May 11, 2004
Though their subjects varied widely, three of this year's Academy Award-nominated documentaries had one thing in common. "My Architect" and "Capturing the Friedmans," as well as the winning film, "The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons of Robert S. McNamara," were finished at PostWorks New York. Winning the Oscar was a major achievement for Director Errol Morris, whose films, including "Thin Blue Line" and "Mr. Death," have been repeatedly overlooked by the Academy. It was no less a technical achievement for PostWorks, which played an integral role in the film's complex post-production.
"Fog of War" contained an array of archival footage in different formats, frame rates and aspect ratios. The film's centerpiece, an interview with Robert McNamara, who served as Secretary of Defense under presidents Kennedy and Johnson and was one of the architect's of America's Vietnam War policy, was shot on 24p high-definition video using the Sony HDW F900 camera. Additional footage-such as dominoes falling across a map of Southeast Asia and war medals in a box-was shot on 35mm. Numerous graphic elements were delivered as 1920x1080 TIFF files.
It was PostWorks' job to convert, conform and color-correct these diverse bits of source material into one technically cohesive HD-resolution master.
"Working with the multiple formats was the most challenging thing," says PostWorks CEO Billy Baldwin. "We laid everything into a 24p timeline so we could create an ultimately seamless element, essentially using 24p HD as our digital intermediate element."
The archival footage arrived on everything from D1 and Digital Betacam to PAL and NTSC VHS. "When we were fortunate, like with the Library of Congress materials, we were able to get film elements that we could transfer to HD, which was a great luxury. But there were many elements on video that we couldn't trace back to film. We didn't have access to the original film elements," says Baldwin.
Senior online editor Peter Heady used the Quantel iQ and Teranex Star-Up up-converter to convert and conform the archival source footage into the 24p format. A Spirit DataCine was used to transfer the 35mm footage to high def. Heady created a textless submaster of the film, which was then color corrected by Eric Alvarado on a da Vinci 2K. The project was sent to Avid Nitris for titling and exported directly from the Nitris to ARRILASER film recorders.
The entire process took about a month during the spring of 2003. "We were getting the film ready for last year's Cannes Film Festival," says Baldwin. "After the Cannes screening, Morris came back with a re-edit that called for a few minor adjustments, and we made the changes. It debuted at Cannes was re-edited before it went off for its final film recording."
Having acquired The Tape House Companies and SMA Realtime in May 2003, PostWorks is a thriving New York post facility housed in Manhattan's SoHo district. The company, which boasts 25 Avid offline edit suites as well as full color-correction and HD capabilities, is making a name for itself in the world of documentaries.
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