No wonder that Hollywood has been hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic. After all, movie sets often require hundreds of people coming together from all over the world to work very closely with each other. In early spring 2020, production effectively closed until further notice. But slowly, quietly, new films (films that were filmed during the pandemic) have begun to appear. How? Filmmakers found ways to adapt and now get even more tools to help them film safely.
Of course, not all movies need high-tech solutions. Smaller movies, like Netflix Malcolm and Marie or the recent Sundance film How it ends, can be overcome with smaller crews and in quarantine. But for larger, more complicated projects — the kind that needs visual effects and a lot of extras — technology fills the gaps in socially distant outbreaks. This is how.
Breaking clouds
One of the most innovative adaptations to date comes from Frame.io. The company is best known for providing web-based tools to teams to review journals and pass notes back and forth during the editing process. Today, however, Frame.io has introduced a new service: Camera to Cloud, which allows several people to start working on a shot the second the film makes it, significantly reducing the number of people on the set and increasing the number you can contribute safe, socially (very) distant place.
Here’s how it works: Suppose you have an 8K RED camera installed. Using the Camera to Cloud system, this platform would connect to a transcoding box, such as a Teradek Cube 655, which takes this 8K video and turns it into a smaller, easier-to-view / share 1080p file. This box is also connected to the Internet, as is a beach sound device, which collects audio from all the microphones on the set. As soon as someone shouts “Cut!” the files are being uploaded to the cloud, where anyone who has been given access can review them.
From here, people like executive producers and VFX supervisors can weigh in with near real-time notes. Even better, the system allows the film editor to work on the film in tandem, even if they are on the other side of the planet. As soon as the shot is taken, the video files (with independent but synchronized audio files) will automatically appear in DaVinci Resolve, Final Cut, Adobe Premiere or any other editing software they are using. As soon as it’s there, they can drop the last capture on the timeline, apply effects and filters (such as typing a green screen), and quickly export it to Frame.io so everyone can check and approve it. Back on set, the director can review the new cut and leave notes that will appear directly on the editor’s timeline with unique frame accuracy.
Files uploaded from the camera can be from 0.5 Mbps (think zoom) to 15 Mbps (Netflix-ish) of your choice. The top end of the scale is usually more than enough for something like network news and could be broadcast immediately. In the case of movies with a reduced setting, the proxy files that are loaded are of edit quality (and the audio, which is much smaller, are the originals) and can be trimmed immediately. When the hard drive with all the full resolution files lands in the edit bay, you can switch to editing with the click of a button.
Camera to Cloud has been used in a Hollywood production: Singing bird. Last summer, the disaster, which hit video demand in December, became the first full production to test the service in beta. In fact, Singing bird was the first film to begin production after the stricter restrictions on Covid-19 were lifted in California, so it had to do everything possible to minimize equipment, including filming with the camera. RED’s smallest (the 8K Komodo) for the director of photography to function as a camera operator. Meanwhile, six or more executives were watching remotely as filming unfolded.