Track to timeline: Brett Ramker’s high-speed workflow for Ferrari’s social content

IMSA (the International Motor Sports Association) runs North America’s top endurance racing series. Its grand finale each year is the Motul Petit Le Mans: a 10-hour endurance showdown at Road Atlanta and one of the biggest dates in U.S. sports car racing. On race day, though, speed matters just as much behind the cameras as it does on the track.

Working in the background, DIT, post-production supervisor, and editor Brett Ramker was up against the clock to deliver a same-day social recap for Ferrari North America’s channels. Footage had to travel from camera card to edit suite and onto social media almost as fast as the cars lapping the circuit. To pull this off, Brett and his DP built a streamlined mezzanine workflow that seamlessly linked the racetrack to Brett’s remote editing setup. 

So, let’s find out how the workflow came together and why Silverstack Lab was the engine driving it! 

About the job

Frequent readers of the Pomfort Blog might remember Brett from our DIT Cart Stories series, where he previously shared insights into his go-to setup and career path. You can catch up on that interview, here. Before moving fully into freelance editing, post supervision, and DIT work, Brett spent years in technical and creative production roles within the racing world. The project we’re talking about today brought him right back: 

„After almost 10 years away, I was invited back to the IMSA paddock by the lovely people at Sunday Management, who manage Ferrari’s communications and socials“, he shares before continuing to outline the project he was brought on for: „This piece was a quick turnaround recap edit for Ferrari North America, which they post to their YouTube and socials“. 

Before diving into the workflow that enabled Brett to deliver the edit at top speed, let’s take a closer look at the camera crew on-site. 

From camera to cut

As Brett explains, these social productions typically run with a let’s say lean camera department: “On these jobs, the camera department is very ENG / Doc style. Even though the IMSA paddock is filled with Ferraris, Porsches, and Lambos, the content budgets are fairly small. The typical workflow is an FX3 one-man band.“ 

However, for this project, Brett teamed up with DP Alex Slupski, who, like Brett, primarily works in commercials and brought a more cinematic, high-end approach to the shoot:

„The DP for this job, Alex Slupski, and I have both moved into the commercial world since leaving IMSA, so we both think like that. Alex is a really good Doc DP and owner of an ARRI Alexa 35. He has a bigger vision, which includes shooting on 35 and bringing me in to manage the post production.“ 

I helped Alex [Slupski, DP] design a workflow that would get me the footage as quickly as possible so I could cut it almost in real time.

In order to bring this ‘bigger vision’ to life, they worked closely together: „I helped Alex design a workflow that would get me the footage as quickly as possible so I could cut it almost in real time“, Brett shares. However, in designing the workflow, they had to overcome quite a few challenges: 

„The biggest challenge of this job was the turnaround and bandwidth,“ Brett explains. „We didn’t have access to a gigabit connection at the track, and Alex was downloading his own media. So we had to develop a workflow solution that could service both our needs with minimal resources.“ 

While exploring their options, DP Alex Slupski initially had a different approach in mind, as Brett recalls: „Before I came on, Alex was trying to do this workflow with Frame.io’s Camera 2 Cloud and a bonded cellular modem“. 

However, given the challenges of the production environment, Brett was skeptical: „I think that tech probably works well in a controlled environment, but not a sold-out race that over 100,000 people attended,“ he explains. 

After experiencing the first issues with said setup, Brett suggested an alternative: „Alex runs this job, so I was happy to follow his lead until it didn’t work. After Practice 1, we knew this workflow wasn’t viable. So I convinced him to pivot to a Silverstack Lab workflow. He downloaded the free trial, I onboarded him to my Suite volume, and was able to talk him through setup on the phone. From there, everything worked perfectly“, Brett recalls. 

Brett’s mezzanine workflow with Silverstack Lab 

Brett thought up a streamlined mezzanine workflow using Silverstack Lab. In a mezzanine workflow, camera originals are transcoded into a high-quality intermediate codec for use in the edit. Unlike other proxy workflows, these files preserve nearly all image information, meaning they don’t need to be relinked to the original camera files for finishing. This allowed Brett to get started on his deliverables almost immediately.

Silverstack Lab 9 was a game changer. Specifically, the updated workflow concept. Without that, we could not have executed this workflow.

Thanks to Silverstack Lab’s workflow concept introduced in version 9.0, multiple processing steps can be preconfigured, chained, and executed together. You can read more about automated workflows in Silverstack here. This allowed Brett to build a streamlined pipeline that was not only fast but also simple for the DP to use: 

„Silverstack Lab 9 was a game changer. Specifically, the updated workflow concept. Without that, we could not have executed this workflow. Because I could build the H.265 mezzanine transcode into Alex’s offload workflow, AND point the transcode directly to my Suite Studios Cloud volume, Alex was able to just plug a card in, hit download, and walk away. There is no other suite of products that could do this, and Silverstack Lab 9 was the cornerstone of that“, Brett explains.  

At his edit suite, Brett accessed the transcoded files and began cutting in Adobe Premiere, also applying a look built in DaVinci Resolve. The workflow ran smoothly and delivered strong results, with only a few minor compromises; all acceptable because speed was the top priority: „Ultimately, it’s a social deliverable, so while we always want the most color fidelity, the really important thing is getting on air“, Brett states. 

„We used an HEVC 10-bit 50 Mbps mezzanine from both the Alexa 35 and Sony FX3. This allowed me to have a lightweight 10-bit negative that could make it from the track to my edit bay over limited bandwidth. We actually ended up airing the piece using these files, and it looked great. The only thing noticeable in the final product was some highlight compression artifacts. But again, it’s a social piece; most people are watching on their phones… You would have to get a microscope out and pause on a particular frame to find them.“ 

Even under tight deadlines, Brett made sure to incorporate a proper color workflow to achieve consistent, cinematic results:

„I was also really happy to incorporate a real color workflow into such a quick turn pieces as well. I used FilmBox to develop two LUTs to build the base grade. I built the LUT natively for LC4 from ARRI, and then built a transfer LUT for the FX3. Unfortunately, the FX3 HAD to be S-Cinetone because of Ferrari’s native social needs but I was able to transfer it as Rec. 709 and get a pretty good result. The sad part is that S-Log3 rolls highlights so nicely and S-Cinetone falls pray to the old Standard 5 Rec. 709 clipping. Either way, I got 90% of what I wanted out of it.“

Race day reflections

As we’re getting closer to crossing the finish line of this interview, we of course wanted to know about Brett’s favorite memories from the production!

„For me, the answer is twofold“, he says. „One was returning to cutting an IMSA piece. I really developed my style with a series I used to cut called Sights and Sounds. It’s been a long time since the last one of those I cut, and I’ve learned a lot. So coming back to that style of edit with my current skillset felt very fun. Think when Maverick jumped in the F14 behind enemy lines in Top Gun: Maverick, kinda like the extremely nerdy version of that feeling“, Brett laughs. 

„Second was realizing the full potential of this workflow. I knew it would be good for this style of super quick turn remote work, but the first time you turn on any new workflow, there is a lot of room for errors. I was super pleased to see it work so well and have used it several times since. I hope to support a quick-turnaround series of feature Docs for Prime next year using the same workflow. If they don’t make me sign an NDA, I’ll tell you guys about it. It’s going to be a monster.“

We’ll be sure to take Brett up on that offer! In the meantime, we wish him all the best and thank him for bringing us along for the ride on the race tracks.