Our Work
- April 2024
- London, UK
Azimuth Post Production
Azimuth Post production has a new home on Eagle Street in Holborn. The facility has been conscientiously re-imaged and meticulously thought through from the choice of building and focus on creative spaces, to technology choices that deliver flexible and adaptable 4K HDR, Atmos workflows, and most importantly bringing in the right people and fostering a collegiate approach to management.
“We went through a tender process and did our due diligence when looking for a reseller partner. Altered Images presented better than anybody else and they had very good references. There was no pressure to buy – just utter calm – and a thoroughness to their approach that was consistent throughout the build”.
Yives Reed, Operations Director, Azimuth Post Production
Altered Images
Azimuth Post Production
How specialist systems integration reseller, Altered Images supported Azimuth Post Production build a state of the art HETV facility from the ground up
Azimuth Post Production
Azimuth’s parent company OR Media has been producing high-end documentaries and specialist factual shows for international distribution including Discovery, Arte and the BBC since 1993.
Over the past decade-and-a-half, much of its work had been mastered at Azimuths Soho facility in D’Arblay Street. With an increased demand for 4K HDR and Dolby Atmos Home Entertainment IMF deliverables, and the need to futureproof their content, both OR Media and Azimuth re-evaluated their post production estate.
From these deliberations, two of Soho’s most experienced post executives were hired, Operations Director, Yives Reed and Creative Director, Carl Grinter and tasked with building a purpose-built post house from the ground up. In turn Grinter and Reed brought Steve Oak on board to be Head of Technical Operations (from Radiant and Rapid Pictures). With a new base on Eagle Street in Holborn, Azimuth Post Production was reborn.
Free of legacy kit and with an agenda to build a truly modern, flexible, and adaptable post house where 4K HDR and Dolby Atmos would be the expected (rather than exceptional). At the top of that list was who would be best suited as the systems integration partner. They outlined the scope of work to multiple specialist resellers, and Altered Images quickly proved to be the most attractive option.
Free of legacy kit and with an agenda to build a truly modern, flexible, and adaptable post house where 4K HDR and Dolby Atmos would be the expected (rather than exceptional). At the top of that list was who would be best suited as the systems integration partner. They outlined the scope of work to multiple specialist resellers, and Altered Images quickly proved to be the most attractive option.
EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE
Oak outlines the new picture finishing set up at Azimuth. “The bulk of the work going through the facility is 4K HDR and Dolby Atmos for IMF delivery. If that’s your benchmark, it helps in making some pioneering decisions and to make those decisions we needed a partner that we could trust.”
Altered Images not only helped with the network installation and supplying the picture finishing hardware and software, but also acted as a reliable sounding board, effectively becoming an extension of the engineering team. Oak and Reed both knew that DaVinci Resolve would act as the core picture finishing workhorse but wanted to work through how to take maximum advantage of the software’s flexibility for grading, conform, online, QC, mastering and even editing.
Critical within those considerations was Altered Images recommendation to install EditShare which fully supported Oak and Reed’s modern post house vision, enabling seamless real time playback of multiple streams of high-bandwidth, native 4K files wherever and whenever it’s needed within the facility.
Oak explains the set up. “We have two Resolve grades, three online, three colour assist and two QC rooms and we are reading and writing from them all at the same time. In addition we have Baselight and Flame Open EXR and uncompressed workflows on top. We’re working with multiple layered sequences, including uncompressed RAW, and all supported by the 40 Gb/s network input from each of the EditShare SSD arrays.
“With EditShare, we have over a petabyte of spinning disc and 192 terabytes of SSD between which we can move workspaces seamlessly while carrying on working. Importantly, EditShare is NLE agnostic allowing our customers to work they want to work with media plug-ins and workspaces for Avid Media Composer, Resolve and Premiere Pro.
“At Azimuth, we bring the native material into a Resolve conform to effectively create a re-link environment. We get a lot of XAVC at 300 and 450 Mb/s, RED, Canon XF, Sony X-OCN and Pro Res RAW. In final post it means that we can have quite large workspaces and we can be pulling a huge amount of bandwidth per client.
“Resolve is the workhorse for the final post within the facility. For a lot of our clients, Resolve gives them the flexibility to make changes in final post. If you want to make that shot change, we can drop that in natively. We can colour trace from a previous grade.
“Baselight is an industry standard within a facility that colourists are familiar with, and in Graeme Hayes, we have a colourist who is top level and comfortable with it. And the Baselight can roundtrip from Media Composer and back into Resolve.
“We have Autodesk Flame which we mainly use for compositing and VFX.
“We have a flexibility within picture finishing that allows us to offer our customers the best of both worlds. Tied in with the EditShare, we have a very flexible, modern 4K HDR post environment.”
With EditShare, we have over a petabyte of spinning disc and 192 terabytes of SSD between which we can move workspaces seamlessly while carrying on working. Importantly, EditShare is NLE agnostic allowing our customers to work they want to work with media plug-ins and workspaces for Avid Media Composer, Resolve and Premiere Pro.
CONSISTENT MONITORING ACROSS THE FACILITY
Altered Images also supplied the Eizo monitoring, which is less typically, though increasingly found, within grading theatres. Oak explains his rationale, “we didn’t want to mix and match our monitors. A decision was made based on the grading theatres and then we were going to tier down from there. Eizo had a range that filled in the gaps so well. We have three Eizo ColorEdge PROMINENCE reference monitors and ten other ColorEdge models. The autocalibration gets us to a certain place quickly.
“Eizo’s support is better than others. All the creatives that have come into the room have been appreciative of the picture. It’s all about trusting the image going from the grade into online.” Additionally, Altered Images provided LG OLED 55”, 65” and 77” viewing monitors for customer review within the grade and picture finishing suites.
And, along with best-in-class Leader waveform monitoring, AJA and BMD converters, GVG Alchemist, Dell servers and TFT monitors, Altered Images also sourced and supplied 48 HP workstations including the HP Z8, Z4R and Z2 Minis. The Z2 Minis have now come of age within post environments, as Oak explains. “We have over 50 Z2 Minis as offline workstations, with the potential to add more. It was about rack and workstation density and the Z2 Minis are quite a mature product now and packs a lot of power into a small form factor.”
PERFECT PARTNER
Oak concludes, “we are bricks and mortar within a Central London location and a lot of our services are hosted here. When you go back to the shell of a building, you have the chance to shape it in the way that you think it should be going forward. We wanted flexibility with what we put into place now and how it might be different in six months’ time which is not how most post houses work.”
Barring the Baselight, Altered Images sourced, installed and continue to support all of Azimuth’s picture finishing estate. It remains a close partnership.
Reed looks back at the decision to employ Altered Images, “not many people have built a post house from scratch of late. It’s a gargantuan task.
“We went through a tender process and did our due diligence when looking for a reseller partner. I’ve had experience of them all. Altered Images presented better than anybody else and they had very good references. There was no pressure to buy – just utter calm - and a thoroughness to their approach that was consistent throughout the build. Tony Gill’s philosophy was so refreshing. It breeds confidence. There was a connection. They were in it with us and proved to be a dream and a breeze to work with. I know that if we have a problem, we’re going to be alright.”
Oak fully endorses Reed’s conclusions, “the install went out to tender, as all good jobs should. Altered Images impressed throughout the whole tender stage. It didn’t feel like they were here just to sell and to run away. They are big enough to have a comprehensive understanding of the technology available to post, but not so large that you're always on the phone to a different person. We have a direct line to most of their engineers for networking through to hardware, all infrastructure, and servers. They understand everything we've got here. They've been an excellent support partner and fantastic to work with.
“It shows that you matter to a vendor when you’re talking regularly with the MD. They’ve been fully invested in what we're trying to do here and hit all the milestones we set. They’ve pulled through in every way.”
There was no pressure to buy – just utter calm - and a thoroughness to their approach that was consistent throughout the build.
