Virtual Reality is still in the Wild West' era, for both filmmakers and studio service providers. Post recently connected with pros on both fronts. Hugh McGrory is the CEO/founder of Datavized, and was the producer on the recent project In\Formation . Alex Laviola is a senior producer with Prime Focus Technologies, where he oversees all IFC Films, HBO, and independent projects. He helped establish a workflow for McGrory's project. The two detail their experiences here .
The Studio
Alex Laviola is a senior producer with Prime Focus Technologies, where he oversees all IFC Films, HBO, and independent projects, including feature films, documentaries, restoration for Criterion Collection and Virtual Reality. Some of his high profile projects include digital film restoration on HBOs The Three Amigosand Cannonball Run, as well as online editor for a variety of feature films and commercials. Here, he talks to Post about his experience setting up workflows for Virtual Reality projects.
Post: Can you elaborate on the concept of creating a VR post workflow. How does this differ from standard workflows?
Alex Laviola: At first, the concept of putting together a post work flow for a VR project seemed daunting. We had to go back to our commonly used film practices and deconstruct what seemed like a large undertaking and apply each step of traditional post to it. Doing so simplified the equation. We started to understand that the concept of VR post production was really much closer to film post production than anticipated. As post supervisor, things began to become clearer once we were given the footage from the shoot and started the process.
With regard to the workflow itself, the project moved along from editorial, to compositing, to online, to color, to audio, to conform, almost as any other documentary project would. To elaborate, it may be worth noting some of the oddities within the project we encountered along the way. We did experience some rather unusual issues with regard to artifacting in the compositing work. For example, in a film documentary, you tend not to hear from Quality Control notes such as man on rights hand is floating in corner of room' or womans foot is three-feet long.' This was where we encountered the most back and forth on what was, overall, a smooth process from beginning to end. Also, in audio, our mixers Kevin Wilson and Paul Levin had the task of dissecting all interview audio and mono-tracking each speaker so that they could be spatialized' in the VR playback unit. This might be where we would need the most retrofitting technically in our facilities. There were times we had to trust that what we were doing was correct given the detachment of post to VR play back.
Being that VR is so new, you cant just hop online and quickly find answers to problems within films professional community. We had to rely on what we were delivering to Eevo, the films distributor, would work with what they were using...And it did. At one point in the film, as you sit in front of two people having a discussion, a voice appears from behind you interjecting, I agree...' and only then youll notice that there had been three other people sitting right behind you the entire time.
To touch a little more on our post work on the project, once we were through compositing and on to our online, grade, and conform, this project was seamless. David Gauff, now our Elder Statesman of VR,' worked the conform in Resolve, which is also the system Eric Alvarado used to color grade. Once we were finished with the grade, David then applied our work to the media, incorporating all titling and B-roll that needed to be included, and output a stereo ProRes 8K file for mastering.
David Gauff: The process of conform at first felt surreally alien because the image on a 2D screen has a complete disregard for perspective and composition. Additionally, the space the subject occupies may not in any traditional sense occupy an area of the 2D screen, which would seem to make sense. However with a bit of faith that the VR headset will reassemble the 2D stitched image into a 3D virtual world everything else can be managed using a very traditional online, VFX, color grade, tilting and mastering rule set. The only other hurdle was the massive amounts of data generated by the 12-camera rig shooting in a documentary style, the subsequent stitched version of all those cameras, and the stereoscopic color graded high resolution master for delivery.
Post: Is there a significant amount of investment, both time and money, to create these workflows? Is new equipment needed that isn't already standard in post houses?
Alex Laviola: Our investment at Prime Focus Technologies was time. Call it sweat equity. We shot most of the documentary here in our New York office using our DI theater and audio theater as our interview locations. Technically speaking, this was a project that gave us an amazing learning experience and was a lot of fun to work on. Virtual Reality is coming up fast and I believe Prime Focus Technologies, with such vast resources and talent, is delivering quality work to customers. I believe in this even more so now after finishing this project that post houses can thrive in the Virtual Reality community simply due to the fact that the file sizes, necessary online and conform capabilities, and talent extend beyond what the independent filmmaker can now achieve on their MacBook.
The investments we were deciding on were basically with regard to stitching software and play back. We worked on some of the stitching using a program called Kolor. This company is now owned by GoPro, which is a perfect match as this documentary was shot using a 12 GoPro cameras. Other investments would include plug-ins to Premiere or Resolve for VR playback and whichever HMD youre produci
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Virtual Reality is still in the Wild West' era, for both filmmakers and studio service providers. Post recently connected with pros on both fronts. Hugh McGrory is the CEO/founder of Datavized, and was the producer on the recent project In\Formation . Alex Laviola is a senior producer with Prime Focus Technologies, where he oversees all IFC Films, HBO, and independent projects. He helped establish a workflow for McGrory's project. The two detail their experiences here . 
