Chrysalis - A Ray Bradbury Sci-Fi Thriller
By Cheyenne Pesko, Editor
After our world suffers severe ravages brought on by humankind, an isolated group of scientists search for new ways to sustain life. When one of them falls ill and a chrysalis forms around him, a tug of war ensues about the future of the stricken scientist ... and ultimately the fate of the Earth. A compelling thriller from a story by Ray Bradbury, Chrysalis is brought to the screen by producer/screenwriter Roger Lay, Jr. with Cheyenne Pesko, editor/post production supervisor, and Gabriel Diniz, director of photography.
When Roger [Lay] first approached me about “Chrysalis”, Panasonic’s P2 technology was very new but already gaining some noticeable momentum in the tapeless workflow production environment. I would have never thought that within eight months I would be designing the on-set solution for P2 acquisition, archiving and rough assemblage for this sci-fi feature.
The film Chrysalis is an independent production so naturally there are very specific budget parameters to work within. Early in pre-production, we were already thinking about pragmatic ways to simplify our overhead investment without compromising the subject matter. How could we make this HD feature look exceptional without breaking our bank? We decided to combine both production and post-production into a singularly functioning entity that would co-exist during principle photography. We designed a workflow around this idea and, aside from the occasional grumblings from the 1st AD, this is exactly what we were able to pull off.
We began with a Panasonic HVX200, a trustworthy workhorse in the field of independent filmmaking. When saddled with a 35mm film lens adaptor (in our case, the Brevis35 by Cinevate), a wide variety of professional imaging elements were suddenly at our disposal including Arriflex and Zeiss film lenses for 35mm cameras. When coupled with the HVX’s native 24p recording format, our sharp as life digital image suddenly became filmic, with gamma curves and depth of field once only attributed to 35mm film.
With the look of the movie well on its way, the next hurdle was how to cost effectively implement the P2 technology in an on-set environment. No corners can be cut on any foundation so we pulled the trigger on the latest Mac Pro tower - 8-core power over two 3.0 Ghz Quad-core processors. In the end, the system consisted of two 24” Apple Cinema Displays, the nVidia Quatro FX 4500 graphics card, the Decklink HD Extreme capture card, two KRK studio monitors and 8 GB of RAM (four 2GB sticks.
P2 cards need a PCMCIA slot in order to be read on a Mac, and while older Powerbooks have a slot built in to them I was far more interested in a Mac tower solution (especially since my 17” Powerbook conveniently expired during week one of pre-production). I spoke at length with a California based company named Synchrotech, one of the only companies I found that had a low-profile P2 card reader for use with a Mac tower. Unfortunately the unit was not thoroughly tested nor guaranteed with our OS. Rather than take the chance, their suggestion was to simply network our Mac Pro with a late generation G4 Power Book via either Ethernet or Firewire 800.
As day one of principal photography approached, I worked out the final details of our data archival solution. While we would be reaping all the benefits of a tapeless workflow, we would also be putting ourselves at major risk of data corruption due to drive failure or possibly user error. Rather than implementing the standard backup rule of three, we upped the ante by one for complete piece of mind. Two Hitachi 750GB SATA drives were installed in the Mac Pro’s hard drive bays and configured as a mirrored RAID. This was the first stop of the P2 data when it arrived from set. Once this simultaneous backup completed (roughly ten minutes for an 8GB P2 card), we would then open each P2 directory with Imagine’s P2 Log Pro software. By using P2 Log Pro as a bridge between the raw media and Final Cut Pro, we were able to thoroughly log each card accordingly and export the content as full-res Final Cut Pro compatible Quicktime movies. These files lived on a 500GB external Firewire drive called “Dailies”, which we called upon regularly to double check continuity and other production queries. The final step for true off-site backup came with our Blu-Ray solution. With single layer disks, we were able to backup approximately 22 gigs of data at a time. While the combined burning and verification process sometimes took over two hours, it brought with it great piece of mind knowing that the original P2 file structures were on disk, unaltered and off site at the end of each night.
The proximity of the edit bay to set was no more than forty paces. We had total of six 8GB P2 cards (or “reels”) in rotation, each card providing approximately 20 minutes of shooting time. The camera department always had two on hand, the P2 tech (my liaison between the camera department and my post team) also carried two blank cards at all times, and I usually possessed two cards at the bay that were either being backed up or formatted for camera. As bold as this may sound, our employed workflow functioned flawlessly. My post-production team worked very closely with the script supervisor, whose comprehensive notes when combined with our thorough P2 reel log gave way to a very comprehensive reference book for the editing process ahead. The intimacy between these two working phases of film production shows that the fusion is very promising and that further development could evolve the process entirely.
The greatest benefit from this production system was seeing what exactly we had in the can minutes after shooting it. One day comes to mind when we were hammering through the last three pages for the day. We were a little behind schedule but needed to avoid an overtime situation. As the P2 cards started coming in from set, they were immediately ingested into our editing system. We were able to perform a rough assembly using the incoming coverage along with some of the FX heavy masters from earlier in the day. It dawned on us that this pivotal scene was not translating the same way as it did in the script. Instead it was soft, an anticlimactic moment that needed immediate attention. We were able to quickly determine that the scene in progress would require additional coverage and even reshooting if it was going to work as originally intended. Rather than have time dictate the quality of our work, we rescheduled the scene to be shot later in the week in a slot where it could receive the attention it required. This provided the time for a brief rewrite and revised shot list.
Given the circumstances and budget, this movie couldn’t have been made any other way.
In my mind, Blackmagic’s DeckLink Extreme HD capture card was most conducive to the needs of our production. Right out of the box it provided hardware acceleration specifically designed for DVCPRO HD and Final Cut Pro. It also provided our semi-mobile edit bay with XLR outputs for studio monitoring. And the simple fact that the DeckLink HD Extreme boasts both digital and analog inputs makes it an extremely versatile board. Given the budget parameters of independent filmmaking, there was no other choice to make the movie the right way.
Many departments enjoyed the instant accessibility of the dailies. We had frequent visits from the director, the script supervisor, the camera department, lighting, set dressing, wardrobe and special FX who were all constantly checking our coverage and receiving instant gratification. Re-shooting, if necessary, was done quickly and easily.
About Roger Lay, Jr. (“Chrysalis” Producer/Screen Story)
Roger studied film and television production at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinema-Television and The Los Angeles Films School, Hollywood, learning his craft first hand on the set of such Universal Film’s as “Patch Adams”, “Bowfinger”, and “Man on the Moon”. Roger began his career when an internship on the hit television show “Everybody Loves Raymond” led to co-writing and producing a series of short films and behind the scenes segments featuring the cast of the CBS sitcom. Soon after, he joined Ray Romano as director of photography and co-producer on his U.S stand up comedy tour as they documented the entire journey in “95 Miles to Go”. Roger has recently directed commercials and music videos for some of Latin music’s top new artists. In 2004 he started his own production company, Urban Archipelago Films and has produced the short film adaptation of internationally acclaimed Ray Bradbury’s “A Piece of Wood”.
