35mm 4K Film requirements for Post Production

Marcus Frakes · August 8, 2006

We are forging into our first 35mm feature length project. I'm hoping to get the data from the telecine on a hard drive (is there any other way?). Then working on it to add visual effects (about 10 minutes of the film). What storage/throughput is **required** to process a project this big? It's being scanned as Film 4k so I'm thinking SCSI 360 or "maybe" Rocket Raid with SATA 2 drives would do the job nicely??

Thanks

Brandon Robinson · August 9, 2006

Hi Montage,

First off you may want to consider a 2K transfer for several reasons. The transfer will cost more, and processing the 4K files will make your composite super slow, not to mention that you will only be able to see about 2K scaled down anyways depending on your monitor. Past that you would be able to work on the footage with any hard drive, unless you want to playback realtime (aside from cached preview). If you want to playback 2K realtime you are looking at an expensive system and also about 12 drives striped together (expensive too), 4K realtime realistically doesn't exist until you go out to film. Contact me directly if you need help with some visual effects or more advise.

-Brandon

PS most features are worked on in 2K still

Marcus Frakes · August 9, 2006

I'll try to be more specific. The feature requires us to add special effects. I believe the combined amount of footage we receive will be about 10-12 minutes. In turn we will composite and add effects to produce about 3 1/2 minutes of finished work. The DoP said we will receive the work in 4K film, to which he wants it delivered back in 4K film. I don't really have a choice on how the data will be delivered. From there he will downconvert to Super 2K? for the final writeout to film. My question mainly concerns hardware....

What type of RAID (SCSI UW320, SATA2, Striped?, etc) would need to be purchased to handle the job? I've estimated 600GB is sufficient? We will add effects in Adobe After Effects, Digital fusion, Combustion, etc. and be working with proxy files. Also is it typical for the job to be given to us on a hard drive?