LOS ANGELES — Director Joss Whedon and cinematographer Seamus McGarvey, ASC, BSC recently employed Arri Alexa cameras in a Codex/Arriraw workflow to capture principal photography for Marvel’s The Avengers. Produced by Marvel Studios, the eagerly-awaited Super Hero saga is slated for a May 4th release in the US by Walt Disney Studios.
The Avengers is the first digitally-captured film for McGarvey, whose previous credits include The Soloist, Atonement and The Hours. In order to become comfortable with the new technology, the cinematographer conducted detailed tests with the Arri camera and the Codex (www.codexdigital.com) workflow technology during pre-production.
“Shooting Arriraw with the combination of Arri Alexa cameras and Codex Onboard Recorders made the transition to digital easy,” he recalls. “Everything worked flawlessly and the images look amazing.”
On set, production DIT Danny Hernandez managed four Codex Onboard Recorders on his cart. He recorded CDL (color decision list) values to the Onboards along with the media from the cameras. McGarvey supervised color applications on set and the looks he established were communicated to Efilm, the post facility handling dailies processing and final digital intermediate work.
Editorial was located near-set and was equipped with a Codex Digital Lab. Editorial crew checked and fixed all the metadata, and made back-up copies of the Arriraw files to LTO-5 tape. The data-packs from the Codex recorders were then sent to Efilm for dailies processing.