On-set look management begins by setting up light and camera according to the DP’s creative intent. From there, the camera department needs to define and apply a color pipeline from the camera to the on-set monitor.
One of the DIT’s responsibilities is to create and preserve on-set looks plus make the corresponding metadata available for further processing beyond the film set. Especially if working remotely or shooting with multiple teams, it becomes quite a challenge to fulfill these requirements.
Nowadays, we’re used to everyday data like bookmarks or addresses being always accessible in the cloud. What if the same was possible for your on-set look metadata?
Pomfort ShotHub (formerly Silverstack Cloud) is a cloud-based system that enables you to collect and share information deriving from the desktop applications Silverstack and Livegrade. Once connected with Livegrade, your shot library is uploaded to ShotHub – including thumbnails if needed. The upload includes all metadata captured in Livegrade (e.g., read from HD-SDI signals or network connections), values of all grading nodes as CDLs, LUTs or curves, as well as manually entered data like script information. Once uploaded, you can access all the shot and look information collected on location in your Livegrade cloud project in ShotHub via web browser. You can also invite other team members to view or even contribute shot metadata to your Livegrade cloud project.
Expand Livegrade’s Usability
Have your on-set look data within reach
Whenever a question about the on-set looks pops up, you can answer it by just taking a look at the browser in your mobile phone or any other computer device at hand. The entire metadata of a shoot with the look-and-feel and the structure of Livegrade is available no matter where you are.
ShotHub is easy to use, especially if you are familiar with Livegrade. Your libraries are represented in the project outline on the left side. On the right side, you can switch the info panel between the shot metadata or the look information tab, including the grading nodes. The main part in the middle shows either a list of shots or a full image preview of your shot library.
You can sort the list by columns and search within your metadata, such as look name or scene. Customize your Shot Library View by dragging columns to sort them individually and choose particular columns to create your own viewing preset. Your saved presets are available in all your Livegrade cloud projects and can be shared with others.
ShotHub’s web interface comes with a light and dark theme for best reading conditions in dark studio environments as well as in daylight.
And when the shooting is finished, you can keep all shot metadata available in a project archive and access it in the same way via ShotHub.
Share your Livegrade cloud project within your team
As mentioned above, you can send out invitations to your Livegrade cloud project from ShotHub in your web browser.
As an “admin”, you also get to determine the invited user’s role. An “external user” can access your Livegrade cloud project in read-only mode to see all uploaded shot information. “Project members” can even upload shot metadata from another instance of Livegrade to the same cloud project.
So if you are working in a team of DITs or at various locations with multiple instances of Livegrade, you can combine their respective libraries into one cloud project in ShotHub. Overviewing several shot libraries makes it easy to communicate with your colleagues and to check the consistency of camera settings or naming schemes.
All created looks belonging to the project are provided in one cloud space, for instance, they can be reviewed and retrieved for the dailies creation at the same time. At the end of every shooting day, everybody is on the same page and tasks can be shared more flexibly within your team. For a detailed overview of ShotHub’s user management and all available user roles, check out this dedicated article.
Review stills from past shoots
As an option, the thumbnails of your library can be uploaded as well. For example, it makes sense if the DP is able to see and scroll through graded stills with a full-screen preview on any place off-set. Thus, you enable the camera team to review looks anytime and potentially use them as a reference for new or ongoing shooting or as a starting point in the color grading suite. As all camera and lens settings are saved with the shot, the created looks can be easier reproduced if needed as well.
Prepare dailies creation
On-set looks are essential for dailies creation, and the grading information has to be transferred to another dailies system. ShotHub connects Livegrade and Silverstack so that file-based look exchange between these two applications becomes unnecessary.
You or an invited user of ShotHub can access the color grading information saved in your Livegrade cloud project straight from Silverstack. Just choose the appropriate bin or folder in your project, and Silverstack fetches the selected looks from ShotHub. You can match these looks by various criteria such as timecode or clip Identifier and all grading nodes applied in Livegrade will be exactly reproduced.
More details about the look matching options via ShotHub and creating dailies will be covered in an upcoming blog post.
Conclusion
With ShotHub, you easily extend the usability of Livegrade and Silverstack through cloud connectivity.
If you want to find out if ShotHub supports your on-set workflows download the latest versions of Livegrade and Silverstack and sign in to ShotHub: https://cloud.pomfort.com/
