Widescreen Climate Change Presentation Given IVCA Award

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Tue, 04/02/2013 - 20:00 -- Nick Dager

The IVCA’s Silver Award for Best Post Production has been given to the widescreen presentation COP18 /CMP8 (Climate Change Conference) for the United Nations by WRG Qatar for COP18 and The State of Qatar.  Mistika VFX artist and colorist David Cox was asked to post produce the high-resolution wide-screen presentation to be projected onto a seventy-meter wide screen for The United Nations Climate Change Conference. The size and shape of the final films demanded a specific resolution and aspect ratio. The conforming compositing and grading were carried out on a single Mistika post-production system in an uncompressed environment at a resolution of 7104 x 1080 which provided the very wide aspect ratio of almost 7:1. IVCA is an independent non-profit membership organization representing the creators and commissioners of film video digital and live events for the corporate and public sectors. As well as corporate producers and freelancers IVCA includes the leading commissioners including Government top FTSE companies and leading NGOs and Charities. They have also been helping spearhead UKTI's partnership program with China. A key partner for IVCA in China is the Digital Content Industries Association. Award winning films can be viewed on the IVCA Player which is an online showcase of the best work selected from across the three IVCA Awards Schemes. IVCA helps lead the communications industries through thought leadership and working closely with the UK Government particularly BIS DEFRA and UKTI and partner organizations. From client sign-off in mid October last year the film was managed in six different locations with 33 shooting days (condensed into three weeks) where more than 12 terabytes of film collateral amazing stories incredible graphics air miles great distances were travelled to produce a breath-taking 23-minute film. The presentation produced by global corporate communications agency WRG Qatar LLC and directed by Ollie Solman consisted of five separate films shot in varying locations including The Maldives and Madagascar. These were introduced and linked by a presenter who was filmed in a green screen studio. The final combined film was post produced at an ultra high resolution of over 7000 horizontal pixels and projected by four side-by-side HD projectors at the U.N. conference based in Doha Qatar. Cox says “These types of projects are quite challenging but also a lot of fun to do on Mistika because of the freedom the system provides to work in high resolutions and unusual aspect ratios. This project pushed the boundaries and utilized Mistika's capabilities to the fullest including compositing grading conforming and delivering. The first few minutes of the film features a presenter who was shot against green screen. This was changed for a digital white cyc background with weather effects shadows and animated graphics added behind and around her. Then there were five location-based films that were introduced and linked by the green-screen host. Each of these were shot in locations from around the world and on a variety of cameras including Red Epic Canon 5D and Go Pro which were all conformed and graded within Mistika.” Cox adds “Obviously the frame shape is very different to the normal aspect ratios of the supplied images. Where the source material was from Red Epic Mistika allowed me to work directly from the 5K footage without transcoding allowing me to frame and grade the shots as needed in real-time without processing. Where the source material was from a lower resolution format such as Canon 5D or Go Pro I used Mistika's compositing features to multi-layer shots to make up a collage of images to fill the frame.” Cox says “The most impressive aspect of Mistika in a project of this scale is that despite the high resolution and odd frame shape was that I was still able to work in real-time for almost all of the grading and multi-layering of the images. When it came to the green screen sections all of the keying tracking and shadows were also completed in the same Mistika and on the same timeline. These aspects were essential to being able to react to client feedback promptly and to deliver this complicated project within a very tight post-production schedule.” Images courtesy of WRG Qatar