NAB 2012: FilmLight FLIPs for End-to-End Color

Debra Kaufman
Santa Monica California USA

©2012 CreativeCOW.net. All rights reserved.

FilmLight introduces FLIP, a new real-time image processing product that's an end-to-end color pipeline solution. Also new is the near-set dailies solution Baselight Transfer and Baselight 4.3, the latest software version with many new features.

Top, FLIP: FilmLight Image Processor. Below, FilmLight will show Baselight for Final Cut Pro at NAB.

FilmLight plans to debut and showcase a wide variety of new and improved technology at NAB 2012. Most revolutionary is FLIP -- which stands for FilmLight Image Processor -- which is essentially a mini, completely programmable Baselight in a compact box, minus the timeline and streaming process. "FLIP can do the whole gamut of grading operations that people are used to doing with Baselight," says FilmLight co-founder/CTO Wolfgang Lempp. "It's a full-blown grading system but it's not linear. It's possible to take it on set and put it between the camera and the monitor, with unlimited amount of flexibility to manipulate the monitoring output of the camera, rather than the raw data. But then we can take the metadata we've gathered in the box and apply it to the raw data."

According to Lempp, FLIP has a wide range of applications. "At the moment, we're thinking of color and grading," he says. "But we will put a chroma keyer in there with two keys and a green screen or for stereo geometry fixes in real-time. The UI elements in it are completely programmable keys, and it's also very quiet."

Selected grades can also be applied to dailies, and that's where FLIP intersects with another new FilmLight product, Transfer. Baselight Tranfser is a real-time 4K dailies processing system that supports Sony F65, ARRI Alexa and RED Epic among other digital cinema cameras. Lempp reports that Transfer was used recently for the Sony F65 4K ACES workflow of director M. Night Shyamalan's After Earth.

"With such fast processing, Transfer allows you to apply the grade to the dailies process and deliverables for offline in a consistent way and to keep all the metadata," notes Lempp, who points out that Baselight Transfer also provides automatic color matching between the on-set grading data gathered via FLIP and raw camera footage. "The result is in absolute integrity of the look captured on set."

FilmLight co-founder/CTO
Wolfgang Lempp

FilmLight will also show Baselight for Apple Final Cut Pro 7 and, new for NAB, Baselight for Nuke, as well as a preview of Baselight for Avid Media Composer. "What has happened is that 90 percent of the work applies to all the other applications and therefore we will be able to introduce the concept of Baselight inside another application relatively quickly to the other major professional products," says Lempp. "And in doing so, you end up with Baselight and the grading system not just in the finishing suite but also in visual effects, where the integration with Nuke is something our clients have been constantly asking for, and in editorial, as part of the dailies process and onset as well."

FilmLight will also be showcasing Baselight 4.3, the latest version of its grading software, which can be paired with its Blackboard 2 console for optimal operation. "After ten years of development, it's become quite a mature production in its functionality and also mature in how and where it's being used," says Lempp about Baselight. "Ten years ago, Digital Intermediates were barely known as an idea and how it's almost universal. Color is no longer an afterthought: it's everywhere. Baselight in its functionality reflects this very much."

"Color everywhere is our theme for NAB," he concludes. "It's only reasonable to expect that people want to have a more collaborative, nonlinear way of putting things together that allows them to interact with what's in front of their eyes."

Lempp is certainly correct when he notes that the lines are blurring between pre-production, production and post. To take the pro-active stance and make FilmLight tools available across the spectrum of production activities is the right thing to do at the right time. It's an especially appealing idea to integrate Baselight with other popular tools, such as Avid Media Composer, FCP 7 and Nuke. This practical approach to real workflows is sure to be taken up by Baselight fans as well as create new ones.

Baselight 4.3, the latest version of its grading software, can be paired with its Blackboard 2 console.