Inbox 1000W Digital Video Assist Playback Case Studies

The Making of McFly: Promo shoot by Corin Hardy

The Ballad of Paul K promo for McFly would have a flicker, old and melancholic look associated with an East European animated film/Jan Svankmeyer puppet animation. Very lonely and tragic. It would feature an animated McFly, performing the track outside a kind of cross-sectioned dolls house/animated model set style run down house.

Inside the house is Paul K - an animated puppet man who is living out the song, a sorry loser who keeps making bad decisions and getting things wrong which affects the immediate world around him and subsequently his life. He's an alcoholic and he's lost his family over his problems.

Corin Hardy comments, "The whole video will have the appearance of a stop motion animated music video. To start with, I shot the background animated set elements on a standard 16mm Bolex. For the live shoot we used HD, mainly because of the time constraints, as we needed actors and band to go over their actions time and again, and to be able to see how they would fit in with the backgrounds. We could see this straight away. Then we built life-size props for the green screen shoot and the Inbox1000W enabled us to match the two perfectly"

Tomb Raider: Rising to the Challenge

Mike Talarico, Visual Effects Unit Director on 'Tomb Raider' had the following comment,

"My experience of working with the Inbox technology during production on Tomb Raider was that it interfaced well with our 3D systems and motion control. Cinesite is currently working closely with Inbox on adapting their technology to work even more beneficially in our production environment and I look forward to working with them in the future."

Dinotopia: Taking the Guess work out of the Blue

Commenting David Booth, Framestore's Visual Effects Supervisor, on 'Dinotopia' said:

"Dinotopia required exact frame matching on set between 3D rendered animations and the live action movement generated by the motion rig and motion control camera. This was achieved by using the Inbox1000W to sync frame accurately the live action to the imported 3D files."

And he adds: "We were able to convert our 3D files to video and then use the Inbox1000W's onboard keyer / repositioner to align the two images to make sure the moves were going to work. The software also allowed us to apply offsets to all or individual layers, so we could apply a constant offset to our motion control camera moves. In all, I think the Inbox1000W and the InboxNetworks software showed it has the potential to work not only on basic shoots, but also on highly demanding frame critical shoots as well."