NRTOPIC uses Autodesk visual effects and finishing software and an Autodesk nonlinear workflow to create FOX network's "American Idol" music videos.

In the visual effects business, one of the most precious assets at your disposal is time. Without enough time, you can’t be as creative as you’d like to be.

When NTROPIC was invited to work on the Ford Music Videos on American Idol Season 8—which called for lightning-fast turnarounds of effects-intensive music videos—their first thought was, “Would we be able to deliver our very best given the incredibly ambitious timeline?”

To raise the bar even higher, American Idol and Ford wanted to surpass the wow-factor of the music videos they aired in previous seasons, while also cutting the budget.

American Idol, the FOX Network’s popular singer star search, required 10 45-second music videos, with one airing each Wednesday night throughout Season 8 (from January 13-May 20, 2009). The music videos, part of a US million 10-year deal between Ford and FOX, are designed to place the top Idol finishers in a different music video each week to promote Ford’s latest cars, like the 2010 Fusion, Mustang, and Expedition. There was also an 11th music video—a montage based on highlights from all 10 music videos—that aired during the finale.

While NTROPIC’s Senior Creative Director Nate Robinson and Creative Director Andrew Sinagra were extremely confident in the capabilities of their Autodesk visual effects, compositing, and finishing infrastructure, there was still fear that the daunting timeline would compromise the results.

What they found was that—with their addition of Autodesk® Lustre® software for real-time color grading—they had a solution that could help tackle this hugely ambitious project with such impressive results. The American Idol work was done at NTROPIC’s new Los Angeles facility, which, like its San Francisco location, has a pipeline comprised of certain Autodesk visual effects and finishing systems, including Lustre and Autodesk® Inferno®, Autodesk® Maya®, Autodesk® Smoke®, and Autodesk® Flame® software, all of which were heavily used to help create the American Idol music videos.

Since the music videos were shot in 4K resolution using the RED ONE™ camera, it was advantageous to also have Autodesk® WiretapCentral™ technology because it helped handle the conversion of RED’s R3D files into the DPX file format NTROPIC wanted to use.

Because of the RED and Lustre nonlinear workflow and tightly integrated Autodesk visual effects and finishing pipeline, NTROPIC now had the tools and talent to meet the deadlines and expectations for the Idol music videos.

“Besides the time crunch, the biggest creative challenge we faced was that we had to keep our work in a completely noncommittal state until the clock virtually ran out,” says Robinson. “And, we had to respond to creative changes from four clients—American Idol, FOX, and Ford and its agency JWT-Detroit—which meant we were experimenting with different looks and effects right until the end.”

The assembly needed to stay in a noncommittal state because of the nature of American Idol: the top finalists perform every Tuesday night and when viewer votes are counted right after the show, 1 Idol is voted off the show, and that decision is made public on the Wednesday night “elimination” show.

Considering that the music videos had to be shot on Sunday night, the directors—Shane Drake and Paul Brown—did not know which Idols would survive the cut and which would leave the show on Wednesday. So, they had to shoot each scene featuring every possible combination of Idols there could be.

NTROPIC’s artists also had to stay fluid until after the Tuesday night show, when they’d know the identity of the departing Idol, so they could finalize the piece—even though that meant working on many shots they would never use. NTROPIC delivered the finished 720p HD music video—cut to a music track of the Idols performing the week’s featured song —which was transferred via FireWire to the show’s playout server at 11 p.m. Pacific time.

“In each video, we had to make sure we gave each Idol and car equal quality screen time, and we packed in 20 to 25 complex visual effects shots, so it’s a very busy 45 seconds," says Sinagra. "These quick cuts all required high-end color grading to exude a particular look and feel. For one, we projected the faces of the 10 finalists onto buildings; for another, we animated 2D cutouts of the Idols and animated within live action; and one week, we made the Idols the stars of their own colorful magic show.”

“But, the clients also wanted these CG cars to be dynamic rather than standing still,” Sinagra continues, “so we used Maya to animate them, and applied 3D lighting and shading setups we had developed for previous car spots.”

“The biggest advantage to using this full complement of Autodesk visual effects and finishing systems—Inferno, Flame, Smoke, Maya, and Lustre—is that they work together to form a unified, nonlinear environment,” says Sinagra. Because the tools are designed to operate in a tightly integrated manner, one system can share the frame store or drop shots into the timeline of another system. This means that files don’t need to be laid off to tape or physically copied and moved to be worked on elsewhere, which is time-consuming and can be confusing.

“The artists here at NTROPIC like to wear different hats, and switch back and forth between different tasks and software,” says Sinagra. “Because the Autodesk nonlinear workflow supports our productivity, there are no pigeon holes or digital islands. With the ability to see changes in real time and work on shared media, we have the total creative freedom to collaborate on shots and bring any ideas we have to life.”

Shortly before NTROPIC tackled the RED-acquired American Idol music videos, Autodesk helped streamline the workflow further by introducing the means to transcode RED’s R3D files into the DPX format NTROPIC wanted to use. Autodesk WiretapCentral and Autodesk® Wiretap® Gateway functionality proved vital because of their ability to quickly transcode the R3D files that were placed on NTROPIC’s server after the production.

Because time constraints wouldn’t permit a traditional film shoot with film processing, telecine transfer, and color correction, RED’s immediacy made it a better choice. WiretapCentral also helped handle the import of XML files, which contained edit decisions from the directors’ Final Cut Pro® application rough cuts.

Another solution came in week 3 when Robinson opted to bring Lustre into their pipeline. “We wanted to work flat and then color grade—going for a variety of looks like super contrasty, black and white, or splashy, vibrant color—so the color grading of each music video would take a long time if it wasn’t done on color grading software,” says Robinson. “When we used Lustre, the process took only 45 minutes because of its real-time color grading of both primaries and secondaries.”

“When you have so little time to finish a super ambitious music video, saving four to six hours is a big chunk of time that can now be spent making the look and effects even more amazing,” says Robinson. “When facing intense time or budget pressures, you need to find ways of working more efficiently. Our Autodesk pipeline was the only way we could have satisfied the demands of this project given the need to keep such highly complex videos in a noncommittal state until the last minute.”

“Using RED footage with Lustre in our Autodesk pipeline was absolutely huge because it filled in key missing pieces of our end-to-end nonlinear environment,” Robinson adds. “It truly allowed us to tweak things to the very end and freely collaborate on 3D/2D effects shots without compromising our creative energy or production values.”