HD PICTURES & POST CUTS 'DUCK' TRAILER
Issue: HD - October 2006

HD PICTURES & POST CUTS 'DUCK' TRAILER

SANTA MONICA, CA - HD Pictures & Post (www.hdpicturesandpost.com) recently constructed a trailer for the art house feature Duck, which tells the heartfelt story of an elderly man (Philip Baker Hall) and a duck, in search for the meaning of life. The two find parallel in their lives after being abruptly displaced from their home.

The film’s creator, Nic Bettauer, presented HD Pictures & Post with a Web resolution QuickTime movie and a tight deadline. Brett Smith, senior editor at the facility, rebuilt, re-cut, and then finished the trailer. HD Pictures & Post’s CEO, Justin Bergeron, coordinated all the post work which included offline editing, audio mixing, HD & 2K finishing, DI, and film-out. The studio used its Avid DS Nitris system on the project.

“Our biggest challenge when creating the trailer was working in a resolution that would be easy to work with, maintain the maximum quality when going back to film and be cost effective, that’s why we chose Sony’s HDCAM SR 4:4:4,” explains Bergeron. “Since scanning the film would have been expensive and time-consuming we chose to do a flat telecine to SR, which let us have the entire film at our disposal. Once we finished the trailer we were able to use the DS Nitris to create the HD master and property formatted dpx sequences for both the 1.85 and scope negatives.”

Smith used a grocery bag for the trailer’s textured background. It can be viewed at: www.duckthemovie.com/duck.html.?