Australian digital production facility Rising Sun Pictures has used Nucoda Film Master to grade and finish two major feature films Red Dog and The Dragon Pearl both due for release this year. The facility also used Digital Vision's new entry-level system Nucoda Compose for VFX dailies to review high-resolution shots in a color-accurate environment for iterative feedback. Rising Sun Pictures has a vast portfolio including the Harry Potter series X-Men Origins: Wolverine Australia and Superman Returns to name but a few. Rising Sun Pictures' DI colorist Alex Meddick who has worked on a number of high profile features including the Harry Potter series used Nucoda Film Master's standard toolset to grade the majority of Red Dog. The comprehensive grading tools were used to achieve the appropriate look set up by director Kriv Stenders and cinematographer Geoffrey Hall. Michael Taylor Rising Sun Pictures' CEO says When we installed our Nucoda Film Master DI grading suite including Nucoda Compose we invested a significant amount of R&D to set up the technical aspects of the pipeline including identifying all new formats of delivery and acquisition as well digital cinema deliverables. This ensures the best image quality from start to finish by understanding the nature of the images acquired. Red Dog was shot entirely in Australia. Daniel Taplitz adapted the Louis de Bernières (Captain Corelli's Mandolin) Red Dog novel. The film is produced by Woss Group Film Productions and distributed by Roadshow Films. The plot is based on the Australian legendary true story of the Red Dog who united a disparate local community while roaming the Australian outback in search of his long lost master. Meddick has also recently used Nucoda Film Master to grade The Dragon Pearl a film shot entirely in China under the new Australia-Chinese co-production treaty. It is a Mario Andreacchio fllm and produced by Ampco Films and Hengdian World Studios. It tells the story of a young boy John (Louis Corbett) who travels to China to visit his father Dr. Chase (Sam Neill) on an archaeological dig and inadvertently discovers a real-life Chinese dragon. Taylor says Prior to installing the Nucoda Film Master we didn't have a real-time grading solution in a full 4K-capable cinema. This allows an entire film to be acquired finished and viewed in a cinematic environment with full 7.1 surround sound. The system has a full feature set with an extensive physical control service to allow efficient and dynamic workflows to be built with filmmakers. We've also tested Nucoda Film Master's Open EXR functionality for use within our VFX pipeline. The benefits are a higher dynamic range in the image and the ability to avoid the need to reprocess images by using our native internal linear to light color space. This shows great potential and we look forward to seeing how it develops with the aim to use it in the grading/DI pipeline. Digital Vision www.digitalvision.tv
