3D Postproduction Advances

Claudio Hernández, editor, The Lady and the Reaper

One of this year's Oscar nominees for Best Animated Short Film, The Lady and the Reaper, is a mortal tale about the Grim Reaper's battle over an elderly woman with her self-satisfied doctor. Starting as a research endeavour, the short film prompted new techniques—emerging throughout its creative process—that carry application for future projects.

The idea for this short film arose from a competition of ideas among the members of Spanish animation house Kandor Moon, with the goal of taking a technological step forward to create a new film using the latest advances in animation and 3D editing technology. The winning idea, submitted by art team member Javier Recio, launched Recio and team into a two-year production that combined detailed art studies, storyboards, animatics, animation system improvements, lighting, rendering, composition, mastering, and more. The short film was experimental, risky, free of commercial restrictions and both artistically and technically ambitious.

As the story's production evolved, the team brought several goals to light that required the in-depth involvement of the Kandor postproduction departments for composition, 3D stereo, and editing. First, the imaging had to be as close as possible to the color pallet chosen by the director. Second, in order to move the production team forward, they had to animate in a much higher resolution than previous projects. Finally, Kandor's newest endeavour had to test and use the 3D stereo format for animation. Over the next several months, these goals served as the driving force behind all work carried out against The Lady and the Reaper, and also spawned the implementation of new work platforms.

The editorial team combined render layers at a colour depth of 32 bits using The Foundry's Nuke compositing system. TIFF images (16-bit depth) were created for output.

To accommodate the 3D stereo images, the number of renders and compositions doubled. A camera system, for controlling depth perception, was developed and monitored with Zalman 3D monitors using active glasses for offline viewing and large-format projectors for final verification.

The editorial workflow included Avid Media Composer systems and Avid MetaFuze, a free application, to conform the sequences. After initially editing in 2D, the editorial team moved to 3D views during the final phases of offline editorial, using Avid Media Composer's stereoscopic editing capabilities to ensure synchronization between left and right eye views.

An Avid Unity shared-storage system served as the main repository for the postproduction team's final resolution frames. The Unity system acted as a bridge between editing and composition departments, saving the team hours of postproduction time by eliminating data traffic and enabling cross-department access to the Avid MXF files. Both the composition and editing teams systems were connected to Unity via a 4GB fiber network, which ensured shared access, immediate availability and a reliable read rate across multiple creative contributors.

For the online digital color correction and conform, the original TIFFs were sent to Evasion Digital in Madrid, along with the Avid EDL generated at Kandor, to create the final film master (16 bits color depth). This process produced a reliable and accurate result of the color palettes in line with the director's original selection.

As such, Evasión was responsible for the color correction and creation of the master for 35mm screening. In addition, the material was conformed with two views for stereo 3D (left and right)—both previously color corrected by Kandor specifically for the digital material. Handing over the footage, Technicolor London produced a digital cinema package (DCP) for 3D display which was also compatible with Dolby 3D.

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Arama Facilities in Madrid created the film's sound elements and music. Kandor sent the sound tracks in AAF multichannel format—which became the basis for designing the final sound in Surround 5.1 format. Arama Facilities used an Avid Pro Tools system to accurately read the relevant information from Kandor's offline Media Composer sessions. This integrated audio and video workflow provided a convenient flow of continuous updates and feedback on the sound progress.

Once the soundtrack was completed, Kandor received a reference stereo sound track to produce a general offline for checking synchronization. The surround master was included in the final laboratory phrase, for the 35mm, and in the 3D stereo DCP generation in Technicolor London.

To view the 8-minute short film, which was nominated but did not win the Oscar Sunday, check out the official site.

Javier Fernández: Post-Production and Digital Colour Correction Supervisor
Claudio Hernández: Avid Film Editor and Offline Manager
Antonio Montes: 3D stereo format image and DCP Supervisor.