Mobile Digital Lab

DAVID BUSH & MIKE CONNOR present
MOBILE DIGITAL LAB

MOBILE DIGITAL LAB is a highly innovative film, documentary, commercials and tv post production facility designed to be located close to shooting venues. It is made for productions ranging from HD to raw formats from 2k to 8k UHD. During shooting the units act as a complete lab for the project, with an independent roving portable unit that follows shooting close to the camera(s), and one (or more) powerful workstation(s) set-up in a hotel room, apartment or production office nearby. The facility, which is configured specifically for each production, is a powerful combination of David and Mike’s decades of worldwide experience in production and post together with new, extremely powerful Apple and Black Magic Design hardware and software. These are configured with multiple core processors, gpu’s, and large quantities of RAM together with fast storage, enabling the firepower for multiple layers and realtime playback (up to 8k UHD at a maximum of 60 fps with raw BMD and R3d files).

David & Mike have worked together for some 25 years and have created and pioneered many different technological solutions for shooting, visual effects and post production; MOBILE DIGITAL LAB represents the most recent state of the art know-how that they have researched, tested and worked with successfully in 4k – 8k. The prototype system was recently used for Ahmed Kamel’s Roaya (who supplied the equipment) and Eagle Films to post during production a prestigious 4k documentary (“My Story”) on Dubai’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed’s life story.

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Unlike today’s traditional post production workflow, there is simply no longer any need to transcode to other formats and work off-line/on-line when all can be achieved directly in the final delivery resolution. Not only does this save time, money and disk-space but it also offers a formidable interactive instrument for absolute quality control available to producers. heads of departments and director, during production. Once principal photography is completed, or at any moment in time, the project can be handed over to chosen facilities with compatible software and hardware, or finished on the system itself.

By the end of principal photography the film will be further along the final completion time-line than with traditional methods, while reaping at the same time the additional benefits of substantially reduced overall costs, reduced time to market and amazing creative interaction for cinematography, sound and visual effects, with heads of department able to see critically their on-going work.

David is available to work also operationally on editing and colour correction if desired, and Mike also offers his services as director of photography. The cost of renting the system is far less than traditional post production facilities, and the two professionals offer a competitive package for their creativity and know-how. New fast connections available over standard internet lines locally (as long as these are of at least 10mbps connection speeds) can be used to send full resolution materials back to production office or local lab continuously, if desired.

Mike has over 30 years of camera experience Internationally. He has worked with film, digital, motion control & visual effects. He has worked alongside Directors such as Ridley Scott, Hugh Hudson, Sidney Pollack, Wolfgang Peterson, Milos Forman, Giuseppe Tornatore and also with many prestigious Cameramen and Creatives. Over the years he has often combined his own techniques with David for ever more challenging story telling (see a few examples bellow).

David is passionate about post production following on from decades of work editing high-end commercials, documentaries & long format television programmes. These often took him out of the post production facilities he founded, designed and managed* in Italy to supervise and produce visual effects on set and, since 2008, he has also offered master class consultancy and training for native stereography, colour and 3d grading. He has worked with Jean-Jacques Annaud, Michelangelo Antonioni, Giuseppe Tornatore, Ferzan Ozpetek, Bernardo
Bertolucci amongst many others.

* Digitalvideo (Milan) Interactive (Milan) and Cinecittà Digital

In Giuseppe Tornatore’s “The Legend of the Pianist on the Ocean” Mike and David worked together on many different scenes of the 450 visual effects.

The film’s piano dance sequence was made with grips dressed in green suits running, pushing and pulling the piano and both Tim Roth and Pruitt Taylor Vince as they moved around the ship’s first class saloon during a storm with the piano’s brakes released. Multiple takes were made with motion control to enable empty plates for the cancellation of the grips etc., and the sea movement itself. In essence, the camera moved, while the set remained still, greatly simplifying production design at the same time.

David and Mike worked together on Renzo Martinelli’s film “Vajont”. In order to create the dam for the film, David suggested creating a small segment of the dam, mounting this on semi-circular rails with the same width and radius as the real dam, and then shooting it in eight different positions with the same motion control moves. This also meant that extras could be multiplied to make it look as though hundreds were working on the construction and completion of the dam. Two dam segments were made; one for the dam while under construction, and the other, shown in the photo, with the almost completed dam. The lower part of the dam was created in cgi and added in compositing.

Optional audio post-production on location!

As with video, quality control and the resolution of problems with audio recorded on location while production is ongoing is a time and money saver. With ADR actors and actresses can sometimes have difficulty attending sessions booked subsequently in dubbing studios month’s later. Making any corrections immediately on or near set is a great advantage to production, and an effective cost saver. This is one of the many services that Alberto offers when in conjunction with the mobile digital lab. He is used to integrating his workflow with the video side and also knows how to use Da Vinci Resolve. He has worked with David for over 20 years to perfect the techniques and workflow described.

The services he offers with mobile digital lab are:

Consultancy in Live Recording, Audio Editing, Mixing, together with Dialogue Audio Editing and Sound Design up to Dolby 7.1 and Dolby Atmos HE. He also offers Quality Control of all the audio and the metadata recorded on location; Cleaning and Restoring of all the audio files including: Spectral De Noising, De Clicking, De Hum, De Reverb, De Plosive, De Rustle, De Wind. Alberto uses Protools Ultimate and Resolve’s Fairlight with all the specific software that is normally used during post-production in facilities.

Beyond the audio acquisition and sound design opportunities, he owns and runs a state of the art audio postproduction facility with Dolby ATMOS HE. The facility and his services are available optionally on line or as a fixed facility to make the final mix of projects. Mulinetti Studios

MOBILE DIGITAL LAB For Info and quotes call Eugene Zykov, Founder, Owner, Producer Russian Film Commission – Film-Media
Тel (Landline): +7 495 686 18 88
Мob: +7 905 545 34 14
also via Facetime / WeChat / Viber / What’sApp / i-Messenger
Skype: ezykov

For theatrical deliverables image calibration can be achieved if there is a dark room. 4k Home Entertainment, on the other hand should have a certain amount of ambient light, avoiding as far as possible reflections on the grading screens. lThis is necessary to simulate more accurately viewing in the home. The displays have ambient light sensors in front and behind their screens to aid in controlling calibration. MOBILE DIGITAL LAB is optimised for raw formats such as Red r3d and Blackmagic raw. Other formats may not work in playback at 8k UHD and will need to be researched.