We are proud to present a novel and innovative Mobile Post Production Facility designed to be set up from its purpose built flight cases in less than an hour, in virtually any location.
The mobile facility, while relatively compact, offers practically all of the functions of a full blown post production facility. These include online editing, colour grading, back up of digital dailies, certain visual effects and post production of sound.
With it we can see both pristine quality images and sound, eliminating the need for off-line editing.
David Bush
Mike Connor
With the 8K Mobile Digital Lab we can shorten the time normally required for delivery of finished product when using today’s standard editing workflow, while also offering the entire crew better quality control and piece of mind over the production's progress.
The 8K Mobile Digital Lab has been developed through David & Mike's extensive post and production experience in the film industry and uses new, extremely high performance technology running on specially configured hyperfast Apple Mac Pro workstations. These powerhouses can work effortlessly in 8k and with the new extended version 12k, voiding once and for all the need for proxy workflows.
Resolve Colour Correction
Resolve editing
Apple Mac Pro
Thanks also to Da Vinci Resolve there is also no need to transcode or convert the original raw camera files into compressed files or other formats, saving time and expense.
Viewing reference images on the brilliant new Apple Pro XDR 6k 32" display within a calibrated environment helps decision making for heads of departments; production design, make up, hair, costumes; indeed the whole crew have much to gain viewing and checking their work on the 6k calibrated display.
The 8K Mobile Digital Lab also enables continuous colour grading with the cinematographer; so that colourist and director of photography can gradually create and refine the look day by day, and show director edited and graded sequences.
In essence both productive and creative aspects can be discussed and worked on immediately, contributing to the advancement of the project, and, importantly, helping to render the entire production's progress more efficient.
The accuracy, ultra high resolution and up to 1500 nits brilliance of Apple’s XDR displays also help quality control of lensing as the calibrated display shows "What you see is what you are going to get" while the 1500 nits display also enables us to check High Dynamic Range or HDR.
Ideally, and if production space allows, the 8k Mobile Digital Lab is placed directly on the set, or in a corner of the studio, but if the ambient light cannot be adjusted in terms of intensity - 10 nits for Home Entertainment and 3 nits for theatrical - we suggest the solution of placing a relatively cheap black gazebo like the one shown in this link, creating a sort of room in the room; often known affectionately as the Punjabi tent in India.
Apple Pro XDR 6k
Custom built flight cases
The 8k Mobile Digital Lab is transported in eight purpose built flight cases and, thanks to the reduced number of cables necessary for connecting up hardware, control panels, disk arrays, screens and Mac Pro workstation is set up very quickly.
The Apple XDR screen is calibrated both for the room’s light levels, display colourimetry, and HDR. These are set up and checked continuously using Steve Shaw’s Light Illusion software and probe.
This innovative method of editing and colour grading immediately the digital camera footage in its final quality and indeed the Mobile Lab itself have been extensively tested by David and Mike using Red Gemini, Red Monstro, Blackmagic design 6k pocket camera in 4k, 5k, 6k, and 8k, and also with the Blackmagic design 12k camera.
Following on from the tests and modifications to extend high resolution playback to include 12k, a first job was worked on in Dubai when the capability of editing and grading during shooting was called for. This became the first time in the world that the 8k Mobile Lab was used for a project.
Mike was director of cinematography, and is seen here in the Dubai office of the Prime Minister of The United Arab Emirates - Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. This was for a documentary based on his book “My Story”, and The Lab was set up in a Hotel in the City. Every evening Mike was able to see colour graded rushes that David graded for him, while director Ahmed Kamel was able to see edits made by editor Wael Al-Masri.
The production companies and producers were also able to see progress in shooting and post production on a daily basis, and everyone was extremely well impressed by this, and, of course the quality of the pristine imagery and Mike's Cinematography. While the main shooting was done in 8k with the Red Monstro, night time desert shots were done with the Red Gemini in 5k taking advantage of its 3200 ISO capabilities.
The project was edited, graded and finalised in 4k, and with imagery shot in higher resolutions this gave very high quality imagery thanks to oversampling.
Please find at the bottom of this page contacts for more information and costs per day, week and month of the 8k Mobile Digital Lab.
8K Mobile Digital Lab and Da Vinci Resolve
The 8K Digital Mobile Lab uses Da Vinci Resolve as this Black Magic Design software and hardware system has become the World's most successful solution for resolution independent cost-effective post production. Thanks to the company's success, and excellent training videos, there are now more and more freelance professional operators around the world. Excellent interface design with lightning fast editing, grading and sound control interfaces also make it easy for Avid, Final Cut Pro or Premiere editors to learn how to use it and become operative in a very short time.
Importantly, and unlike other solutions, Resolve allows massive creative and technically streamlined collaboration between editing, grading, effects and audio all on one platform.
The software Imports directly virtually all camera raw formats, speeding up post production since there is no need to waste any time transcoding to proxy or compressed formats.
For some types of visual effects, and especially those where we try to capture as much as possible in camera, the possibility of making extremely high quality vfx composites on set also makes sound creative and economic sense.
As a visual effects supervisor that has worked for decades with the equivalent of a blindfold over my eyes, I have always dreamt that I would have been able to see all of the elements we had just shot put together. Well, now its become possible, and with a calibrated 6k Apple XDR screen the finished visual effects can be shown to director and approved, or, if there is a need, re-shot then and there.
8K Mobile Digital Lab and Apple Pro Technologies
8K Mobile Digital Lab has a specialised configuration of processors, ram, disk drives and multiple graphics boards in Apple's new, hyper-fast Mac Pro. This monster machine can process contemporarily multiple streams of 8K RAW, 12K and can handle Film Mastering, Digital Intermediates & Film Restoration, with their uncompressed 16 bit 4K files.
Proxy free workflows
1,000 nits
full-screen sustained brightness
1,600 nits
peak brightness
1,000,000:1
contrast ratio
"Having tried it myself", David writes, "I can say that grading in 8k offers an incredible and absolutely unique selectivity for colours and, at the same time, less image noise. The power of the workstation makes the interactivity, instant playback and sound track merge into a colourist's dream, displayed gloriously on the brilliant 6k XDR display."
Grant Petty, CEO of Blackmagic Design adds;
"With the new Mac Pro we see full‐quality 8K and 12K performance in real-time with color correction and effects, something we could never dream of doing before. DaVinci Resolve running on the new Mac Pro is easily the fastest way to edit, grade, and finish movies and TV shows.”
In the words of Jarred Land, president of Red Digital Cinema;
"Apple’s new hardware brings a mind‐blowing level of performance to proxy‐free r3d workflows".
8K Mobile Digital Lab founders
David Bush and Mike Connor
Stimulated by our long term professional quest of striving to improve processes and techniques in our fields, we decided to design and create the 8K Mobile Digital Lab based on what we believe is already a more efficient and cost effective solution for merging production and post production techniques.
We have observed from a privileged position that the current post production workflow and overall costs are no longer efficient or cost effective for today's market.
The Lab that we have created is in essence the tool that we dreamt of for our own work, and, as it offers overall savings to production, helps shorten time to market, while also offering very useful new creative tools, we think the market will like it too.
Alberto Parodi has a passion and ability in all that has to do with sound. Indeed, he's come up with a brilliant portable unit for audio on location that is designed to work very efficiently with the 8K Mobile Digital Lab.
Alberto Parodi