Entertainment Technology News

(London) -- Today sees the worldwide release of Synaesthesia, a production management and data-tracking system for the film and video industry. Designed to streamline the digital production process, Synaesthesia is a multi-layered, visually-rich, digital worksheet that can capture all elements of a production in a single place. It was created by the UK-based film workflow specialist, Surreal Road, who spent the last two years putting it through rigorous beta testing.

Synaesthesia enables the easy breakdown, tagging and annotation of information, material and assets throughout the production lifecycle. From scenes, characters and costumes, to equipment, sets and shots. Synaesthesia is flexible and fully scale-able. Users can focus purely on recording core information, such as notes or contact details, or capitalise on the system's advanced features, such as the ability to manipulate edit decisions or capture camera footage metadata, to make content searchable at a later date.

Synaesthesia uses Filemaker© technology and is compatible with leading editing and finishing software, such as Assimilate, Final Cut Pro, Final Draft, Scratch and Shotgun. It supports a variety of job roles along the complex and fragmented production process, delivering comprehensive tracking of each element and an integrated overview of the entire production. Licence holders can use the system independently or share information amongst each other, to aid workflow. Features include:

Pre-Production:

•The ability to import a screenplay for an automatic breakdown of scenes, shots and characters
•Organise, tag and annotate concepts and pre-production material
•Attach files - from video, such as screen tests; to images, such as costume or location ideas
•Use thumbnails to work visually and create digital storyboards
•Log the dates that physical and digital assets will be needed for specific parts of a production and keep track of them throughout
•Assign contacts to different elements of the production.

Whilst Shooting:

•Record the detail of each shoot, to aid continuity and post-production adjustments
•Automatically import metadata from sources such RED® Camera footage •Easily enter addresses using Google® Maps
•Log any on-set issues.

Post-production:

•Create storyboarded sequences from logged footage and output them to editing systems
•Manipulate Edit Decision Lists to perform tasks such as adding handles
•Log technical information, to create trailers or showreels.

Commenting on the release, Jack James, Managing Director of Surreal Road, said: "I know from personal experience how difficult it is to keep track of everything during the lifetime of a production. In fact, Synaesthesia was born out of the desire to streamline my own workload when I was the data manager on a BBC set. Since then, we've worked hard on this solution. This is a visual business, so we've created a very visual product to make it as intuitive, satisfying and effective to use as possible. Put simply, Synaesthesia can make film-makers' lives much easier. We hope it sets an industry standard for the future."





Resources:

www.synaesthesia.surrealroad.com