NEW YORK: Looming as the first summer 2012 blockbuster, Barry Sonnenfeld’s Men In Black 3 spent considerable location time in New York last summer, with a rigorous production schedule supported by NY’s Sixteen19. “This was an extremely buttoned down project,” reports managing director Claire Shanley. “Everyone on MIB3 was at the top of their game, and we were committed to insuring total reliability for every piece of gear.”
“After kicking off the editorial process in Manhattan during the shoot, we shifted to East Hampton in July,” reports post production supervisor Paul Levin. Working thousands of miles away from Los Angeles, expert technical support and workflow oversight were critical. “I’ve worked with Sixteen19 on a number of major projects in the past, and I knew we could count on them both to provide dependable systems and to see us through any unanticipated problem. Sixteen19 exceeded our expectations.” Beyond its offices in NY, LA, London, and New Orleans, Sixteen19 specializes in providing high-level service to large productions outside of these hubs and supporting them in their work around the world.
First assistant editor Jason Solberg reports that when a glitch in the Avid Unity was discovered during a tech run-through on Sunday, July 3rd, “Sixteen19 director of technical services Travis Boyer worked deep into the night to resolve the problem. By Tuesday morning after the holiday, we were totally on track. I know Paul (Levin) had great experiences with them in the past, and I’d recommend them for my upcoming projects. You need to be absolutely confident your gear will work, and that you’ve got a reliable support team at your back,” he says. “MIB3 produced almost 1/2 a million feet of film, as well as digital footage acquired on Arri Alexa. Barry doesn’t do a lot of takes, but this feature has a tremendous amount of action. The feedback we’ve been getting from early screenings have ‘winner’ written all over them,” he adds.
Paul Levin notes that the audio layback and color correction services Sixteen19 provided in LA to prep MIB3 for screenings worked flawlessly. “Barry was particularly impressed with Sixteen19’s colorist, Steve Beganyi. He was a total pro and absolutely delivered for us.”
Sixteen19’s MIB3 technical package included: five dual-boot Avid Media Composers running v. 5.5.9.3 and v. 4.0.5.13, linked to a 32 terabyte Avid Unity running v. 5.1.3 Each system incorporated a 50″ Panasonic Pro 20 Series monitor, two 27″ Apple Cinema displays and a 27″ JVC studio monitor. Sixteen19 also ran a line from the VFX station to Barry Sonnenfeld’s East Hampton theater to enable screening onsite.
“MIB3 was a terrific opportunity to showcase our broad production support capabilities,” Claire Shanley concludes. “We appreciate Paul Levin bringing us on board, and look forward to working with Paul, Barry, and their team on future projects.”
Photo: “Men In Black 3” First assistant editor Jason Solberg in East Hampton at a Sixteen19 Avid Media Composer.
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Sixteen19 is a post-production services company with offices at 1619 Broadway, NYC and divisions in New Orleans; L.A. and London. In addition to production and development, the firm specializes in DI, color correction, editing and finishing and on & near set services. The NYC complex features 15 spacious Avid editing suites, color correct theater/ screening rooms, digital dailies, file transcode/encode and workflow management. Contact: 212-245-1402
