Post in the Field

The LightIRON Outpost consists of a 32TB RAID storage system, an Apple Mac Pro tower running LightIRON custom software that facilitates dailies creation, and multiple RED Rocket cards that accelerate transcoding into ProRes or Avid files in realtime for editors.

What I set out to prove with LightIRON Digital was that you can take it with you, at least in terms of postproduction service. Though LightIRON is a Hollywood post company that focuses on end-to-end file-based workflows, we have developed a virtual on-set extension of ourselves housed in a wheeled cart no bigger than a mini bar fridge (beer not included). Dubbed "LightIRON Outpost," it is designed for file-based camera shoots, and can store, back up and turn around dailies in realtime right there on set. And those dailies can be sent wirelessly from our Outpost to mobile devices and viewed on iPhones, iPods, iPads, and the like.

Basically, Outpost is what LightIRON does on wheels. Using progressive technology of file-based cameras, we are able to deliver dailies, check files and back them up all on set—and it can be a remote location miles from civilization. Everyone still gets the footage the same day. One of the most important things we can offer a production is compression of time, especially for people working on TV shows, but also those working on location out of the country. No one wants to waste time waiting for the timed dailies to come back if they don''t have to.

No more shipping footage to the lab and waiting sometimes for days for dailies to arrive. That bodes particularly well for productions filming in remote locations, such as Icon Productions'' How I Spent My Summer Vacation. Starring Mel Gibson, the film recently shot in Mexico using the Red Digital Cinema Red One digital file-based camera and one of our LightIRON Outposts on set. In developing Outpost, we have been working with Steve Freebairn, one of the industry''s leading digital imaging technicians, and Freebairn served as the DIT on Summer Vacation. The Red One camera records without being tethered to hard drives and flash cards, and we just connect it to Outpost— a processing lab inside of a mobile box. We''re not tethered to the camera, and we can roll the Outpost cart to wherever they want us.

The portable Outpost consists of a 32TB RAID storage system, an Apple Mac Pro tower running LightIRON custom software that facilitates dailies creation, and multiple RED Rocket cards that accelerate transcoding into ProRes or Avid files in realtime for editors. Files can be viewed in full resolution, full de-Bayer format with an onboard 2K flatscreen monitor. The system can run off a little putt-putt generator and has battery backup for safety.

It''s important to note that the quality is far better than DVD dailies—not just to the iPad, but we can stream it to Pix or to Apple TV or something like that so they can watch dailies on a TV and judge things like critical focus, not just performance. We build our own secure wireless network on set that covers the location and streams to multiple wireless devices.

For LightIRON Outpost, we employ our own mobile application called Lightstream that does more than just playback. It includes chapter markers and can group clips by scene or other parameters, and directors of photography can create and make notes on still frames that then can be easily emailed.

With an Internet connection, we can push those main files out of Outpost to a server, whether it''s back to us in L.A. or somewhere else. We actually moved files to Australia for Summer Vacation. Icon Productions had the raw files backed up to the 32TB RAID as well as to LTO4. (Those were shuttled back to LightIRON HQ in Los Angeles for safekeeping.) Some productions like Icon end up purchasing the RAIDs, which we hold in our vault until time for the digital intermediate.

Having an Outpost on set offers significant savings for the production. We start around 15 percent cheaper because we''re eliminating the overhead of a traditional post laboratory. As your shooting ratio goes up, the savings increase because you''re never billed by the hour for footage. You have a manager of the data on set anyway to do backup. If we train that person to run the cart, we''re only adding a small percentage to what they do already. It just so happens that you''re paying for that person to be there all day— it doesn''t matter how many hours you actually shoot or how many copies you need to make.

Outpost isn''t designed for tape-based capture systems, which require a more complex, unwieldy infrastructure, thus defeating the very purpose of a mobile Outpost, but it isn''t limited to just Red cameras on major motion pictures either. Outpost can be used with other file-based recording cameras such as Silicon Imaging''s SI-2K and Canon''s EOS 5D Mark II and EOS 7D DSLRs. We have projects under way to integrate the system with Arri''s new Alexa camera.

Outposts have been established on smaller productions, television series and even commercials. Undercovers, the new NBC series from J.J. Abrams, is using Outpost while shooting with the Red camera.

The fourth installment of Disney''s Pirates saga, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, is shooting in 3D in Hawaii with Red cameras and has an Outpost manned by Freebairn and Zach Hilton on set. Well, technically it''s in a hotel ballroom to take advantage of that facility''s high-speed Internet connection to move files back and forth to Los Angeles. Dailies for the director and backup, however, are happening all on location. In the case of Pirates, they''re shooting with up to four 3D rigs. We process those separately for backup and make 2D dailies. (For mobile devices, it''s currently a 2D world, but not for long.) The Red company has built software called RedCine-X, which will display dailies in 3D on monitors in real time right out of the Mac computer. In fact, any project we are a part of with Red, we can play dailies out of a Mac in realtime right using RedCine-X.

As people see more and more of our carts out there, they are going to realize that there are numerous advantages over shipping it to an off-site lab. The end result is not only more creative control, but also the best way to insure a metadata-rich handshake between production and post.

The CEO of LightIRON Digital, Michael Cioni has more than a decade of progressive postproduction filmmaking experience. Before forming LightIRON Digital, he spent six years at PlasterCITY Digital Post, which he co-founded in 2003 and built into one of Hollywood''s preeminent desktop-based postproduction facilities. He is a founding member and instructor at REDucation, the official Red camera education and training program. He sits on the board of directors of both the Hollywood Post Alliance and Filmmakers Alliance, and he served as an adjunct faculty member for USC's Annenberg School of Journalism.