Frame.io is already known for its integrations into popular color-grading applications like DaVinci Resolve, Colorfront, and Pomfort Livegrade & Shothub. Today we’re thrilled to add a new power-player to the list—FilmLight’s Baselight.
Like Frame.io, FilmLight’s approach is to make their products play nicely with other products in the post-production workflow, so both functionally and philosophically it’s a natural match. Used as the grading tool of choice on this year’s Oscar Best Picture winner, CODA, and nominee for Best Cinematography The Tragedy of MacBeth, it’s also been used on the recent Sundance movie Alice, as well as on Netflix hits like Squid Game and Inventing Anna.
A frictionless experience
The Frame.io integration in Baselight is one of the tightest available. With no extra extensions or plugins to download or install, the workflow is incredibly intuitive and frictionless.
Seamlessly integrated
The integration allows you to upload timelines and import comments directly from within the Baselight Scene menu. You can add marks with comments onto the Baselight timeline and then add the sequence to the render queue. Rendering and uploading take place in the background so the colorist can keep working.
Selective comments
It’s possible to set up user-defined marker categories that make it easy to filter the comments that are exported from the timeline to Frame.io. For example, you can add a filter so comments go to the director or DP—that means they don’t see any of the marks that the colorist has made for themselves or for any other team members. The director or DP can see the comments the colorist has made for their eyes only, frame-accurately, on the timeline (or in a list view) and reply to them.
The colorist can also apply a filter to look for only new comments and can easily download them within Baselight. Notes can be rapidly and efficiently addressed, and the process repeated until grading is complete.
Project Presets
There’s no need to reinvent the wheel every time you want to share a timeline. When you’re working on multiple projects, it’s possible to save export settings on a per-project basis so it’s faster and easier to collaborate without continuously reconfiguring upload options.
The big picture
Final grading for high-end television and motion picture projects is one of the places where having ideal viewing conditions and the ability to easily collaborate with the colorist is essential.
But, as the past two years have demonstrated, it’s not always possible for people to be in the same room together.
As the demand for remote collaboration increases, this integration plays into another that we’re announcing today: the Frame.io app for Apple TV 4K. Available now for Enterprise customers, it provides a new solution for how to be in two places at once.
Consider that now, directors or DPs can be in their homes watching graded sequences on a large-screen television, in 10-bit 4K UHD HDR, and leaving comments in the Frame.io web app that go directly back to the colorist working in Baselight. This has already been possible on an iPad, but being able to see the material in the way it’s intended, on a big screen, is a big deal.
And when it comes to creating new ways of collaborating regardless of location, color us there.
Editor’s note: At present, please contact FilmLight directly for implementation.
