IMAGE LINE PRODUCTIONS MOTIVATES, EDUCATES & ENTERTAINS IN REAL TIME WITH BLUFISH444 HD|FURY AND ADOBE PREMIERE PRO
01 March, 2005
About Image Line
Founded in 1996, Image Line Productions specializes in toy commercials, corporate documentaries, product launches and employee incentive videos. Its media presentations are used to motivate, educate, entertain and reward employees of such companies as Microsoft, Intel, Honda, Washington Mutual Bank, and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Image Line has also produced national and international toy commercials for Mattel Inc, MGA Entertainment Inc. and many others.
The shows Image Line creates are very heavy with graphic treatment and layering, often using a main "look", or "theme". The shows are started in Photoshop when Image Line designs concept frames to discuss with its clients, revises, and then creates still elements to be animated in Premiere Pro, After Effects, 3D Studio Max and Combustion.
The tools
Image Line has used Premiere and Premiere Pro for over 5 years now as its primary editing platform. When it decided to add HD capabilities in-house to meet clients’ requests for high definition presentations, it investigated a number of products and chose the HD|Fury. The Bluefish card provided Image Line with the quickest route to HD, as well as the most pleasing results. Image Line is able to edit shows both in SD and HD using offline DV resolution, and then upres the shows to create its final masters. With several rooms all accessing the footage at the same time through its 1 gig network, Image Line works with the Bluefish QuickTime V210 format, creating effects, bluescreening and composites over the network. It also uses the HD|Fury to preview its After Effects compositions on the monitor.
The Projects
Image Line created an opening video for a Washington Mutual Bank employee meeting, for a huge 60 by 19 foot screen utilizing two side-by-side HD projectors. The theme was "All across America", so Image Line used high-res pictures and created 3D After Effects and Combustion compositions and previewed the show using the HD|Fury. It also used the HD|Fury to help create a launch video for Microsoft's Media Player Version 9, which was actually played from a computer hard drive. Image line could, however, preview the show on its monitor in HD. Image Line created a high definition special effects show for Adobe, Inc. showcasing Premiere's HD editing capabilities and Boxx Technologies high def editing machine for NAB 2004. For that show Image Line did all the editing and heavy sound design in Premiere in full HD mode.
Ben Jehoshua, Partner at Image Line Production comments,“Bluefish has been taking quite a bit of abuse from us in the form of different file formats, computer installations and also, gasp, traveling. We took the machine with us onto the green screen stage to record directly onto the media drive so that we could bypass the Sony HDCAM compression so that we can get a pristine image for keying. That worked like magic. We found the HD|Fury very resilient and flexible. We use it both for HD and SD shows.”
He continues, “I love being able to preview effects in real time before rendering. It's a wonderful feature, and since a lot of our footage for SD shows is shot using DV and DVCpro cameras, it's wonderful being able to integrate different kinds of footage into our uncompressed graphic design environments inside Premiere. We use a lot of "real-time" effects, but actually only utilize processors to preview them, and we love it! It almost feels like a mini flame, so our clients are always impressed at the agility of our design process, and the tight integration into After Effects make it feel like we have a super powerful setup, which, I guess, we do. We also like being able to master SD footage onto Dig beta. We have several commercials running on the air that were finished on the HD|Fury at our facility.
The Bluefish staff is innovative, responsive and very friendly, which I find great when working in the high stress environment of deadlines and creative crunch.”
He concludes, “It's good to be alive during the desktop revolution, and Bluefish is a nice example of what we can do better than our grandparents. We would love to migrate to HD full time with our clients, both commercial and corporate, and use it to create some compelling media both for TV in the form of pilots and presentations, but also art installations, experimentation and short or long format films.”
