STUDIO CITY, CA — Dakota Pictures, the producer of the revived television series Arrested Development, recently called on Shapeshifter (www.shapeshifterpost.com) to provide post production services. The show debuted on Netflix on May 26 and will include 15 new episodes.
Shapeshifter was responsible for a range of finishing services for the series, including final conforming, final color correction, and visual effects. Arrested Development ran for three seasons before its cancellation by Fox in 2006. The Netflix series, which represents the show’s fourth season, once again stars cast members Jason Bateman, Will Arnett, Portia de Rossi, Tony Hale, Michael Cera, Alia Shawkat, David Cross, Jeffrey Tambor and Jessica Walter.
“During the editing of Arrested Development, we took full advantage of the 4K image captured in the field by our Red Epic cameras,” explains Dakota Pictures’ post supervisor Lincoln Sevier. “Show creator Mitch Hurwitz would sometimes ask for shots to be blown up as much as 300 percent. Because of this, it was important that we online the episodes using the original Red media instead of a 1920x1080 conversion. I knew the Davinci Resolve had this ability, but needed a skilled colorist and facility that were ready to take on a project the size of Arrested Development.”
Sevier reached out to Blackmagic Design, the manufacturer of Davinci Resolve software. They put him in touch with colorist Randy Coonfield at Shapeshifter.
“He and his company were well versed in using a roundtrip workflow to color and online Red media,” Sevier notes.
“Netflix’s delivery deadline is unique in the industry in that they’ll accept an entire season all at once, instead of the typical one-episode-per-week like traditional networks,” adds Shapeshifter founder, Russo Anastasio. “This, coupled with the fact that episodes of Arrested Development Season 4 are tied together with insider gags and creative threads, meant that things needed to remain fluid till the last minute.”
In addition to using Resolve, Shapeshifter employed Avid Symphony in the 4K post workflow.