Nucoda Film Master flies with 3D legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole

Directed by acclaimed American filmmaker Zack Snyder and produced by Zareh Nalbandian of Animal Logic, the feature is based on the well known Guardians of Ga’Hoole books by Kathryn Lasky. The story centres on Soren, a young barn owl fascinated by his father’s epic stories of the Guardians of Ga’Hoole, a mythic band of winged warriors who fought a great battle to save all of owlkind from the evil Pure Ones. The film features a number of famous voices including Geoffrey Rush, Helen Mirren, Hugo Weaving, Sam Neill, Abbie Cornish and David Wenham.

The entire 3D grading and mastering was completed on Nucoda Film Master by Animal Logic’s award-winning Head Colourist Eric Whipp. He explains, “For this style of animated film we use compositing mattes to isolate all the characters and parts of the image to create specific looks in detail. In a similar way you might grade a live action film, we do the same except we have the luxury of perfectly cut out mattes for characters.

“We initially graded the film in 2D to get the look right. Once we got to a point where we were happy, we applied all the settings to the right eye and then switched into stereo mode for final tweaks.  All windows and shapes had to be re-aligned for the right eye, and then we did other alterations such as light level adjustments. Once in stereo mode, layer by layer colour adjustments can easily be made using the Nucoda Film Master. Another useful feature is the system’s Open EXR functionality. All the shots were composited in EXR format, which was great as it was like working with a film negative in the sense that there was range in the highlights that could be pulled back if required.” He concludes, “The Nucoda Film Master really enhanced the creative process of this production. We literally added hundreds of lens flares in the grade using the system’s Sapphire plugin tools to enhance the story and the look of the film, which really put the icing on the cake.”