Our Post Production Tools
Post-production is all about flexibility and power, and for us to be able to interface with any of our production company and film producer clients as independent editors and colorists we have to run all of the common post-production software. So we have two full blown edit systems/bays running on new, heavily loaded Mac Pros, some of the fastest and most flexible computers around. Each of these runs DaVinci Resolve (our primary editor/color grading tool), Final Cut Studio, Final Cut X, Premiere and Avid Symphony – and we can add any other software you are using. Needless to say we have oodles of fast storage arrays everywhere.
Obviously this means that we can always interface with the client, but we can also bring in other editors and assistants to help on rush projects, or our clients can work on a system at the same time. We also run After Effects and 3DMax for 2D and 3D animation and compositing work.
CLAi have always been technology leaders in our industry, adopting tomorrow’s 4k UltraHD in 2008, and 6k/8k UltraHD Plus for both video editing and film color grading and correction today. Embracing and mastering the latest technology and software in every area of post production – if appropriate for the project – gives CLAi a unique edge, and a deep understanding of what is possible. It allows us the freedom to take on any type of project and attack it the right way without compromise, providing an unmatched level of quality and sophistication to enhance our creativity…
Covid hit our industry incredibly hard in so many ways, but it also made us face up to a new reality. One of these was to enable remote working on projects – something that we have always done, but Covid forced us to revisit these systems and approaches to post-production. As a direct result of this, while we are physically now based in beautiful Pebble Beach, south of San Francisco, we have put in place systems to do almost all of our everyday work remotely. This has enabled us to be very flexible, more cost effective than ever, and move through projects faster. Of course, we are still available for face to face get togethers and working – with you or here – which is essential at some points in a project but the positives are very real.
One of these which more and more clients are using is our pre-shoot consultation service. It is a free bonus that we provide to chat about cameras, shooting formats, lighting, DIT protocols, and – where you are doing your editing elsewhere – interfacing the edit and grade. We find that ensuring we are all on the same page and your systems can best align with ours can not only get the best technical and creative quality, but save you thousands of dollars in wasted hours and compromises down the line. Okay, I admit it, this makes our life much easier and more rewarding too…
These are a few of the software tools that we pair with our edit and colorist systems to use every day.
When it comes to color correction and grading we can switch any or all of these systems…
over to DaVinci Resolve Studio – our tool of choice for colorist work, which is why we have multiple seats available. Of course, still having the editing software available on each system makes moving between edit and grade easy, as does the ability to author BluRays for film festivals and kick files out over the internet on a nightly basis so the production team can see what has been done and pass back their notes… as we did as part of creating a 4k post workflow with the original RED, I have evolved a system that makes geography much less of a factor in who we can work with.
This innovation continues with our use of Ai technologies. We have been users of Colorlab Ai software since it’s inception, which we integrate into our Resolve color grading as a way of allowing Directors to brief us using samples from a huge database of movies and scenes. We are then able to use these same palettes, coloring and film stock emulations in the initial grade looks that we create for you at the start of a project, and refine in our grading process. It’s a fabulous way of integrating a common language into what we do, and goes beyond your initial style boards into defining the final look.
Last but not least, we can handle the final audio cleanup and mixing on many of the projects that we take on. It makes a lot of sense to tie the grade and this mix together as the colorist plays a big part in affecting what elements and movements in a scene impact on a viewer, and the mix should reflect this (which is not always/usually the case when you get the track back from the composer or sound studio). For this we usually turn to ProTools, or Resolve’s Fairlight audio tools, and we often involve one of our pals from a local sound studio in helping customize the shape of the audio.