The Briefing Room

VFX Supervisor, Jean-Luc Dinsdale Encounters Workflow Issues that Only Automatic Duck Pro Import FCP Could Solve

SEATTLE, WA (March 11, 2008) – With many successful Hollywood film credits under his belt and myriad visual effects challenges and experiences from which to draw, visual effects guru Jean-Luc Dinsdale of Jumbo Dynamo Pictures was not quite prepared for the workflow nightmare awaiting him on Canada’s first-ever stop motion animated film, ‘Edison and Leo.’

Likened to ‘A Nightmare Before Christmas,’ ‘Edison and Leo’ follows the story of crazy inventor, George Edison, and his relationship with his son Leo. When Leo is electrocuted as a child, he is infused with the power of electricity, and unfortunately, can’t touch anyone without electrocuting them. And so follows the crazy adventures of this father and son story.

“We were shooting Canada’s first-ever feature-length stop motion animated film and had no resources to tap — we created all workflows and processes from scratch,” says Jean-Luc Dinsdale, technical director of Jumbo Dynamo Pictures and visual effects supervisor on ‘Edison and Leo.’ “Shooting on digital still cameras, you’re creating thousands of singular still frames to ultimately create fluency in the film. What was not obvious to us was the amount of individual frame manipulation required to each frame to enable the editorial and VFX crew to work their magic. Not only were the edits intensive, we also needed to re-conform each shot from our Avids to our VFX platforms without losing all the edits. We needed to match each plate, frame-by-frame, so we could do our VFX. The staggering number of individual frame edits required wasn’t something I had come across before, and we had no idea what to do.”

One experience Dinsdale could draw from was his experience with Automatic Duck on the high profile Disney film, ‘Air Buddies.’ A VFX-intensive film, ‘Air Buddies’ required a similar, albeit smaller scale, workflow of exporting edited material into a VFX package without losing editing data on each frame. So Dinsdale called Wes Plate of Automatic Duck.

“Automatic Duck was the perfect solution for ‘Air Buddies,’ it saved us countless hours of tedium and produced extremely high quality results,” continued Dinsdale. “Wes had the answer for ‘Edison and Leo,’ Pro Import FCP. For this job, we created a series of AAFs out of the Avid system and simply imported them into Final Cut Pro using Pro Import FCP. We then re-linked the original footage and re-conformed the shots as a new series of tiffs that matched each edited plate perfectly.”

“We had over 600 shots we needed to export and the new Automatic Duck workflow saved us at least an hour per shot – just doing the simple math, over 600 hours saved because of Automatic Duck Pro Import FCP! The stress of this process was completely eliminated – the savings were staggering. I cannot imagine doing this job without Automatic Duck, it would’ve been impossible! And the fact that Duck president, Wes Plate, personally took my call, walked me through the solution and didn’t let go of our hands until he knew our workflow was solved was invaluable. It’s rare to see that kind of customer service or dedication from our vendors!”

Automatic Duck Pro Import FCP, its flagship import tool for Final Cut Pro users, enables digital media artists to import OMF files from industry-popular Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs), such as Digidesign Pro Tools, into Final Cut Pro.

Additionally, Pro Import FCP adds significant features to enhance the Final Cut Pro workflow, such as import capability from Adobe Premiere Pro, the ability to decompose sequences during import and translate Avid Title Effects into Final Cut Pro text generators. These features are designed to further simplify, and greatly accelerate, the workflow process of importing designed content from disparate editing systems directly into Final Cut Pro. For more information on Pro Import FCP, please visit www.automaticduck.com/pifcp.

Automatic Duck will also be announcing new enhancements to Pro Import FCP at NAB 2008. Wes Plate, president of Automatic Duck, will be on hand in their booth #SL2128F to meet with customers and share all new developments in Pro Import FCP, as well as new features in Pro Export FCP, Automatic Duck’s export tool for Final Cut Pro users.

About Automatic Duck

Automatic Duck is the pioneer of Timeline Integration Engine technology and leads the content creation marketplace with powerful solutions for seamless, comprehensive timeline translation capabilities between Avid, Adobe After Effects, Combustion, Discreet Smoke, Final Cut Pro, Motion and Quantel via XML, OMF and AAF. For more information on Automatic Duck’s unique Timeline Integration Engine technology, please visit www.automaticduck.com.