The producers of Cosmos recently relied on Joust’s digital workflow management tool to keep track of the complex visual effects work of the series, which just ended its season on FOX and the National Geographic Channel.
“On Cosmos, we used Joust to streamline a number of areas in our digital pipeline,” explained Eli Dolleman, co-producer, postproduction and animation on Cosmos. “Joust provided an online viewing platform for all our dailies. It also served as a centralized asset repository for the VFX camera data collected on set, as well as viewing proxies of vendor delivered shots in all stages of production. This allowed producers and executives to both review footage and keep tabs on shot production. In addition to helping organize and view incoming vendor shots, Joust also smoothed out the turnover process, pairing relevant data with raw plates and delivering this material securely to more than a dozen different VFX vendors.”
“Through file association during the dailies ingestion process Joust allowed our editorial staff to pull plates through the submission of simple EDLs,” Dolleman added. “These EDLs would be read by Joust which would work in tandem with a Colorfront Transkoder, referencing camera masters, converting them to full resolution DPX files and posting these files to our various vendors.”
Joust streamlines the management of the digital workflow and enables the production to access, transcode and deliver assets and metadata, saving money and giving artists more time to work on shots.
“One of Joust’s most valuable contributions is that it allows creative supervisors full control over the assets during the production. Joust allows for instant reviews of shot submissions through a web-based dailies viewer as well as on demand editorial pulls,” explained Joust founder, Jenny Fulle. “The process empowers productions to securely transfer and receive data to and from multiple VFX vendors, with the touch of a button.”
