Synaesthesia is the new software product by Surreal Road. It’s been in development for around four years now, and is almost at a point where it is production-ready.

But what is it?

Having worked on all sorts of film and TV productions in different capacities (of greatly varying budgets), it often amazed me how “disconnected” every role seems. This is especially true in areas like post-production, where people employed to enhance or otherwise change particular shots would do so without any knowledge of the history of that shot. It might be possible to find out the camera and lighting setup used for a particular shot in some cases, but what about the intent behind that setup? What was the cinematographer aiming for, and how can I better enhance that, as opposed to the more usual practices of (at best) attempting to reverse-engineer a shot in order to understand it, or (at worst) changing things in a more haphazard manner until something looks good.

This was a problem I’ve encountered on almost every production, and in part it’s unavoidable. The reality is that just as the writers are often left outside the gates of production, so too are the production crew long-gone when it comes to post. This also becomes a practical and logistical problem. Where is a particular reel of film? What was the time and date of a particular shot? On a very organised production, it is likely that the editor would be armed with most of this information, but in all other cases, there is simply no one around to ask.

I look at software created for the visual effects industry, and it is staggering: the functionality and capabilities of VFX software is advanced to the point where it’s possible to use these tools to quickly create shots that are indistinguishable from reality. But when it comes to the actual production process, we’re in a technological drought. Even popular writing software, such as Final Draft, is only slightly more useable than TextEdit, even with years of industry experience and development put into it. What was I supposed to use in my capacity as data manager on various things to stay on top of everything? Excel?

The solution of course, is that (those computer-savvy enough) people tend to cobble together some sort of database (usually in the ubiquitous FileMaker Pro) which serves the immediate needs of the production. Much of the time this works out rather well, the production ends up with a bespoke system that covers most of the bases, something “good enough”. But what about those people who haven’t the time or the resources to create something from scratch, or those people who just want to hit the ground running? Well, you are who Synaesthesia was designed for.

At its core, Synaesthesia is about keeping track of things about a production, from start to finish. Here’s a typical scenario:

1. You have a production. You add notes, storyboards, descriptions of characters, of sets, all to get a sense of what it’s about.
2. At some point you have a screenplay. You import that and it links all the scenes with sets and characters you’ve previously created, and adds anything that’s missing.
3. You refine the script, importing new versions as you go along, further fleshing out what you want to shoot and so on.
4. You create a database of people and equipment  you’re going to need, and assign them to different parts of the production.
5. You start shooting. You log what’s shot as it happens, along with notes, things like whether the take was good or not, what was recorded and making last-minute script updates.
6. You import data directly from digital footage (such as RED camera footage), in order to accurately log timecodes, and shooting parameters.
7. You start editing, having access to all your previous notes for each clip of footage that was shot. You can import sequences from an editing system and have Synaesthesia tell you which shot is used where. You can make changes to the edit from within Synaesthesia, and save those back to your editing system.
8. You can designate certain shots as needing effects work, and update those shots as new effects versions are completed.
9. Finally you can archive all the reels of footage, noting their locations, in case they’re ever needed again.

That’s quite a broad overview, and it assumes you’re going to use Synaesthesia from start to finish. But perhaps the best part of it is that you don’t have to. Maybe you’re only concerned with pre-production, and just want a place to keep storyboards, concept art, and screenplay versions organised? Maybe you just want to log continuity during a shoot? Or maybe you just want to tweak a couple of edits? Well then, Synaesthesia can help you.

It’s probably also helpful to mention what Synaesthesia (at least, in its current form) isn’t for:

• It’s not for budgeting or scheduling
• It’s not a replacement for software such as Final Draft
• It’s not a replacement for systems such as Final Cut Studio
• It’s not a server-based system, (it’s not possible for multiple people to make changes to the data at the same time).

A more detailed list of features is available  here. As I’ve said, Synaesthesia isn’t quite finished yet. It’s capabilities are still being worked out. But there are several key principles that we’ll always try to adhere to:

• It will be simple to use
• It will integrate with software you already use
• It will give you the information you need

But more than anything else, I want it to be for whatever you (the user) need. With that in mind, we will be inviting people to try out pre-release versions in order to tell us what you like, what you don’t, and what’s missing. You can sign up for an invitation here.

My latest book, “Fix It In Post” is available for pre-order now on Amazon.

Thanks to everyone who let me pick their brains over the course of the last few months.

The blurb:

“Finally!  A well-written software agnostic guide to fixing common problems in post ranging from shaky camera to film look!”

—Jerry Hofmann, Apple Certified Trainer; FCP Forum Leader, Creative Cow; Owner, JLH Productions

Fix It In Post provides an array of concise solutions to the wide variety of problems encountered in the post process. With an application-agnostic approach, it gives proven, step-by-step methods to solving the most frequent postproduction problems. Also included is access to a free companion website, featuring application-specific resolutions to the problems presented, with fixes for working in Apple’s Final Cut Studio suite, Avid’s Media Composer, Adobe Premiere Pro, as well as other applications.

Solutions are provided for common audio, video, digital, editorial, color, timing and compositing problems, such as, but not limited to:
* automated dialogue recording, adjusting sync, and creating surround sound
* turning SD into HD (and vice-versa) and restoration of damaged film and video
* removing duplicate frames, reducing noise, and anti-aliasing
* maintaining continuity, creating customized transitions, and troubleshooting timecodes
* removing vignettes, color casts, and lens flare
* speeding shots up, slowing shots down, and getting great-looking timelapse shots
* turning day into night, replacing skies and logos and changing camera motion

Fix It in Post: Solutions for Postproduction Problems

Some people have requested a copy of the slides used for the Red camera post workflow I was involved in, so I’ve made a PDF version available for download.

Get it here…

It looks like I’m going to be doing a second edition of my Digital Intermediates For Film & Video book. The revision will involve bringing it up to date with new technologies and techniques, and slimming it down a little bit so it’s more, well, portable, and less like a doorstop.

Anyone who’s read it and has anything they’d like to see in the next edition (or feels they could live without), let me know in the comments or by email.

I’m also going to see if I can get a few copies to give away when it gets published.

Over the last year, the focus of Research by Surreal Road… (and Surreal Road as a company) has shifted slightly. Originally the website (formerly at www.digitalintermediates.org) was aimed at supporting the digital intermediate industry exclusively, as well as to provide supplementary information to my book on the digital intermediate process… but something very interesting has happened during this period.

Roughly this time last year, I wandered into a PC World store. On one of the shelves were several external disk drives with a capacity of one terabyte. That’s strange, I thought, what are consumers doing with that much storage? After all, in the digital intermediate world, a terabyte of storage has rapidly become miniscule. But there are reasons for this: we’re working with high-quality, uncompressed images, and lots of them at that. So what do “regular” people need a terabyte of storage space for, I wondered. At that time, it wasn’t particularly cheap, so I figured it must be for people like photographers who use it for archiving, and so on. But during the last month, that trend has continued. Now you can pick up 2TB of external storage and even afford to just stick it on a shelf somewhere. Sure, it’s not as compact as LTO3 tape backups… but it’s much more convenient for the short-term. So much so that I have recently bought a couple of terabyte drives just to have at home so I don’t have to bother archiving stuff.

I think at some point I predicted that as soon as storage was cheap enough, 4k mastering would become common-place. That hasn’t really happened though, and I think it’s because it’s largely held back by software and other hardware issues (notably display devices). So instead I’ve been keeping an eye on the other end of the market: if there’s no real progress being made at the high-end, you can bet that the lower-end is going to start catching up. I was pondering this at this year’s NAB trade show when Apple announced its new Final Cut Studio line-up. It was pretty much a complete digital intermediate solution, I thought, and the price makes it within the reach of amateur film-makers as well as professionals. With little in the way of innovation from the likes of Autodesk in a long while, I started hedging my bets that the future of the digital intermediate… process was not going to be in the high-tech arena, but rather on the humble desktop computer. And the really interesting thing about the software side, is that with things like Final Cut Studio, there are many, many more people using it on a daily basis, which in turn means that there are more resources to draw on, and that (in theory at least) they tend to have fewer bugs or annoying idiosyncrasies.

What this means for Research by Surreal Road is that it is going to cater less to a niche, high-end market, and instead to a more general, digital post-production audience. Many of the techniques and workflows covered in the book are now equally appropriate to people using Final Cut Pro for example. This doesn’t mean that the current readership will find nothing of value; many of the forthcoming articles will be based directly on my experiences working on the BBC’s Earth movie…, by far the most complex project I’ve encountered to date.

To this end, in addition to the cosmetic changes to the website, there are new discussion forums… (note if you’ve registered on our old forums you will probably need to register again), and some new categories (Opinion…, Tips & Tricks…,
Tools…).

We’ll also be adding tags to new posts, which you can see at the bottom of each page. It’s just another way to find posts of interest. If you’re already subscribing via our RSS feed…, you don’t need to change anything to keep receiving new posts. And last but not least, I’m going to make a concerted effort to write more on here. I’m not sure how much more, but I’ll at least aim to get more than one post a month…