ACES Workflow for GOTG Vol. 2

The other day I came across this article and thought it would be a good one to share on my blog.  I have been working in ACES regularly for the last 8 months.  Not really by choice, but necessity.  Since last November I have processed dailies for three features, and each one required the footage to be colored in ACES.  I’m no expert by any means, but I feel like I have a pretty good grasp on it.  There are definitely some improvements that have to be made, but ACES gets you to a really good place very quickly (which is awesome for dailies).

The article discusses how ACES aided in relaying on-set color decisions through the dailies process and how those decisions were implemented downstream for VFX and the final DI.  One thing that I found particularly interesting was the mastering of different formats and how ODTs played a significant role.  I imagine with a movie like GOTG Vol. 2 future formats and releases will be a big money maker.  This workflow allows the studio to easily capitalize on that market.

I thought this article was a good read and provided some informative insight as to how studios are implementing ACES into their workflow.  Seeing ACES being used on a movie of this magnitude shows me that it’s definitely here to stay.  For me, sometimes it’s a bit of a headache in the grading suite since the footage doesn’t always behave like I want it to, but there are some major benefits to it as well.  And at this point, it appears the benefits outweigh the headaches.  With time, I’m sure all the kinks will be worked out and these growing pains will be a distant memory.