ESPN's New HD Production Shot in Remote Location, on Time and Under Budget

ESPN's New HD Production Shot in Remote Location, on Time and Under Budget

'The Bronx is Burning' online color correction time cut by half thanks to Technicolor(R) Creative Bridge, NVIDIA(R) Quadro(R) FX 4500 SDI by PNY Technologies(R) and ASSIMILATE

PARSIPPANY, N.J., Aug. 7 /PRNewswire/ -- "The Bronx is Burning", ESPN's new miniseries makes use of an innovative digital workflow design using Technicolor Creative Bridge's Mobile Digital Lab and Theatre (MDLT). This state of the art MDLT houses a Globalstor ExtremeStor DI workstation with the NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500 SDI by PNY graphics board running ASSIMILATE's SCRATCH Data-Centric Workflow Solution. On location at Sonalysts Studios in Waterford Connecticut, the MDLT gave the production team access to a complete digital "pre-post" pipeline; allowing the production team to establish a new pre-post colorization model. As a result the HD production was much more efficient and the final online color correction was much more cost effective.

"The Bronx is Burning" was shot on location throughout Connecticut, using the Thomson VIPER FilmStream(TM) digital camera. Second unit DP David Stump, ASC, highly experienced in both VFX and digital production, was brought on board by producer Bill Johnson ("A Walk to Remember" and "The Kid") to help design the HD 4:4:4 digital workflow. The system chosen by Stump and the production team was Creative Bridge's fully integrated, fault-tolerant high definition DI solution. The ExtremeStor DI workstation with the NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500 SDI by PNY and ASSIMILATE's SCRATCH delivered everything they needed: real-time color correction, real-time HD-SDI playback, color accuracy and it was on-site.

"The workflow was great. The dailies didn't have to go to New York to be processed; they only had to go as far as the mobile lab parked in the back of the studio where Jeff Olm, Creative Bridge's colorist was waiting. We looked at colorized dailies the next afternoon," said Bill Johnson producer for The Bronx is Burning.

To establish the pre-post colorization process, Jeff Olm, Creative Bridge's colorist, worked with The Bronx is Burning's Director Jeremiah Chechik, 1st Unit D.P. Doug Koch C.S.C. and 2nd Unit DP David Stump A.S.C to create a series of "looks" (Lookup Tables or LUTs) in pre-production. "Jeremiah, David and Doug shot three days of test footage in all different types of settings and then established over 50 different looks or LUTs that they wanted to use," said Johnson. Before each scene was recorded, Koch and Chechik would choose a look for the scene and note it on the camera report and the slate frame. Back at the mobile lab, Olm was then able to use the real- time color correction capability of the NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500 SDI by PNY combined with SCRATCH to make the clone master while simultaneously down converting a copy for editorial.

"Shooting digitally, using Creative Bridge's mobile studio and pre-defined LUTs, made coloring at the backend go about 25-30% quicker, faster and smoother. The savings were astonishing; when it came to colorizing online we cut our budgeted time by half," said Johnson.

"The powerful accelerators of the GPU on the NVIDIA Quadro SDI by PNY graphics board were critical to The Bronx is Burning color processing pipeline, enabling both real time color correction and real time viewing of results in HD formats," said Jeff Medeiros senior business development manager, PNY Technologies Inc.

Using the HD-SDI output of SCRATCH and the NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500 SDI by PNY, Creative Bridge was also able to ensure that what the Director and DP were seeing daily, was the same as they would see in post production. " All parties could view both the original footage and the color corrected footage within hours on the 6' wide HD projection screen, in our mobile theatre," explained Dan Lion, partner and co-founder of Creative Bridge. " In many cases issues could be detected and corrected before the set was struck."

The Bronx is Burning, produced by Tollin/Robbins Productions, is an eight- part baseball - themed miniseries for ESPN Original Entertainment. Based on Jonathan Mahler's bestseller "Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning", the miniseries covers events of New York City in the summer of 1977. The series premiered July 9th on ESPN, a date which coincides with the 30th anniversary of the Yankees' first World Series under owner George Steinbrenner.

To read additional details on The Bronx is Burning profile visit http://www2.pny.com/pressRoom/CaseStudies/index.aspx. For a complete feature listing and to learn more about the NVIDIA Quadro SDI by PNY graphic board, please visit http://www2.pny.com/category_buymulti.aspx?Category_ID=38.

About PNY Technologies, Inc.

Established in 1985, PNY Technologies(R), Inc. is a leading supplier and marketer of NVIDIA Quadro(R) by PNY Technologies professional graphics boards and XLR8(TM) and Verto(R)-brand consumer graphics cards. The company also offers a full line of high-end memory upgrade modules, flash media, USB flash drives, portable hard drives and flash peripherals. Headquartered in Parsippany, N.J., PNY maintains facilities in North America, Europe and Asia. For more information, please visit http://www.pny.com/.

The PNY logo is a registered trademark of PNY Technologies, Inc. NVIDIA and NVIDIA QUADRO are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of NVIDIA Corporation in the Unites States and other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Copyright (C) 2006 PNY Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved

   For Editorial Information:   Jeff Medeiros   Senior Business Development Manager   PNY Technologies, Inc.   1-408-567-5512   jmedeiros@pny.com   or   Margaret Salleroli   Manager, Marketing Communications   PNY Technologies, Inc.   1-800-769-7079 ext. 5512   msalleroli@pny.com  

First Call Analyst:
FCMN Contact:

Source: PNY Technologies Inc.

CONTACT: Jeff Medeiros, Senior Business Development Manager, Inc.,
+1-408-567-5512 jmedeiros@pny.com, or Margaret Salleroli, Manager, Marketing
Communications, 1-800-769-7079 ext. 5512, msalleroli@pny.com, both of PNY
Technologies, Inc.

Web site: http://www.pny.com/
http://www2.pny.com/pressRoom/CaseStudies/index.aspx
http://www2.pny.com/category_buymulti.aspx?Category_ID=38

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Profile: International Entertainment