For the final film in the trilogy adaptation of Ayn Rand’s novel – “Atlas Shrugged: Who is John Galt?,” Independent Producers John Aglialoro, Harmon Kaslow and CoProducer Bernie Laramie, together with Director James Manera and Director of Photography Gale Tattersall, set out to facilitate an end-to-end 4K workflow from capture to finish and on through projection. With lofty production goals and a modest budget, Tattersall and Laramie employed the AJA Ki Pro Quad 4K/UltraHD/2K/HD file-based recorder and Canon EOS C500 camera to capture and record more than 40 hours of 4K ProRes 444 footage shot across Downtown Los Angeles and Malibu over the course of 17 days.

“I loved how easy it was to use the Ki Pro Quad and was impressed by how well it worked with the C500, as well as the quality of the resulting footage,” Tattersall noted. Laramie added, “AJA really knocked it out of the park with the Quad. Throughout the entire production, it never missed a single beat and was 100 percent reliable; that’s invaluable to me as a producer, because I can’t afford to lose time.”

After wrapping each day, the production team removed the AJA Pak solid state drives from the Ki Pro Quad and uploaded the footage across Thunderbolt via the AJA Pak Dock drive reader to a Light Iron OUTPOST system for on-set dailies and synchronization with .wav files recorded by the sound department. On Set Digital Imaging Technician Rafel Montoya reviewed the footage, applied a standard LUT from Log to Lin and completed color correction. The on-set OUTPOST system transcoded the files to Avid DNX 115 for editorial and H.264, which was uploaded to their Mediasilo.com online account for streaming dailies. Editor Tony Ciccone, working in Avid^® Media Composer^® 7, along with Boris and Sapphire plug-ins, cut the film. Once the picture was locked, the original 4K ProRes 4444 files were conformed from an Avid list at Light Iron and color corrected in 4K on a Quantel Pablo Rio, which utilizes AJA’s powerful Corvid Ultra hardware for real time 4K finishing workflows.

“Digital workflows have become standard, and 4K is likely to become mainstream in the next few years. Technology like the Canon C500 and AJA Ki Pro Quad bring high-quality digital 4K acquisition within the reach of almost any filmmaker, which is a huge boon, because 4K not only looks better than 2K, but it also gives you more workflow flexibility from post through to cinema projection,” Laramie shared.

Directed by James Manera and slated for release this summer, “Atlas Shrugged: Who is John Galt?” amalgamates romance and intrigue to deliver an enthralling conclusion to a story of a dystopian United States in economic collapse as its top minds have mysteriously disappeared. For more information, visit: www.atlasshruggedmovie.com.

AJA Ki Pro Quad is a compact, solid-state recorder that enables 4K/UltraHD and 2K/HD workflows and easily mounts to a variety of cameras. When paired with the Canon EOS C500, it accepts 4K RAW output over SDI as a data stream and performs real time debayering (the reordering of sensor data into recognizable RGB images) to record footage in ProRes 444 or ProRes 422. Encoded files are stored on AJA Pak modules (256GB or 512GB removable SSDs), which can be plugged into an AJA Pak Dock Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 reader, and uploaded to compatible computers for instant use with non-linear editing solutions from Apple, Adobe, Avid, Autodesk and more.

About AJA Video Systems, Inc.

Since 1993, AJA Video has been a leading manufacturer of video interface and conversion solutions, bringing high-quality, cost-effective digital video products to the professional, broadcast and post-production markets. AJA products are designed and manufactured at our facilities in Grass Valley, California, and sold through an extensive sales channel of resellers and systems integrators around the world. For further information, please see our website at www.aja.com.

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