Fifty Fifty makes the grade for Gary Lineker on the Road to FA Cup Glory

Fifty Fifty, an independent post house in London, has installed Baselight PLUS, FilmLight’s complete grading solution. The package includes the Baselight system, Slate control surface and Baselight for Avid Editions. The new system was quickly put to the test, finishing Gary Lineker on the Road to FA Cup Glory, a one-off 60 minute documentary produced by Goalhanger Films for the BBC.

Shot on Sony F5, RED and Canon 5D cameras, colourist Kenny Gibb had around 900 shots to match and develop, creating the rich and vibrant feel the producers wanted. At the same time, Fifty Fifty’s Julian Nelson was finishing the online. The advantage of the Baselight for Avid plugin is that it accepts the Baselight Linked Grade (BLG) colour metadata from the main grading suite and imposes the grade in real time. This meant Nelson was always looking at the latest version of the grade.

The plugin also provides access to all the Baselight toolset, in this case using a Slate control surface. This came in useful on this project — covering a late re-edit requested by the BBC – and it was also indispensable for applying grading functions in the edit.

“During the online, our client wanted to blur out some branding and personal data,” Nelson said. “We would not normally do that in Avid, but by launching the Baselight UI inside the software, we were able to build layers on top of the grade, using the area tracker, inside/outside mattes and variable feathering that makes Baselight so powerful.”

As a busy facility, working on long-form television as well as commercials, Fifty Fifty sees the potential of seamless collaboration between editorial and grading. “The round trip between Avid and Baselight is fast and efficient,” explained Nelson. “It is not just for huge projects, but anything where you need the flexibility and control to manipulate the edit and tweak anything afterwards. “Working this way has provided much greater flexibility for our clients, and for our business as a whole.”

Fifty Fifty installed its Baselight systems in March 2015, following a careful evaluation of the grading systems on the market.