Joust Perfects VFX And Digital Workflow Solutions for "Cosmos: A SpaceTime Odyssey"

BY: Marjorie Galas, Editor

From the outer-reaches of distant galaxies to the inner workings of the smallest cell, the visual effects work in "Cosmos: A SpaceTime Odyssey" has been a monumentous acheivement. With over sixteen companies and countless artists supplying effects, effeciant wrangling of the various images was crucial to keeping time and budget on track. Enter Joust, the repository for all digital data and meta-data. Joust provided an economical and efficient workflow solution for the critically acclaimed television mini-series.

See Also: A World Of Talent Returns To "Cosmos: A SpaceTime Odyssey"

Created by VFX digital workflow veterans and The Creative-Cartel heads Jenny Fulle and Craig Mumma. Joust equipped the VFX production team with the ability to produce high quality visual effects that distinguished and defined the series. During the digital and meta-data collection process, Joust becomes a powerful resource for any production and post-production team by providing features including dailies and vendor review systems, bid package creations, a watermark image creator, and an automator for vendor submissions. Additionally, Joust provides editorial with powerful tools that include the capacity to pull plates, transcode, and partially conform and compare editorial changes within minutes (trimming days of a schedule!)

“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 Fulle. “The process empowers productions to securely transfer and receive data to and from multiple VFX vendors, with the touch of a button.”

Eli Dolleman, Co-Producer, Post Production and Animation on Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey stated "On COSMOS, we used Joust to streamline a number of areas in our digital pipeline. 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.”

To elaborate on Joust’s role in facilitating the turnover process, Dolleman offered this explaination; “Through file association during the dailies ingestion process Joust allowed our editorial staff to pull plates through the submission of simple EDLs. 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.” “In short, Joust was extremely important in the post production process for a show with as many complicated shots and production elements as Cosmos. It allowed us to be flexible and reactive and helped with efficiency, all of which were necessary on this massive 13 episode mini-series."

Addie Manis, VFX Producer on COSMOS added, “The fact that Joust allowed editorial to pull the VFX plates in-house was the greatest time and money saving tool.”

The series finale of "Cosmos: A SpaceTime Odyssey" will air Sunday June 8th, followed by an encore screening Monday, June 10th. To learn more about Cosmos: A SpaceTime Odyssey" please visit: http://www.cosmosontv.com/

For more information and an online demo of JOUST, visit:

http://joustco.com.