Friday, June 26, 2015

ACES for Editors and Colorists, plus The Monitor Shootout!

Presentations on ACES plus the Best Reference-Grade Monitors

The June Editors' Lounge held a night dedicated to educating the post production community about ACES, the Academy Color Encoding System, as well as the latest in state-of-the-art, reference-grade monitors.

ACES
How do you get the entire creative team from the set, through editorial, post and archiving to speak the same language when it comes to color management and file interchange? ACES is the answer!

Alex Forsythe, Academy Technical Lead, ACES Project, Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, opened with a presentation about what ACES is and how it works, with a focus on editorial and post. He was followed by Digital Intermediate Colorist Trent Johnson of Deluxe Culver City and Editor Shelly Westerman, who discussed ACES' real world application. The duo collaborated on The Wedding Ringer, a film that employed ACES throughout the creative process. Also present was Screen Gems Head of Physical Production, Glenn Gainor, and the group discussion was moderated by Documentary Producer Steve Tobenkin. The evening was filled with great questions and detailed answers; guests gained real insight into ACES and learned how ACES will impact their work.

Monitors
The Editors' Lounge Monitor Shootout presented multiple reference grade LCD and OLED monitors from Dolby, Flanders Scientific and Sony. These color-critical screens were lined up in a row under controlled lighting conditions while displaying the same HD content, so that attendees were able to move from monitor to monitor and evaluate them in a way that can't be done at individual trade show booths. Company representatives were on hand to explain features and answer questions.

In addition, Sony set up a BVM-X300 OLED monitor which played HDR 4K material at native resolution — the stunning images were a definite hit!