Opera Film utilise Aurora IgniterX on new projects

Stockholm-based Opera Film, a production firm specialising in feature films for the international market, are using the IgniterX video capture and edit card in the unique production of two new projects, a horror film titled ‘Camp Slaughter’ and a dark, futuristic sci-fi film titled ‘Typhoon.’
"We've used the IgniterX card for a number of years now, and we've stayed with it because of the great quality of the codecs," said Martin Munthe, director at Opera Film. "Aurora's MJPEG-A codec saves a lot of disk space and delivers the best quality I've ever seen in 4:2:2 compressed video. It's often difficult to tell the difference between the uncompressed and the 'offline' MJPEG-A codec, and of course the uncompressed codec is very important in colour correction and effects work where you want as much of the original color information present as possible."
Camp Slaughter is the first project Opera Film has completed with the IgniterX. Munthe and his colleagues did all the post editing and finishing, as well as colour correction, in an uncompressed 10-bit format. The IgniterX card allowed the production team to work in both the YUV and RGB range when going in and out of After Effects for visual effects and deinterlacing.
"Colour correction is very important to us because we shoot digitally and want to bring as much as we can out of that footage," continued Munthe. "Camp Slaughter is a horror film that would suffer tremendously if the images lacked the impact of motion picture film. We wanted it to look as good as film, and for that to happen we couldn't stay in DV during post."
In addition to post and finishing, Opera Film also used the IgniterX for post looping the film's dialogue. Used along with the Final Cut Pro voiceover tool, the IgniterX audio inputs helped to speed up the process of post synching.
Typhoon, currently in production, was shot with a Sony PD150P DVCAM handheld camera straight to a disk drive using the IgniterX's Y/C analogue connection. The signal was fed without tape compression via a high-quality Y/C cable from the camera's D/A, providing a much higher image resolution than is typical with this grade of camcorder. Opera Film shot the entire film against blue-screen backgrounds with only the actors and a few small props present, while the rest of the film was produced using LightWave 3D. Numerous ‘track points’ allowed the company's graphic artists to recreate the camera's movement and to translate it into computer-generated background shots, which are currently being rendered out and composited in After Effects with the IgniterX footage.
"We're a small independent production house, so we have to use cheap off-the-shelf hardware and software to create our films," said Munthe. "We've done amazing things, such as our CG work on Typhoon, on a small budget. I've never heard of anyone doing what we are doing on this level, and the price and performance of the IgniterX card help make it possible."
(GB)