WILDERNESS is a new thriller set in various scenic locations in North America. In order to achieve the right look for the show, production decided to shoot both in Canada and in the United States.
In order to achieve what the editorial, post production and Amazon teams required; it was paramount to have a digital dailies lab as close to location as possible. But considering the cost implications of having our British lab crews travelling and living close to set, creativity in designing the dailies workflow was paramount. Luckily, workflow design is an area where Cinelab excels.
In order to pull this off, Cinelab sent one of our custom-built labs on a journey across the Atlantic, to be setup in Vancouver, Canada. We flew one of our experienced lab operators (Edward Pettifer) to set it up and stress test it, making sure it’s ready for when production starts. Once setup, this lab would be run remotely from Cinelab HQ in the UK, a process that was both seamless and effective.
This setup allowed our team to create backups to LTO tapes and Amazon’s S3 cloud storage (a requirement on all Amazon projects) on location, while our teams in the UK controlled the equipment remotely with assistance from a local Canadian technician. Some of the dailies deliverables were created in the UK, where our dailies colourist Daniel Rosenberg had access to bespoke colouring equipment, supervised by our Head of Colour Darren Rae.
This workflow was supervised by our Head of Workflow, Christy Kail, who has this to say about this project:
The challenge with this project was one of digital logistics. Having the colourist based in the UK meant that we had to find a reliable way of allowing them to see the footage without having to wait for the raw files to be sent across the Atlantic.
With editorial also based in the UK, we were always in a race against time, to get graded files to them as soon as possible.
With teams working across different time zones, Cinelab still ensured the edit team had their files promptly, so no moment was wasted, and that the creative teams had access to the previous days clips on PIX the next morning.
Production Company: Amazon Studios
Type of project: High End Television
Cinematographer: Kat Westergaard
Post Production Supervisor: Karen Payne, Judi Fleeton
Main Camera and Format: Alexa Mini LF, 4.5K ARRIRAW with HDE
SHOOT STATS
Principal Photography: 63 Canada shoot days / 13 US shoot days
Camera Rolls: 547 rolls
Clips Processed: 4682 clips
Total Size of Project: 134TB
Total Frames Processed: 13,745,500 frames