A 50 minute documentary produced by Spaghetti Media, was flighted in Ster Kinekor Cinemas concurrently all over South Africa. Commissioned by ABSA Business Bank, and conceptualized by Cando Advertising, the documentary showcased the growth of a number of SMEs, which today are well known brands in their fields.
Spaghetti Media produced the documentary in 49 days, making for extremely tight deadlines for a project of this nature. The team created every element of the movie from shoot to final mix. Spaghetti Media worked with director Nick Brown and a small crew for the 12 shoot days. Spectrum were responsible for Quality Control and encode, and were extremely accommodating in allowing the Spaghetti team to QC the job in small batches.
Full frame DSLR and micro 4/3rds cameras made this project possible. “We shot on the Canon 5D and 7D, as well as the Panasonic AF101. We used the AF101 with our AJA Ki Pro for the chroma elements and the Canons for the rest. The combination of the AF101 and the AJA Ki Pro allowed for full raster 422 images straight from the SDI out and helped us avoid transcoding the chroma footage. We had a Mac Pro dedicated to transcodes on the Canon footage and used ProRes HQ as a digital intermediary before finishing in 10 bit on the Smoke. We graded in both the Smoke and in Apple Color and had to tweak the workflow a fair bit before we achieved a workable round-trip.
“Data wrangling on a project this size is critical. We couldn’t have done it without our EVO SAN/NAS storage system from Studio Network Solutions. With the EVO offering both SAN and NAS simultaneously, we were able to keep the sheer amount of raw data to a minimum. The 3D team were rendering to a shared directory on the NAS, whilst FCP, Logic Studio, Smoke and After Effects were addressing the raw footage on the SAN. This allowed us to work small batches and to begin comp, grade and final audio while we were still editing. We were working with 10-bit files in full high definition. A multitude of 3D animators were working on the documentary concurrently and EVO streamlined the workflow. This allowed us to complete the 50 minute documentary in extremely tight deadlines,” explains Andrew Lester of Spaghetti Media.
With regards to the client, Lester explains, “It really is a privilege to work on a project such as this one. It is awesome that Absa used small businesses to develop this project and showed a lot of substance by doing so. The team at Absa were a pleasure to work with; they were cognizant of the pressure of producing a minute a day for a sustained period of time and really sought to work with ourselves and Cando Advertising as a team and partner with us in meeting the deadlines. As a micro enterprise the content is relevant to us – so to work on communicating the messaging to South African SMEs is extremely rewarding.”
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