Grandpa in my pocket - Series 1
26 x 12mins. Adastra Creative for BBC Cbeebies. Broadcasting from February 2009.
Take one mischievous Grandpa, his magic shrinking cap and his imaginative seven-year old grandson, and all sorts of mini-adventures start to unfold. This VFX- based children’s TV series, shot in Cardiff, South Wales, generated over 100 hours of 1080p HD footage during the course of a 31-day shoot. Codex delivered a highly productive, time-saving, tapeless workflow for footage moving continuously back and forth between the set and the editorial/VFX departments. On a daily basis, the Codex Recorder also enabled the production team to make rapid and informed decisions on-set.
Codex Digital worked closely on the workflow with Jon Rennie, head of visual effects at Dinamo Productions, which provided VFX compositing services on the production. Rennie was the VFX supervisor on the production and also outlined the workflow for the production – where the chief requirements were for high-quality HD and immediacy of feedback.
A Codex Recorder was deployed as the principal record, instant on-set playback and comparative review station, and also as the source for all of the deliverables needed by the editorial and VFX teams. During production, the Recorder simultaneously captured the 1080p, 25fp, 4:2:2 output from two Sony HDW1500 cameras – one shooting live action footage, the other capturing greenscreen VFX material – which were located in adjacent studios. The footage from each camera was recorded on to individual Codex diskpacks. Around three hours of footage was recorded each day, with material exported directly into the Avid editor, and around 250Gb shipped each day to the visual effects artists at Dinamo on hard disk. The Recorder handled around 6.5Tb of footage over the duration of the shoot.
The daily deliverables provided by the Recorder were: Avid DNxHD MXF 185 of the greenscreen material for the VFX compositors; Avid DNxHD MXF 120 of the live action and background plates, for the editorial and VFX teams; and Avid DNxHD MXF 36 for on-set playback, review and line-up. All shots had same files names and metadata, making it easy for every department to find and compare shots. The Recorder enabled the on-set production team to find and playback background plates, alternative takes and reverses, all with audio. This footage could be combined in minutes on set with the appropriate VFX greenscreen material. This immediacy, assisted the production team with line-up and the actors with their performances.
