I thought i would take some blog space and geek out a bit. I feel its been too much talk about cultural revolutions and to little about pixel resolutions, RAID systems and grading software. This will be a quick walkthrough of our workflow, from production to post production

A simple schematic over our wokrflow

So let’s start from the beginning. Because we are a small team (3-4 people) on the road we travel very light with a minimum amount of lenses, lights and additional camera gear. One lens box and 3-4 lights with some different filters often do the trick. Also a roll of duct tape lets you mount anything on everything. The camera we use is the RED ONE digital cinema camera. As far as we are concerned its the only choice when shooting a feature length documentary the way presspauseplay is made. I don’t even want to think about the hassle of transporting, loading, unloading, storing and developing film stock, and the quality is as you know enough for any multi million dollar production. The RED is a big camera though, and even if its hard to move away from the 4K image quality we use the Canon 5D mkII to shoot in tricky situations and places were the RED would have been too eye catching.

For on camera storage we use the RED HHD and the flash cards, and then transfer that to two mirrored G-drive minis for backup while on the road. The media is later transferred to our RAID system for editing and backup. We also do an additional backup off-site in case of a fire or anything like that (knock on wood...).

This is what our RAID file structure looks like

As for the post-production its largely handled by Final cut studio. The editing is done directly with the camera generated _M proxies and even though this is not a workflow recommended by RED it works fine so far. These proxy sequences will later be sent to Apple Color for grading and online (they will be reconnected with the .R3D files) and rendered out as ProRes 4444 quicktimes. As with every other preferred RED workflow this will surely change and we will end up changing this part of the workflow as we go along. We’ve also teamed up with our friends at Redpipe to handle the final sound design.

There will be some more in depth updates on the process as we get more into editing.