length, scanning the selected material, and transferring data to the color corrector, Smoke & Mirrors will scan all material straight after the dailies transfer so that a client can begin color grading within 60 minutes of receiving the EDL. Flame will also have instant access to the graded material to speed the process to the final conform.
Flexibility: Rather than sending an EDL back to the scanning department when a change is requested and waiting for the new material to get scanned, S&M will have instant access to every frame shot, meaning revisions to an edit can be dealt with instantly and without the client incurring any extra costs.
Accuracy: Instead of having to rescan film, which could potentially result in slightly different scans to the original work, Smoke & Mirrors' system will guarantee identical colorimetry and pixel accurate positioning by using the same scan for regrades or multiple passes at the same work.
Cleanliness: Whereas traditional processes require handling each piece of film multiple times, Smoke & Mirrors' process minimizes film handling, dramatically reducing the chances of negative dirt or damage.
Cost: As a consequence of these benefits, Smoke & Mirrors will save their clients time and money.
"We took everything we knew about color grading and put it all together to develop the best system we could think of," noted Eagleton. "I'm really proud of this new system and the multiple ways that it will help our clients. The goal of everyone here is to remain at the forefront of the industry and we did that first by redefining coloring practices. We're looking forward to our next big innovation very soon."