10,000 Days Case Study
Film Master Powers Roush Media for"10,000 Days". Color Grading and Finishing Performed for Web Series Shot with RED
“10,000 Days”, an original web series created by Eric Small, was shot entirely on the RED camera by cinematographer Marco Mazzei and finished at Roush Media. With Visual Effects by CafeFX and Sound Design by Tom Myers of Skywalker Sound, “10,000 Days” used top technical talent to help tell the dramatic story of the Beck family – who were lucky enough to survive Comet 23 which struck the Pacific Ocean with the combined magnitude of all the nuclear weapons in the world.
Heading to Roush Media for their end-to-end workflow was a great decision for the production. Utilizing their color grading and final finishing ensured that the images delivered were exactly what the creative team had in mind.
"10,000 Days” offered a unique challenge for Roush Media, which took the complex RED Camera project from dailies to delivery. After the files were imported, it was time for Small and Mazzei to go for the look they always knew they wanted. During dailies, Roush Media pulled high resolution stills from the RED footage. Small and Mazzei then used Photoshop to color correct these images and sent them back to their DI colorist as a reference point for final color. ‘I knew what they wanted,’ said Keith Roush, DI colorist and founder of Roush Media. ‘They were looking for something kind of like “300” meets “The Day After Tomorrow”.’
Roush knew that utilizing the picture enhancement tools in Film Master would secure the look that Small and Mazzei wanted, including the ‘hyper sharp’ images they’d discussed. Roush used Digital Vision's DVO algorithms from Film Master, adjusting the texture as well as color, bypassing the OFPL setting from RED’s debayering and utilizing their own post filter process to control the levels of detail with better results for the final image. The Roush team was also able to mix RAW RED footage with DPX visual effects files with ease.
Creator/Director Small was extremely satisfied with the workflow, ‘I now have a digital bridge from the stories in my head to an online audience. I’m not sure it gets any better than that. Working with the images in unique ways allowed us to remove some of the characteristic RED camera “look” and just create really stunning images.’ At a recent REDucation event, Digital Vision showed the trailer of “10,000 Days” on a Sony SXRD 4K projector to some very excited cinematographers, one of whom came up and asked what lenses were used to achieve the incredibly sharp images.
