Why Apple Pro Technologies?
Mobile Lab's main workstation contains the maximum configuration of processors, ram, SSD's and graphics boards in Apple's new, hyperfast Mac Pro, also fitted with the added Afterburner - a card defined as a "Game-Changing Accelerator". This monster machine can process contemporarily 6 streams of ProRes 8K RAW or 23 streams of ProRes 4K RAW.
The ability to grade native 8K is even more critical than editing it.
Mobile Digital Lab also sports two of Apple's brilliant new 1000 nits. 32" displays - the 6k XDR's, which can also display HDR. In the words of Jarred Land, president Red Digital Cinema "Apple’s new hardware brings a mind‐blowing level of performance to proxy‐free r3d workflows".
Grant Petty, CEO of Blackmagic Design adds;
"With the new Mac Pro and Afterburner, we see full‐quality 8K performance in real-time with colour correction and effects, something we could never dream of doing before. DaVinci Resolve running on the new Mac Pro is easily the fastest way to edit, grade, and finish movies and TV shows.”
"In my modest opinion, I can say that I bought my first Mac more than 40 years ago, and I've always preferred them to other operating systems, thanks to their ease of use and reliability; now that the new powerful multi-processor pro workstations have become extremely powerful workhorses, and offer the flexibility of numerous card slots, its a no - brainer". (co-founder David Bush)
Why Apple Pro Technologies?
Mobile Lab's main workstation contains the maximum configuration of processors, ram, SSD's and graphics boards in Apple's new, hyperfast Mac Pro, also fitted with the added Afterburner - a card defined as a "Game-Changing Accelerator". This monster machine can process contemporarily 6 streams of ProRes 8K RAW or 23 streams of ProRes 4K RAW.
The ability to grade native 8K is even more critical than editing it.
Mobile Digital Lab also sports two of Apple's brilliant new 1000 nits. 32" displays - the 6k XDR's, which can also display HDR. In the words of Jarred Land, president Red Digital Cinema "Apple’s new hardware brings a mind‐blowing level of performance to proxy‐free r3d workflows".
Grant Petty, CEO of Blackmagic Design adds;
"With the new Mac Pro and Afterburner, we see full‐quality 8K performance in real-time with colour correction and effects, something we could never dream of doing before. DaVinci Resolve running on the new Mac Pro is easily the fastest way to edit, grade, and finish movies and TV shows.”
"In my modest opinion, I can say that I bought my first Mac more than 40 years ago, and I've always preferred them to other operating systems, thanks to their ease of use and reliability; now that the new powerful multi-processor pro workstations have become extremely powerful workhorses, and offer the flexibility of numerous card slots, its a no - brainer". (co-founder David Bush)
Why Apple Pro Technologies?
Mobile Lab's main workstation contains the maximum configuration of processors, ram, SSD's and graphics boards in Apple's new, hyperfast Mac Pro, also fitted with the added Afterburner - a card defined as a "Game-Changing Accelerator". This monster machine can process contemporarily 6 streams of ProRes 8K RAW or 23 streams of ProRes 4K RAW.
The ability to grade native 8K is even more critical than editing it.
Mobile Digital Lab also sports two of Apple's brilliant new 1000 nits. 32" displays - the 6k XDR's, which can also display HDR. In the words of Jarred Land, president Red Digital Cinema "Apple’s new hardware brings a mind‐blowing level of performance to proxy‐free r3d workflows".
Grant Petty, CEO of Blackmagic Design adds;
"With the new Mac Pro and Afterburner, we see full‐quality 8K performance in real-time with colour correction and effects, something we could never dream of doing before. DaVinci Resolve running on the new Mac Pro is easily the fastest way to edit, grade, and finish movies and TV shows.”
"In my modest opinion, I can say that I bought my first Mac more than 40 years ago, and I've always preferred them to other operating systems, thanks to their ease of use and reliability; now that the new powerful multi-processor pro workstations have become extremely powerful workhorses, and offer the flexibility of numerous card slots, its a no - brainer". (co-founder David Bush)
David Bush & Mike Connor present a cutting edge editing, colour grading and DIT unit created by them & based on their wish lists for post-production after decades of production and post-production experience.
The system is placed on or near set and is designed to save time & money for producers while offering exceptional quality for advertising, documentary, film & television production and post.
The core of the system is an extremely powerful workstation based on a fully optioned Apple Mac Pro with Da Vinci Resolve software & hardware. The combination avoids the need to use the traditional off-line (or with proxies) workflow, then re-conforming on-line, and the time required for this.
With the Mobile Lab, it is now possible to work with a full high-resolution deliverable or master in HD, 2k, 4k, or 8k from the first day of shooting.
The Mobile Lab is both a lightning-fast DIT workstation and creative editorial, colour grading and audio editing hub - all within a single system.
David Bush & Mike Connor present a cutting edge editing, colour grading and DIT unit created by them & based on their wish lists for post-production after decades of production and post-production experience.
The system is placed on or near set and is designed to save time & money for producers while offering exceptional quality for advertising, documentary, film & television production and post.
The core of the system is an extremely powerful workstation based on a fully optioned Apple Mac Pro with Da Vinci Resolve software & hardware. The combination avoids the need to use the traditional off-line (or with proxies) workflow, then re-conforming on-line, and the time required for this.
With the Mobile Lab, it is now possible to work with a full high-resolution deliverable or master in HD, 2k, 4k, or 8k from the first day of shooting.
The Mobile Lab is both a lightning-fast DIT workstation and creative editorial, colour grading and audio editing hub - all within a single system.
David Bush & Mike Connor present a cutting edge editing, colour grading and DIT unit created by them & based on their wish lists for post-production after decades of production and post-production experience.
The system is placed on or near set and is designed to save time & money for producers while offering exceptional quality for advertising, documentary, film & television production and post.
The core of the system is an extremely powerful workstation based on a fully optioned Apple Mac Pro with Da Vinci Resolve software & hardware. The combination avoids the need to use the traditional off-line (or with proxies) workflow, then re-conforming on-line, and the time required for this.
With the Mobile Lab, it is now possible to work with a full high-resolution deliverable or master in HD, 2k, 4k, or 8k from the first day of shooting.
The Mobile Lab is both a lightning-fast DIT workstation and creative editorial, colour grading and audio editing hub - all within a single system.
David Bush & Mike Connor present a cutting edge editing, colour grading and DIT unit created by them & based on their wish lists for post-production after decades of production and post-production experience.
The system is placed on or near set and is designed to save time & money for producers while offering exceptional quality for advertising, documentary, film & television production and post.
The core of the system is an extremely powerful workstation based on a fully optioned Apple Mac Pro with Da Vinci Resolve software & hardware. The combination avoids the need to use the traditional off-line (or with proxies) workflow, then re-conforming on-line, and the time required for this.
With the Mobile Lab, it is now possible to work with a full high-resolution deliverable or master in HD, 2k, 4k, or 8k from the first day of shooting.
The Mobile Lab is both a lightning-fast DIT workstation and creative editorial, colour grading and audio editing hub - all within a single system.
David Bush
David Bush
David Bush
David Bush
David Bush
David Bush
David Bush
Mike Connor
David and Mike Connor -
Motion Control and
Visual Effects
With Mike, I have worked on many different projects over what seems like a vast amount of time. Thinking back, perhaps it was after having worked on some of the Mulino Bianco Commercials in Italy that our desire to raise the benchmark in visual effects for films too matured.
I had spoken to the Venice Film Festival's Art director Gillo Pontecorvo round about then. He agreed that most Italian film directors had little knowledge of what could be done using digital technologies, so he suggested we take over the beautiful Salone degli Specchi of the Excelsior Hotel in Venice, and spend time explaining to many of them that there was a whole lot more than making dinosaurs like those in Jurassic Park; digital visual effects could mean saving money and offering spectacular virtual sets too.
As soon as I explained the possibility that Gillo had offered to us, Mike enthusiastically agreed to bring his motion control systems to Venice so that we could show directors what could be done shooting and post producing with real equipment there and then.
Well, the ten day demonstration was a success, and we didn't have to wait for long before a major film project would ask us for our services. The first Italian director to understand the potential and to want to use digital techniques was Giuseppe Tornatore. He said to me that he wanted to make his upcoming film "The Legend of the Pianist" look like a film produced with a very rich budget, yet he didn't have loads of money. So, I asked him to explain what he wanted. I worked at producing story boards, and discussed with Mike and Giuseppe how we could make these visual effects and virtual sets
Images and stills from
the "LEGEND OF THE
PIANIST ON THE OCEAN"
Thanks to MEDUSA AND SCIARLÒ
We ended up working on some 450 shots, and I put together a temporary consortium of Domino Owners and operators around Europe to work on them. It would take a small book to explain all, but suffice to say, we discussed many different scenes with Giuseppe, and helped make them happen on set. The task was helped by the stimulating noble creative heart of the film - a story about the loneliness of the Artist amongst many other things. and, of course, the kind of timeless material of an Oscar winner such as Giuseppe.
Many of the scenes were particularly fascinating, and amongst these a particularly stimulating scene was the piano dance. In it Tim Roth sees his friend the trumpeter suffering from sea sickness, due to the fact that the Virginian is in the middle of a violent Oceanic storm. Tim Roth suggests to his friend to take off the grand piano's brakes, and come and sit with him. The trumpeter, played by Pruitt Taylor Vince, says that the idea is madness, but decides to carry out the operation.
So starts one of many brilliant creative ideas of Giuseppe, the grand piano dances with the rythmn of the Ocean and our friend the trumpeter gradually feels better, especially swigging at a champagne bottle that he had grabbed from a passing table.
We held meetings with Giuseppe and the film's production designer Francesco Friggeri about how to make this scene. In the old days we knew that the great Fellini had used a hydraulic platform to move the set, but this wasn't very practical for the 1000 square meter first class saloon of the ship. At the very least it would have taken some engineering, time to construct and a substantial sum of money.
Giuseppe also expIained that the piano with our pianist and trumpeter had to break through a wall of decorative glass at the end of the scene and fly down a narrow corridor before crashing into the Captain's cabin.
I talked it through with Mike, Giuseppe and Francesco and we mused that it made sense to move the camera and not the set. Especially since Mike could program his motion control rig to create the rolling and pitching of the ship while enabling the brilliant operator Enrico Lucidi to follow and frame dynamically the dancing piano. The piano itself was moved by grips dressed with green costumes who pulled or pushed the piano and our actors so that they were always behind the protagonists and piano in the 23 shots that we had broken the sequence into.
A pre time coded playback track fired off the motion control so that each sequence could be played in playback by Tim Roth, and we shot empty plates of the background without the piano so that post production was very simple.
In order to create the dam segments for Renzo Martinelli’s film 'Vajont', David, as visual effects supervisor suggested creating a 1/8 th, segment of the dam, mounting this on semi-circular rails with the same width and radius as the real dam, and then shooting it in eight different positions with the same motion control moves.
David leaning on Mike Connor’s Milo Motion Control rig with extended arm, seen while shooting dam segments for Renzo Martinelli’s film “Vajont”.
In agreement with the production designer Francesco Friggeri this was all done near the actual location so that the backgrounds were shot with talent in camera and did not on the whole require green screens.
This also meant that extras could be multiplied to give the illusion that hundreds of workers were busy on the construction and completion of the dam.
Two dam segments were made; one for the dam while under construction (see above), and the other, shown here, with the completed dam. The lower part of the dam was created by extension in cgi.
