Production & Post-Production

Top US and UK film executives visited Abu Dhabi last week for a showcase tour of what the Emirate has to offer as a filming location for international productions.

The drama series Westworld, which just completed its first season on HBO, is described as a dark odyssey about the dawn of artificial consciousness and the evolution of sin, exploring a world in which every human appetite, no matter how noble or depraved, can be indulged. One challenge for the producers was imagining how that world sounds.

One of the most distinctive aspects of writer-director Kenneth Lonergan’s new drama Manchester by the Sea is the quality of its sound design. “Making a quiet movie is hard, because, as a sound designer, you want to infuse every scene with something more than dialogue,” said supervising sound editor/re-recording mixer Jacob Ribicoff. “But you have to resist that temptation and keep it quiet and let the performances speak for themselves.”

Cognition recently completed post on Underwater, a new 360 video created by Soma Fashion Network for the HTC Vive virtual reality system. The facility’s engineering team designed a custom workflow that allowed senior colorist Mike Eaves to grade the video in real time and view the results in 360-space. The groundbreaking process paves the way for other VR projects and keeps Cognition at the forefront of the new medium.