Mistikas Stunning Colour Grading Tools Helped Create Spectacular Filmic Look in the Hobbit: the Desolation of Smaug at Park Road Post Production

SGOs award-winning Mistika DI Colour Grading post systems form the core at Park Road Post Production and were utilised again in epic fantasy film The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, a production of New Line Cinema and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures (MGM), the second film in The Hobbit Trilogy directed by Peter Jackson.

2013 New Line Productions, Inc. New Line Cinema's and MGMs fantasy adventure THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG, a Warner Bros. Pictures release.

Mistikas involvement at Park Road included supporting on-set services and screening HFR digital dailies, all the way through to the DI online, stereoscopic work and stunning final grade for the film. The world-class facility boasts impressive purpose-built state-of-the-art DI theatres for both high-end 2D and stereoscopic finishing work, supported by Mistika 4K/Stereoscopic master systems combined with dedicated finishing suites with matching SGO technology and shared storage for speed and fluidity between their online editors and colourists.

Supervising Digital Colourist for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug Trish Cahill worked with a team at Park Road alongside Lead DI Colourist Vickie-Lynn Roy, using Mistikas world-leading colour grading toolsets to complement the second films darker and richer narrative as the company head through Middle-earth toward both Erebor and, of course, Smaug - the extraordinary creature brought to life by Benedict Cumberbatch and the VFX geniuses of Weta Digital.

At Park Road we are inspired by filmmakers who share our constant desire to push storytelling tools forward. That motivation allows us to deliver world-leading results for our clients which never let technology take the lead, but which give us compelling colour grading tools with which to achieve a director's vision. The Mistika is simply a great asset creatively and technically, and is at the core of our work on this incredible production.

Trish further explains the DI process using Mistika and how she put her creativity to work behind the head-spinning action scenes and help enhance the picture-book beauty in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.

Park Road choose tools which are not only scalable and technically deep, but have truly focussed on using those tools as enablers for creative expression. With the Mistika we were able to work interactively with the production, at High Frame Rate, taking the unique looks developed for the second film and extending them in the final grade sessions to focus on visual narrative. The best thing about great tools is they enable us to work with filmmakers to bring the world they imagined to life.

Vickie-Lynn expands explaining some of the technical intricacies behind the scenes, Beyond the look development undertaken prior to the final online sessions, such as the variable lens' effects built entirely in the Mistika, we were able to effortlessly fold in highly technical requirements for specific shots - such as deep mattes, themselves mathematically driving complex grade and stereo effects - all on the same platform, and all the time running critical stereo work in parallel with the ongoing look refinement, as the team headed towards the final delivery.

Lead Stereographer Meetal Gokul explains The interaction of grade and stereo is so often underestimated, so at Park Road we work in parallel - with any screening format, 2D or 3D, available for review at any time. The stereo toolset in the Mistika was definitely used to its fullest for the second film in the Trilogy, and as always my teams focus is on an incredible 3D experience which drives the story forward. This film is amazing, and the Mistika continues to provide exactly the right platform to service productions of any scale.

Head of Technology at Park Road Phil Oatley confirms We rely on the capability of SGO's Mistika when creating stunning content for all our clients. Once again, on a ground-breaking production of this magnitude, Mistika has provided a proven and reliable architecture that was both flexible and robust, giving us the immense speed we required. It is a huge advantage to work on one unified platform, and the Mistika combines immense power with remarkable versatility.

It took Park Road Post Production, together with SGO, years of research, development, testing and refinement to create the unique workflow for The Hobbit Trilogy. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey realised a new technical and aesthetic standard. Workflow Architect Anthony Pratt played a pivotal role in developing Park Road Digital Cinema, VFX and 3D workflows and is part of the lead team that designed the worlds first HFR-3D workflow. The pipeline we have built around SGO's tools is seamless both for the client and for our team. The core of our entire pipeline was enabled by the dedication, support and innovation of the team at SGO, and use of the Mistika as our primary platform. We were delighted to put it to work again on The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. Tony adds, Mistika has not only energised our team, and replaced the previous heavy-iron' infrastructure at Park Road, but is the absolute heart of servicing large-scale productions and with timeliness previously impossible to achieve.

Park Road, with technology partner SGO, also won the industrys prestigious IBC2013 Innovation Awards for their pioneering work building the Worlds First HFR-3D post workflow. The 2013 IBC International Honour for Excellence was also presented to Sir Peter Jackson. In addition, SGO received the coveted International 3D Societys 3D Technology Lumi re Award for its Mistika finishing and colour grading system and for advancements in Stereo 3D and Ultra HD technology, a highly complimentary recognition alongside Park Road's receipt of a Lumi re Award recognizing their HFR Pipeline.

SGOs Director of Global Sales and Operations Geoff Mill

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