US network IFC recently debuted the latest chapters of Trapped in the Closet, singer-songwriter R Kelly’s ‘urban operetta’ series. Trapped co-director/editor Jim Swaffield decided to adopt AJA Ki Pros to optimise and simplify the production’s camera to edit workflow. Swaffield and DP Teodoro Maniaci chose to work with two Sony F3 cameras for the bulk of the photography, supplemented by an Arri Alexa for slow motion sequences. “With good glass, the Sony F3 produces wonderful images, it has a great sensor,” explained Swaffield, “however the internal recording is done at 4:2:0 35Mb/s and we wanted a higher data rate.” To address this issue, Swaffield turned to Gary Pontore, a VP in the Modern Media Solutions Division at Future Tech Enterprise, who serves as a post/digital workflow consultant on the series. Pontore recommended an all new workflow using two Ki Pro recorders on set fed from the camera’s SDI outputs to the recorders to benefit from Ki Pro’s 10-bit 4:2:2 recording capabilities, along with Mac Pros running Final Cut Pro 7 and Adobe Creative Suite 6 for editing. The two F3 cameras output 1920x1080x23.976fps 4:4:4 10-bit RGB S-log signals, to which LUTs were applied on set by DIT John Waterman using Pomfort LiveGrade software. “Teo likes to interactively combine illumination and grading,” said Swaffield, “and we were able to get very close to our final look dynamically on set as we shot. We then recorded this signal at high quality, to ProRes HQ 422. With the Ki Pro, our files were already in ProRes and ready to edit without having to transcode, which allowed co-editor David Rosenblatt to work live on set. This was key for us because our start date got pushed back while our delivery date remained the same, so we ended up only having three and a half weeks to do everything – but thanks to the Ki Pros we were able to work and turn everything around very quickly with no problems.” – Jake Young
www.aja.com Image credit: Parrish Smith
