"We were impressed with the bespoke Stereoscopic Play-back System Escape Studios built for us. It has given us the play-back we want, saves us vast amounts of time and really opens up our 3D stereoscopic capabilities."

Stuart Pitcher, Head of VFX and Graphics, Fugitive Studios

Fugitive Studios Customer Story

The Client

Fugitive Studios is a successful independent post-production house based in London. Among its many select clients are Warner Bros., Walt Disney Pictures and Universal Pictures. Some of its recent production credits include end-rollers and sequences for Sherlock Holmes and title work for all six Harry Potter films.

The Background

Given its work on major motion pictures, Fugitive Studios is on the battlefront of the recent explosion in demand for stereoscopics. Filmmakers and television studios around the world are looking for ways to incorporate 3D titles, subtitles and visual effects for features and trailers to match the growing consumer demand for the next dimension in content and technology.

Challenge

While the demand for 3D production work was increasing, Fugitive faced a significant technology challenge that many studios are likely dealing with today. As broadcast media have moved from standard definition to high-definition and now high-definition 3D, the stereoscopic technology for developing, rendering and editing the content has been cost prohibitive for some while traditional quality control methods were creating workflow bottleneck for studios like Fugitive.

“Employing a basic set-up for intensive quality control work was proving a challenge and a real workflow bottleneck for us,” explained Stuart Pitcher, head of VFX and Graphics at Fugitive Studios. “We needed to be able to review the stereoscopic data in real-time to create a faster workflow. Occasionally we used a digital cinema package to screen our footage in cinemas, but we couldn’t do that every time we were working on a trailer, so we needed something that would allow us to do it in-house and do it quickly.”

In effort to overcome its workflow challenges, Fugitive turned to Escape to help design, build and install an affordable, standalone bespoke turnkey stereoscopic playback solution that would help the artists spot imperfections and quality control their material without the need for time-consuming rendering.

Senior Business Development Manager, Film and TV for Escape Studios Richard McGuiness added, "Traditionally, stereoscopic systems have required a substantial investment causing a large number of studios to turn down stereo projects for lack of facility. Studios often incur costs on top of an already expensive system, and we were trying to avoid that when looking for an alternative for Fugitive Studios."

The Solution

To meet its production needs, Fugitive and Escape identified four critical requirements of its stereoscopic system:

• Real-time RW stereoscopic playback.
• Compatible with XP64-bit output and specification requirements
• Matched to back-end infrastructure.
• IRIDAS FrameCycler DDS front-end.

"The solution we developed was unique to this project and required some creative thinking to meet the power-hungry demands of stereoscopic playback," commented McGuiness. "We had to put some black magic into the machine, including a very powerful RAID card for better interaction, a 10 gigabit Ethernet and some lightweight Linux server structure."

Included in the system were three core components:

• HP Z400 workstation
• Modified Boston Igloo workstation
• 46” 3D JVC display

Pitcher stated, “Fugitive based the system on a Boston Igloo because of its open, robust and customisable platform. They built a complete extended suite from start to finish. It can hold three full film-2k resolution features and play them back in real-time.”

Prior to installing the system, Escape completed a variety of tests using Fugitive Studios’ data to tailor playback to the resolution and file types that the studio would use. Despite the complexity of the advanced system, Escape deployed it in just under two hours, including testing and importing fresh footage.

The Result

Fugitive Studios now has its own 3D screening room complete with crystal clear 46” stereoscopic playback, and according to Pitcher, “We are the envy of many of our peers.”

He added, “It saves us a vast amount of time by giving us the ability to QC data and spot any problems straight away, which also ensures that we deliver to our customers the best product the first time. The new system has increased our capabilities to source and deliver more stereoscopic work, and could open doors for many studios, which can use the system to run a stereoscopic configuration at half the cost of other systems. This translates into significant time and cost savings that were previously unattainable.”