Made In The Shade: Reach for the Stars
Virgin Galactic is a new venture from the Virgin Group that will make aeronautical history; theyʼre taking civilian passengers on flights into sub-orbital space. The excitement surrounding the project is immense, and right at the heart of the action is Carl Fospero and his independent film production company, Made in the Shade.
Theyʼve been commissioned to document the whole enterprise from start to finish, from the construction of SpaceShipTwo and the “Mothership” to the training of the astronauts, capturing each moment in high-definition video and editing the footage with Final Cut Studio on a Quad-core Mac Pro and a MacBook Pro.
Naturally, Fospero is very happy. “This is a wonderful opportunity for me – as an independent producer, director and journalist – to be exposed to an exciting project which is so new and in constant development. Virgin Galactic has inspired a lot of people on a lot of levels and itʼs been great fun”.
Carl Fospero (holding the camera) and Virgin Galactic's Ned Abel-Smith at the unveiling of the Mothership, 28th July 2008.
The films are used as promotional material to generate interest and ticket sales, the centrepiece of which will be the countdown of the inaugural flight and its launch into space. This footage will stand testament to a bold new era in space travel.
In contrast, Fospero can still recall the moment when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon in 1969. “I grew up in America expecting one day Iʼd be up there too. My friends all pretended to be astronauts. Many people who have already signed up with Virgin Galactic have had the same experience as kids and are taking advantage of a genuine opportunity to actually visit space”.
But while Vigin Galactic is a prestigious client to work for, the project also presents its own unique set of challenges. At any given time Fospero and his team might be required to film the construction and assembly of the SpaceShipTwo in California, and then travel halfway across the world to a press conference in Sweden. With a punishing schedule of tight deadlines and geographical distance, Made in the Shade required a technical solution that was both flexible, ultra-portable and stable, whilst also being able to process footage of the highest quality.
This is why Final Cut Studio has proved to be so indispensable. “Today Iʼm able to shoot and immediately review HD footage on my MacBook Pro", says Fospero. "I can edit on the spot, and burn the movie onto a DVD for the client to take away. Itʼs just incredible”.
Fospero decided from the outset that the project should be filmed in the highest resolution available, thereby making it “future-proof”. That meant abandoning the standard definition broadcast resolution of Digital Betacam and DVCAM and moving up to HD formats.
Primarily he shoots with SONY’s HDCAM HDC series and for filming that requires a bit more portability and agility, SONY’s XDCAM EX. “Uncompressed HDCAM is an amazing format but in terms of size, tape expense, memory storage and processing demands for immediate use, it’s pretty heavy duty”, explains Fospero. “Conversely, the new Sony XDCAM EX fits nicely into a carry-on, and records compressed HD to SXS memory cards (8GB or 16GB). Thereʼs no need for a playback decks or anything more complex than my MacBook Pro, a power cable and a camera. Effectively, I can store an entire HD production facility in the overhead compartment of an airplane”.
“We recently had a situation where three full-days of shooting resulted in 19 HDCAM tapes of footage. We had one week to put an EPK (Electronic Press Kit) together for a press conference in New York. My concern at the time was getting all the HD footage cut down and ready in acceptable standards for the global media, without losing the beautiful quality of the pictures we had captured”.
Fortunately, help was at hand with Appleʼs ProRes 422 HQ codec, a high-definition, lossy video compression format thatʼs a standard feature of Final Cut Studio. “Itʼs a phenomenal compression. The codec allows us to cut HD on our Macs without expensive HD cards or large computer systems. All we needed was 7200rpm storage drives, an 800 firewire cable and a MacBook Pro”.
“Though I could have hired an HD playback deck and captured the rushes myself”, continues Fospero, “Iʼm a firm believer that just because we can do everything ourselves, doesnʼt necessarily mean that we should. So I contacted On-Sight Upstairs, a professional facility, who took our footage and dubbed off 45 minutes of important material that we planned to edit. The footage was then converted to ProRes 422 HQ movie files and copied over to a portable hard drive. The entire process took about three hours. We took the hard drive away, edited an EPK and returned to On-Sight’s editing suite. They opened my FCP project file, legalised the footage, checked audio, colour corrected and output it to HD, DigiBeta PAL /NTSC (Digibeta was required by the broadcast media)”. Within a matter of days, Made in the Shade was able to meet all of the press needs, something they couldnʼt have easily accomplished otherwise.
In addition to the time savings, thereʼs a matter of budget savings too. Fospero first used ProRes 422 HQ on a previous job for another client: “It was the perfect solution because the budget was creeping up and up, and we thought that cutting HDCAM would require a costly HD editing suite. There was no time for off-lining. Instead, we made significant savings with ProRes 422 HQ which we were able to pass on to the client, and Iʼve been a big fan ever since”.
