MPC (The Moving Picture Company) have extended their creative offer by carrying out a remote Telecine colour correction between their Telecine suites in Wardour Street, Soho and the MPC approval suite based at Technicolor Content Services (TCS), Hollywood, USA.

The grade itself, for an HSBC commercial, was carried out by MPC’s Director of Telecine, Jean-Clement Soret and took place over the course of 4 and a half hours. Jean-Clement worked his magic in London, with the MPC client Sarah Patterson of JWT and her Creative team sitting with him. The directing collective Traktor were able to simultaneously watch and approve the process in LA.

To make this process possible, MPC engineers worked closely with their counterparts based at TCS, Hollywood. The video was streamed in HD via the TPN, (Technicolor Production Network) - a high bandwidth network pipe between London’s Technicolor facilities and those in the US and mainland Europe. The creative process was facilitated using ‘iChat,’ a video conference call facility which allows all parties involved to see one another and communicate directly throughout the session. The technology involved allowed Traktor to view work in progress on fully calibrated monitors; which fully matched the settings at MPC. The detail was such that they were even able to give feedback on the really fine details such as grain and the colour of the blacks.

Traktor explained: ‘We had a great experience grading our film with JC over the interschnitzel. The journey from Santa Monica to Hollywood takes about 30 minutes… much shorter than the trip to London… in fact even shorter than going to the airport. Obviously, the time saving is considerable; carrying out Telecine in London is generally a 4 day commitment. The picture we saw on our end was as crisp and clear as if sitting at MPC in London. The delay was less than a second. The session went smoothly and we will be more than happy to do this again, that said, however, we still feel that there is no substitute for the real MPC.’

The set up, which MPC used for feature visual effects approvals on Wolfgang Petersen’s ‘Poseidon’ and Keenen Ivory Wayans’ ‘Little Man,’ is being used for two subsequent projects this week and is available for future grading sessions.