LBB caught up with the team at Cinelab Film & Digital to find out about our new service offering, the advantages it presents, and why it’s a surefire way for production to save some precious budget.
The digital ‘dailies drop’ is the new addition to Cinelab’s key service offering of film and digital dailies for long form and short form productions. The idea for the new service was borne out of direct experience seeing commercial productions struggle to get everything done in ever shorter designated amounts of time. “Sometimes there’s just too much work. The journey from shoot to delivery in short form is relentless.” says Cinelab’s Daniel Kraus.
Daniel recently joined the Cinelab team as head of business development alongside commercial director Adam Coles, likewise a new hire.
Cinelab is well known and well regarded in the film and advertising industries for its work with - well - film. Though what some people are still not aware of is that Cinelab’s team includes some of the best digital post production experts in the business after Cinelab joined forces with the digital dailies outfit, On Set Tech, in 2020, evolving from a film lab into a fully integrated film and digital services facility.
The Cinelab team realised that they could “tap into our existing infrastructure and experts to help the industry,” says Daniel Kraus. The new dailies drop service offering is designed to cater for short form productions shooting on digital cameras, offering all the support needed in dealing with rushes on wrap.
“We’ve noticed on short form digital shoots that processing and preparing dailies for review and editorial can sometimes be an afterthought and left to the teams who have already been shooting all-day,” adds Thom Trigger, marketing manager.
When would someone turn to a service like this? “It will be indispensable to last minute shoots. If you decide to shoot tomorrow and don’t have time to put together a full team with a data manager or a DIT, we can definitely help. Just send us your rushes and we will take it from there” Daniel explains. It’s also going to come in handy for any ongoing shoots that start to overrun - as many often do - and need to avoid the excessive costs of overtime. “Tell your DIT to do the final backups and send the rest to Cinelab to work on overnight. That way you will avoid working with a very tired crew and dealing with the expense of overtime.”
A typical scenario the Cinelab team has been privy to multiple times is being told that the shoot was going to be single camera and ending up with a multiple camera shoot instead. Put simply, there’s sometimes not enough time in the day to deal with all the challenges that a pivot like that presents, meaning teams have to come back the next day. As Cinelab already has the workflows to work overnight set up, engaging their services to simplify the post-shoot process gives production crews a big advantage.
“Dailies Drop works just like our film service,” says Thom. “At the end of your shoot, you simply arrange a drop-off of your media to Cinelab and our team will take care of the rest. We ensure rapid dailies creation, prompt editorial delivery, and industry approved archiving and validation of all digital media assets.”
Anyone making use of the service can count on Cinelab to create rushes back-ups onto drives, LTO tape, or to the cloud, and transcode and sound sync material. The team will also take care of delivery of both large RAW files and editorial media to anywhere in the world, all while working quickly, efficiently, and securely. Daniel summarises it succinctly: “It saves money, it prevents headaches, and it’s fast.”
The team sees a lot of different parts of the industry benefiting. For producers and production managers, it can become a lifeline and a kind of insurance policy. “Creative agencies can treat this service as another tool in their toolbox. We’re a way to help deal with complex shoots; some locations are tricky and you can only send a splinter unit with not a lot of crew who can’t then deal with the footage properly” Daniel adds.
Typically, the footage goes to the editor but that’s not the best way to do it, according to Adam Coles, commercial director. “Editors will benefit from this service as they’re going to have guaranteed fast secure delivery. Producers will benefit because they’ll be working with an established workflow. It’s going to benefit the whole of the production team,” says Adam.
Thom points out that Cinelab can save productions a lot as far as budget goes. “In the commercial world, 12-hour days are typical nowadays with a lot of overtime. So our service is actually a cost efficient way for productions to have it all delivered to them.”
As the UK’s only full-service film and digital dailies facility, the expansion into short form digital is an exciting one. The new service is set to become a go-to for an industry where expectations are high, budgets are tight, and timelines are even tighter.
This article first appeared in LBB Online - here.