Filmmaker Emmanuel Benbihy scored an international hit with Paris, je t’aime. The concept of interweaving multiple romantic stories directed by a stellar group of directors featuring an all-star cast in one of the world’s most glamorous cities proved irresistible to audiences around the globe.

For the second installment of his projected multi-Cities of Love opus, Benbihy focused on New York. After attracting 10 directors, including Mira Nair, Wen Jiang and Natalie Portman, for New York, I Love You, Benbihy began the process of simultaneously pre- and post-producing 10 separate but interrelated films.

“Even before scouting locations, we needed to find a large, centrally located, well equipped and extremely flexible production/postproduction facility that could accommodate our intricate schedule,” Benbihy says. “We had three AD teams working simultaneously. There were times when we anticipated having as many as five directors working in-house concurrently and other times when only one or two would be in residence. Our timetable was extraordinarily complex.”

A number of Benbihy’s NYC team members recommended Mega Playground as a centralized headquarters for the ten-month project. “We met with Mega Playground principal Eitan Hakami and chief technical officer Terry Brown early in January 2008,” Benbihy recalls. “As we toured the facility we found production offices, Avid editing suites, a DI color-correction suite, online and offline HD suites, telecine and dub capabilities. They had everything we needed on a technical level, not to mention an extremely comfortable lounge and dining areas and a spectacular view of the Hudson River. We felt immediately at home.”

“Emmanuel explained that there would be periods of extremely intense overlapping production/postproduction, and other less busy periods as some segments wrapped and other directors began their assignments,” Hakami says. “We customized an agreement that would enable the production to expand and contract their space commitment in keeping with their workflow fluctuations. We knew they would be with us for most of 2008, and that they would utilize virtually all our services. We wanted their experience to be pleasant, cost effective and efficient,” he adds.

Technical conversations with Hakami and CTO Terry Brown further assured Benbihy that choosing Mega Playground was a wise move. “They have an encyclopedic range of experience with DIs, dubbing, dailies and all the support services,” he says. “They were able to answer our questions and resolve many of our technical issues. We developed a solid collaborative dialogue and felt throughout our ten-month stay that they genuinely cared about New York, I Love You.

Describing Mega Playground’s role, CTO Terry Brown explains the film was originally planned to be shot entirely in the Panavision Genesis format, but a number of the director/cinematographer teams insisted on shooting film. “Ultimately we were working with material from Genesis, 35mm 3-perf film, Canon HDV and Panasonic P2 and VariCam,” he says. “During Genesis camera tests shot by Mike McDonough, a primary NYILY DP, the images appeared somewhat noisy. We found the camera’s equivalent film speed was being overrated at 500 ISO, when it should have been closer to 250. Making this change and utilizing waveform monitors on-set allowed optimized exposure.”

To maximize on-set pre-visualization and provide proper dailies and editorial images, Brown created a series of base LUTs (lookup tables) for the Panavision gamma processor unit (used both on-set and for dailies processing). The LUTs visually emulated the DI room master display and allowed the dailies and on-set monitoring to accurately represent the final image. While on set, the DIT made subtle modifications to the basic LUTs when necessary and sent them along with the dailies for processing.

“New York, I Love You was a uniquely challenging assignment,” Brown emphasizes. “Beyond the technical issues related to seamlessly stitching together a number of disparate image formats, our colorists, Mike Smollin and Jason Crump, were working with ten director/DP teams instead of the usual one. They did an absolutely superb job.”

“Vivendi Entertainment will show our film in the U.S. on Oct. 16, and we hope to repeat the great success we enjoyed with Paris, je t’aime,” Benbihy concludes. “New York is truly one of the world’s most beautiful and hospitable cities. Our directors and cinematographers made extraordinary use of its inimitable locations and idiosyncratic atmosphere. We plan to film a number of I Love You features in great cities around the world, it will be interesting to discover whether they can duplicate the level of comfort and hospitality we enjoyed at Mega Playground.”