Should you’re in any respect accustomed to my work, you recognize I don’t wish to sit still for too long.
Over the past decade I’ve accomplished an rising quantity of labor in Southeast Asia, and my final three initiatives have been in China. For sure, I worth instruments that allow the type of agile workflow wanted when engaged on the highway in far-flung productions. And some of the useful remote workflow tools I take advantage of is Body.io.
Within the final three initiatives, the place I served as director, ending editor, and colorist, we relied on Body.io for sharing belongings between our editorial and VFX groups. Moreover, I’ve used it during the last a number of years to grade remotely, for purchasers situated in several states or nations.
Body.io completely permits efficient and productive communication with clients, which works a great distance in the direction of making life in post-production much less hellish.
However expertise has additionally proven me that Body.io is an extremely great tool for pre-production.
Throughout a latest dialog with the Body.io group, I discussed how fantastically helpful the platform was for my final movie in China, Carry My Heart to the Yellow River. I advised them I used Body.io extensively all through my complete workflow, however they have been notably considering how we used it for writing, casting, and site scouting, and invited me to share it with the neighborhood.
So, right here’s my tackle how Body.io suits completely right into a pre-production workflow.
Screenwriting
I directed Carry My Coronary heart to the Yellow River in the summertime of 2018. It was co-written with Chinese language screenwriter Kenjing Xiong (who wrote the unique story).
The movie, produced by Zunzheng Wang in Shenzhen, in Guangdong Province, would require us to share quite a lot of file and media sorts. That’s simply a part of working with collaborators throughout nations and continents. So we set the entire mission up in Body.io from the very starting, to make cross-platform and cross-border collaboration as simple as doable.
It began with the screenplay. Sadly, there’s at the moment no standardized screenwriting utility within the Chinese language movie and tv industries that’s able to dealing nicely with Chinese language characters. Screenwriters in China have simply gotten used to creating do with phrase processors like Microsoft Phrase.
However fortunately sufficient, Body.io isn’t only for video and audio media information. It’s simply as helpful for handing off Phrase information and previewing PDFs.
Kenjin would ship me Phrase information by way of my translator, Phillip Ngan, and I’d convert them into Ultimate Draft. After I made my edits, I’d ship again PDFs, which might be translated again into Chinese language in Phrase once more. It sounds horrible, however it labored nicely, and Body.io’s capability to maintain everybody on the identical web page from throughout borders made the method a lot better than earlier options I’ve used.
Casting
Issues actually acquired attention-grabbing once we began casting.
Due to our tight schedule, each casting and site scouting needed to be accomplished remotely (each DP Bo Hakala and I have been on different jobs). Line Producer Jianlan Li organized video auditions in each Shenzhen and Beijing, and all of the recordings have been uploaded to Body.io.
Body.io’s remark and approval options made it simple for me to overview, contemplate, and refine my alternatives as I pored over all of the totally different auditions. Preserving monitor of whom I favored and why was simple, and soliciting suggestions from my collaborators on culturally particular points was seamless.
We stored all of the alternatives on-line for later overview, simply in case. Since all our notes and ideas stayed connected to every clip, it might have been simple to recast or fill a brand new position. Body.io actually distinguished itself on this capability, and I plan to make use of it extra for sourcing expertise.
Location Scouting
Body.io was additionally incredible device for managing scouting.
Being suitable with so many file sorts meant that we may overview DSLR stills, video clips from varied cell telephones, and drone footage from nearly anyplace. Our scouting group threw nearly each format you’ll be able to consider in there, and all of it labored in an almost real-time expertise.
Fortunately, the identical overview and commenting mechanisms that served us so nicely for the audition clips have been simply as helpful for collating suggestions on areas and logistics.
The one file kind we stored separate was the VR footage I’d requested be captured by way of a Ricoh Theta digital camera. Since I had an Oculus headset, I believed I’d strive reviewing 360 stills as an alternative to being there, which I may entry by way of the headset’s viewer software program.
Sidenote: For anybody , the VR was a fairly profitable experiment. I wouldn’t say it was a vital necessity, however it did present a greater really feel for every setting’s capability for protection than the easy sequence of pictures you normally get from a location scout.
Put up-production from Afar
After we had the story finalized, the actors solid, and the areas chosen, I flew in to start manufacturing.
In complete, we careened by means of sixteen days of capturing, with 4 days on location in Shenzhen, and the remainder of our time in Gansu province’s Gannan area (in addition to some sections of the Yellow River in Sichuan province). It was an unimaginable expertise.
As soon as we moved into post-production, Body.io was as soon as once more vital to our course of.
I kicked issues off by creating synchronized and metadata-enriched dailies in DaVinci Resolve, so our New Zealand-based, bilingual editor, Chia Chi Hsu, may get to work.
Whereas I’ve edited most of my earlier indie initiatives myself (I used to edit professionally within the 90s, so I’m not just a few meddling director), I actually wished handy off to an editor on this one for quite a lot of causes. Nevertheless, since I wish to step into the editorial course of at totally different factors, I at all times need my editors to be comfy with that (I play nicely with others. I promise I’m not horrible).
And since Chia was wonderful with this association, in addition to my requirement that the mission be reduce in DaVinci Resolve, we started working virtually instantly after capturing wrapped.
On the time, DaVinci Resolve lacked the tight Frame.io integration it has now. I mailed a drive with offline dailies and mission information to Chia, and we used Body.io to commerce screeners of the edit, together with the DaVinci Resolve .drp mission information.
Since I used to be going backwards and forwards between China and the USA, I made certain to maintain a clone drive with me always. Keep in mind youngsters, at all times keep your footage safe.
This contained all the media and initiatives that I’d despatched to New Zealand, so I may at all times pull down a mission file and reconform it to do a hands-on overview and tweak go.
This went nicely, and Body.io was the hub of our collaboration by means of your entire edit, from Chia’s preliminary meeting and refinement, by means of her ultimate go. When she left for a prearranged trip, I continued refining the edit, utilizing Body.io to offer suggestions on my work till her return, proper by means of to ultimate image lock.
On high of that, we used Body.io to commerce off music cues from my Detroit-based composer John Rake, VFX works-in-progress from Minneapolis-based Splice Right here, and mixes from New Zealand-based submit home Division of Put up. And I may choose these up wherever I occurred to be at the moment, whether or not it was the USA, China, New Zealand, Thailand, or Singapore.
In all of those locales, Body.io labored persistently and nicely, and helped flip what may have been a tangled ball of chaos into an simply managed course of.
Shifting Ahead
Carry My Coronary heart to the Yellow River has to date been accepted to over 40 movie festivals in ten nations, profitable 9 awards and garnering glowing critiques, and Body.io helped us to make that occur.
Going ahead, I’m completely going to proceed to make use of Body.io from the very earliest levels of my initiatives by means of to the final.
For my part, the group at Body.io has accomplished a powerful job of making a Swiss military knife of a device. It’s capabilities serve distant workflows of all stripes, even those who don’t essentially sit inside the unique “post-production” pitch. With its safety and worldwide functionality, I’ll preserve my workflows right here for a protracted whereas.
I encourage all groups, huge and small, to experiment with Body.io to see what’s actually doable. The advantages could possibly be big.
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