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News - Nice Shoes New York Makes $3 Million Investment in FilmLight Color Grading Systems

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Plans New Collaborative Workflow for Commercial Post
Posted: 03.05.2009 00:00

Nice Shoes, New Yorkʼs largest provider of post-production services to the advertising industry, has agreed to purchase more than $3 million in new color grading technology from FilmLight. The purchase includes four Baselight EIGHT color grading systems, the flagship of the Baselight line – a system capable of grading 4K media in real-time. Additionally, Nice Shoes will receive two Baselight ONE systems and several laptop versions of the Baselight software. Nice Shoes has also purchased FilmLightʼs Truelight color management technology for display calibration and film output.

The acquisition of the systems is part of a larger expansion effort initiated by Nice Shoes. The company plans to occupy an additional floor of the building where it is located in Manhattan; the new space will house all of the companyʼs color grading facilities as well as part of its visual effects and editorial operations. Nice Shoes expects to take delivery of its first Baselight EIGHT in June with all systems up and running by the end of the year. It will represent the largest installation of Baselight systems worldwide.

Nice Shoes spent more than a year and conducted rigorous tests involving both traditional hardware color correctors and software-based systems such as Baselight. “We brought them all in for an evaluation. We had our artists work with them and compared their feature sets and how well they supported collaboration,” said Nice Shoes Chief Technology Officer Robert Keske. “Baselight offered the the most flexibility from an infrastructure point of view. The systems communicate perfectly with one another and therefore alleviate the problem of moving projects around. They also communicate well with our other applications and so have the most potential for collaboration.”

FilmLightʼs non-linear, softwarebased color grading technology will allow Nice Shoes to offer a new approach to color grading for commercials and to post-production work in general. Baselightʼs open architecture allows it to be linked to and share resources with other systems in the workflow, including editorial, compositing and visual effects workstations. As a result, color grading does not have to proceed as one step in a linear postproduction process. Rather, it can be engaged at any point in the process, allowing colorists to work collaboratively with other artists.

“We want to integrate all of our departments,” observed Nice Shoes Colorist Chris Ryan. “Instead of effects, editing and color grading operating as separate functions, weʼd like everything to flow through a central structure. We will continue to do jobs the traditional way, but for other projects, such as design-driven jobs, the work might flow back and forth between workstations with design, graphics and color working together.” Ryan added that FilmLight engineers developed modifications for Baselight to better support the collaborative workflow model that Nice Shoes envisions.

A key figure in the deal, Joe Bottazzi, Partner and Chief Engineer, Nice Shoes, commented “We are very excited to be working with FilmLight on this project. The new systems are key to launching Nice Shoesʼ into the next generation of workflow and to producing a higher end product.”

Nice Shoes plans to use Baselight EIGHT as its primary grading platform. All six systems will use FilmLightʼs new telecine control technology to directly control Nice Shoesʼ Spirit Datacines. The Baselight systems will also be set up to use Thomson Grass Valleyʼs Bones software for media ingest.

This mix is intended to allow the facility to get the most value from its investment and operate at peak efficiency. “While I am grading one job on Baselight, my assistant can be prepping the next job, so that when that group of clients walks in, I just load it in,” explained Ryan. “The Baselight ONE, meanwhile, can be used to render out the previous project to the SAN so that its ready for our Flame guys or output to tapeformat.”

While this approach to commercial post is new, Keske expects it to eventually become the norm for highend facilities. “We are looking toward the future, when a collaborative, homogeneous solution is something that post-houses will have to offer,” headed.

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