ASCENT 142 LEAD THE WAY IN DI WITH THE PURCHASE OF ARRI LASER II

Ascent 142 has announced its purchase of the ARRILASER II, which will deliver the capacity to turn around quality laser film-out work faster than any other facility in the UK.

The investment In the system, that can deliver speeds of 0.9 sec./frame in 2K and 1.5 sec./frame in 4K, reflects Ascent 142’s determination to lead the field in the British DI industry, and offer an unequalled variety of cutting edge postproduction services under one roof. The equipment is the first of it’s kind to be installed in the UK.

Adrian Bull, Chief Technology Officer for Ascent 142, said of the £ 440,000 acquisition: “With the new ARRILASER II we will be able to offer our clients better tonal reproduction with the 16-bit workflow and – most importantly in an industry defined by deadlines – vastly improved turnaround times for both our domestic and growing international client base.”

Utilising a Linux-based software package, the ARRILASER II features a newly designed user interface that gives a constant overview of recording jobs in progress. The new software offers unprecedented flexibility of operation and speeds up daily operations considerably.

Patrick Malone, Director of Digital Film Services at Ascent 142, commented: “At twice the speed of previous Arri recorders, it also delivers greater accuracy during processing, and is supported by an advanced project management system, which allows us to integrate the device into our existing DI pipeline -seamlessly.”

The ARRILASER II will be operational at Ascent 142 Wardour St, London later this month.

 

ASCENT 142 POSTS FESTIVAL WINNER

Ascent 142 completed the picture post on drama Fish Tank, directed by Andrea Arnold, with sister companies Rushes carrying out the visual effects and Soho Film Lab handling the film processing.

The feature film, about fifteen year old Mia, whose life is turned on its head when her Mum brings home a new boyfriend, jointly won the Jury prize with Chan Wook’s Thirst at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Fish Tank was shot on 35mm Fuji Film by cinematographer Robbie Ryan. Robin Pizzey, senior DI colourist at Ascent 142, spent two weeks with Arnold and Ryan completing the grade having previously worked with them on the director’s last feature, Red Road. The aspect ratio of the film was 1.33, and the brief was simply to ‘keep it natural’.

Pizzey commented: “We wanted to keep it as close as possible to what was exposed on the negative, almost like a photochemical grade in a laboratory, and try to avoid creating much of a ‘look’.” It was also necessary to match shots in variable weather conditions and change one scene from day to late evening; the finished result is a rich, saturated look.

Rushes, who have previously worked with Arnold on the BAFTA award-winning Red Road, carried out the full VFX for Fish Tank. Jonathan Privett, Rushes VFX supervisor, commented: “Andrea’s films always depict a gritty reality and that occasionally throws up production issues that have to be solved by the use of visual effects.” Rushes completed around 30 shots including a number of high complexity composites.

Soho Film Lab are due to complete all the film deliverables on Fish Tank. They supplied the 4perf 35mm rushes services for the shoot and following the film out from Ascent 142 they supplied two lots of show prints for Cannes.

Rushes also carried out the post production and VFX for the short film After Tomorrow, which was also nominated for a Palme d’Or award at Cannes. The film, directed by Emma Sullivan, was shot on Red camera. It was graded by Rushes’ colourist Denny Cooper using Resolve before Rushes’ VFX artist Emir Hasham completed the online.

 

ASCENT 142 POST FIRST FEATURE TO BE SHOT ENTIRELY ON RED

Ascent 142 completed full picture post and Rushes all 250 VFX shots on Lesbian Vampire Killers, the debut feature from Phil Claydon, starring James Corden and Matthew Horne and the first (UK) movie to be shot entirely on RED camera. Both companies were involved in working closely with the Director and production team early on in pre production to assist with the new post pipeline required camera data and with planning the VFX.

The basic process for handling data on the film began with the camera department, which recorded data onto Compact Flash cards. These were then copied onto Firewire drives for delivery to Ascent 142. Throughout production, 142 received dailies in the form of raw data from the cameras where the data was converted to 2k DPX Log files.

For Patrick Malone, Director of DI at Ascent 142 which handled full picture post production, one of the great things about RED is that the compression levels are very manageable. RED does, however, pose challenges.

"If you're a film cameraman you will know that a certain exposure of a certain stock will give a particular result," he says. "With RED being a data camera, you have to put the tools in place that allow you to have that foresight on set because you can't apply simple logic and maths to the equation."

Production requested a tape delivery for its Editorial team working on Avid. 142 deployed a workflow, starting with the export of Pro-res QuickTimes with file name and time code burn-ins via the REDcine application. These were subsequently played out to HD Cam tape via Final Cut, and supplied to Editorial for Avid Ingest along with ALE files containing all relevant RED metadata.

Once the offline edit was done, EDLs were supplied by Editorial and used to create XML files in Final Cut Pro. These were then used to extract the 2k data, from which VFX plates were supplied to Rushes VFX Dept and the final VFX shots were resupplied to 142 conformed in Smoke and DI grade.

The Rushes VFX team were on location during production at Three Mills Studio, working closely with Claydon to develop ideas for the VFX . The VFX included matte paintings for the backgrounds of 2 min Prologue which was shot entirely on green screen, as well as a full CG tongue, CG vampire trails and compositing of prosthetics and special effects. Louise Hussey, Rushes Producer, commented: “The great thing we found working with Phil, is that he is so open to ideas and suggestions from us, his main criteria was, as long as it looked great, he was happy. We had a lot of free rein, which is very rare.”

Rushes worked with Millennium FX who created all the prosthetics and SFX who were responsible for the ‘Goop’ rigs that supply the elements for the exploding vampires. The three companies had to work closely together on set, deciding potential VFX approaches for the final 250 VFX shots. . Pulling out a particular shot whenever necessary on set was invaluable for supervising VFX. “With 250 shots, having data on hand on set helped manage the VFX process by providing rushes to look at straight away in QuickTime”, says Jonathan Privett, VFX Supervisor at Rushes.

The Rushes team agreed that working on the film was an immensely rewarding experience, driven by the director’s enthusiasm and the level of improvisation required: “It was the most fun I’ve had working on a film in fifteen years” Privett remarked.

Lesbian Vampire Killers is released nationwide in the UK on 20th March 2009.

 

ASCENT 142 LAND JET OMOSHEBI

Ascent 142 has announced that Jet Omoshebi will be joining its expanding creative team to work on drama and feature output.

Omoshebi leaves Pepper Post 2008 where she has been senior colourist since joining in 2004. Her recent credits include work on the BBC drama Cranford and Life on Mars. Amongst the many awards for her work a notable highlight was winning the Women in Film and Television craft award in 2007.

A delighted Dave Barrett, VP Sales and Business Development, Ascent 142 commented: “We feel this is a real coup for Ascent 142. Adding an outstanding award winning creative talent like Jet to an already strong team is an endorsement to the investment in people, technology and infrastructure that we have made over the past twelve months”. Barrett added, “We are dedicated to becoming the number one in our sector and we will continue to invest in industry talent”.

Commenting on her appointment, Omoshebi said: “Ascent 142 has a wonderful reputation and impressive creative talent. I’m looking forward to working with them and hopefully adding a different dimension to the grading facility.”

Jet began her career in post-production as a sound assistant before moving to Rushes (part of Ascent) as a telecine assistant in 1990, progressing to colourist after three years. For the next ten years, Jet worked as a senior colourist at the Moving Picture Company, Complete Video, SVC Television and later Digital Film Lab. During this time Jet worked with the majority of advertising agencies in London, building an excellent reputation and client following.

Omoshebi is acclaimed for her versatility and has extensive knowledge of telecine machines and grading systems, working on Ursa, C-Reality, Spirit and Millennium scanners with both Pogle and Da Vinci 2K and was instrumental in the design and build of Pepper’s Spirit Datacine and Da Vinci 2K+ suite.

In addition to Omoshebi’s move, Dan Chuter after five years as Peppers facilities & marketing manager is also moving to the Ascent Group as marketing manager answering to Sally Reid, VP Marketing & PR.

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ASCENT142 SHORT LISTED FOR PRESTIGIOUS BROADCAST AWARD

 

Ascent142 is honoured to have been nominated in the Best Post Production House category for the 2009 Broadcast Awards. The ceremony is held to recognise and reward excellence in programme making.

Sally Reid, VP Global Marketing said ”We feel the nomination is in recognition of Ascent142’s commitment to our industry. Ascent142 has been driven by investment and successful efforts to consolidate its position in the market through meeting the many challenges of delivering a wide range of creative services to a very high standard and to deadline, offering good value for its clients.”

The business so far this year has invested almost £3 million in additional staff and equipment at it’s state of the art premises in 142 Wardour Street and continues to build on what has been an exciting year filled with change and some uncertainty.

The team at Ascent142 would also like to wish the best of luck to all nominees.

Award winners will be announced at a black-tie event in London’s West End on the 21st January.