Filmlight - Look in the Cloud

The eighteen-month project will develop ways for creative teams making movies or TV shows
to collaborate interactively to review and agree the ‘look’ of a sequence across all the stages
of video processing.
Video for effects-rich movies and TV drama is processed by multiple teams, both on-set and
in postproduction, in a series of steps involving video capture, shot management, look
management, transcoding, editing, VFX, compositing and grading. Each of these steps can
change the look and the dramatic impact of a sequence, but it is extremely difficult for the
director to ensure that a look is communicated, applied and maintained along the chain as
sequences are repeatedly edited and effects, CGI and grades are added. Work is often
distributed between companies in centres such as London, California, Vancouver, Wellington,
Beijing and Mumbai. Creative professionals and teams view digital sequences in different
conditions and applications: there is no guarantee that the ‘red’ seen in a facility house in
London matches the colour the director on location in Rome wants to change. Mistakes occur
and the ‘look’ drifts away from the director’s vision, leading to frustration, delay, and
expensive re-working.
‘Look in the Cloud’ will develop a metadata system and architecture that will allow all the
creative teams to see, discuss and modify the look, with a Cloud-based workspace,
metadatabase and application plug-ins that enable everyone (director, cameraman, DIT, editor,
VFX artist, colourist et al) to see – and know they are seeing – the same thing, irrespective of
the software application or equipment they are using.
FilmLight Ltd will market the resulting system and services to facility houses, film and TV
studios and production companies around the world from its sales and marketing offices in
London and USA and its international network of resellers.