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Conformalize This!
New Killer App Meets the Killer Ape
by Michael Kunkes
 A screengrab from Conformalizer. |
Justin Webster was an early arrival on Peter Jackson’s King Kong production, working on tech support and helping plan the sound workflow, eventually ending up with a sound effects editor credit on the film. He also brought along something else, a new Mac-platformed stand-alone application he created called Conformalizer, which he had been developing for over 12 months. It was given a baptism last year on Roger Donaldson’s The World’s Fastest Indian.
 Justin Webster |
Conformalizer is marketed by Maggot Software, Webster’s one-man company in Wellington, New Zealand (http://www. maggot.co.nz), which he named, for whatever reason, after “the humble maggot.” It is the newest in a line of tools that includes Assemblerator, which re-assembles 16-bit Avid-imported OMF files with clean, 24-bit production audio (“an all-digital version of the Digidesign Post Conform application”); Remetacator, a broadcastquality Wave metadata reader and writer for loading BWF files in Avid workstations; and Renamerator, a file renaming tool.
As with other sound editing automation programs such as EditTrace and Virtual Katy, Conformalizer can import EDLs and film cut lists, and it can also import and simplify change notes in the style of Conformer and Change Note Assistant (see Editors Guild Magazine, JAN-FEB 05). Where Conformalizer gains the advantage, Webster feels, is in its simpler engineering and ergonomics. “I wanted to create something which could ingest any format of EDL, cut list or change note, and then be able to re-cut my session with a minimum of effort,” he says. “I wanted it to be intuitive but also accurate and powerful at the same time.”
Webster, like his aforementioned competition, is the latest sound post professional to create a program that automatically conforms and updates ProTools sessions, FX lists, ADR databases and other functions that greatly shorten some of the endless workload of sound effects, music and visual effect editors. In addition, as well as being able to compare two versions of a cut, Conformalizer can then export a change note-style list for the conforming of console automation or non- ProTools digital audio workstations. Why have sound editors had to become programmers as well? Seems they have to. “The constantly evolving mass of formats breeds an equal number of workflows,” Webster says. “No solution is going to last more than a few years, so the large software companies are simply not going to invest in temporary solutions.”
 Sound Designer David Whitehead standing at entrance to the Niah Great Cave in Borneo, waiting to record the dusk exodus of bats forKing Kong. Photo courtesy of Justin Webster |
Perhaps the single most powerful feature of Conformalizer is Movie Panel, which allows editors to import two picture files and run them together, side by side. After events are selected in the change list, the two scenes will locate to corresponding points and verify that the change list is accurate. The two pictures can then be played together to check for any minor visual effects updates or sync slips, and editors can modify the change list or add events on the fly. “The ability to quickly verify and fine-tune the conform before applying it to any session, predub or database makes it a much more accurate program, especially on an effects-heavy film such as Kong, where the majority of shots contain digitally- generated elements,” says Webster.
“We would get new reels coming in from the picture department without notes on what exactly had changed,” says Ethan Van Der Ryn, Kong’s Oscar-winning supervising sound editor and sound designer (see related story, page 20). “Conformalizer allowed us to take the new picture, run it down with the old and quickly generate a list to send to the crew. We could easily find a new car added in the background, or track minor movements in Kong’s mouth. A scene’s length may not always change, but plenty of things can change within the scene— sync, additions, removals—and the sideby- side visual comparison is something I’ve never seen any other program do. It enables you to understand changes visually.”
“It is always incredible to me how discerning the human eye is––even when the two pictures are scrolling by at faster than real-time speed,” Webster relates. “You may not know exactly what has changed, but you know something is different. Nudging back a frame at a time will show exactly what has changed and by how many frames. The huge number of visual effects shots in Kong and the subtlety of many of the changes led to this feature’s creation—even though I was skeptical at first about how useful it would actually be.”
 King Kong sound crew members Brent Burge, Justin Webster, Chris Ward and Martin Kwok, with the pilot, rigging a plane with microphones in preparation for engine sound recording. Photo courtesy of Justin Webster |
Another helpful aspect of the program is its Block View feature, which gives instant feedback on the severity of a re-cut; it shows two lines of blocks cut into chunks to represent the old cut and the new cut. “By selecting an item in the change list, you see the corresponding blocks light up, so scrolling through the list will quickly alert you to swapped shots, inserts and deletions,” Webster says. “Couple this with QuickTime movies, which locate to the start of each chunk, and you can very quickly figure out what has happened in the new version.”
In creating Conformalizer, Webster felt that an EDL/cut list comparison system would be far more flexible than relying on change notes generated by picture editors, especially on long productions. “Change notes can be buggy when there are multiple shot moves between two versions, but there is also a great advantage in not being reliant on the picture editor to generate a list every time you need one,” he explains.
With Conformalizer, assistant editors simply output a cut list or EDL every time they output a new picture version, providing the ability to compare any version to any other, any time. “It’s not uncommon for shots or scenes from an early temp to drop out of the cut for months, only to reappear during the final mix,” Webster adds. “Sound editors might have to rebalance the entire film into a smaller number of reels, then do it all over again if the composer changes a week later. Rebalancing is one obvious advantage of using EDLs and cut lists over change notes.”
As luck would have it, that exact situation emerged on Kong, with the well-publicized replacement of longtime Jackson collaborator Howard Shore with James Newton Howard (The Sixth Sense) just seven weeks before the premiere date. “That had some interesting knocks on the effects,” Webster recalls. “We had recently rebalanced the entire film and now had to do it all over again once we had the new score. We had over 20 sound effects pre-dubs along with dialogue, temp mix stems and console automation to be rebalanced and carried forward. Once we ran the cut lists and decided we were happy with the conform, it took just a couple of minutes to rebalance each reel and output the new session, fine-tuning the conform notes for the mixers and outputting change notes for the automation of the Euphonix consoles.”
A considerably longer lasting problem for the sound editors on Kong was the sequence of Jack Driscoll and Ann Darrow’s escape from Kong’s clifftop lair. Apart from being constantly re-cut, the visual effects consisted of dozens of computer- generated bats, whose flight paths and vocals changed with every version.
“Sound designer Dave Whitehead was re-cutting the scene daily,” recalls Webster. “As the new pictures arrived, someone would quickly run through the new visual effects shots in the Conformalizer and make a list of exactly what had changed and when. Even scrolling through the picture at 1.5 times speed, a trained editor could spot a background bat that had slipped one frame. By the time the editors grabbed a copy of the new picture file, they also had an EDL for conforming and a visual effects note detailing every little change in every shot. Foley editor Peter Mills was an especially big fan of these visual effects notes, since keeping Kong’s footsteps in sync was a constant battle.”
Webster contends that Conformalizer’s market will not be confined to effects-heavy productions, and that directors and producers of smaller and indie films will find it a valuable tool. “We met with the members of Universal foreign versioning team, and they flipped when they saw how fast we could analyze a cut and reconform a dialogue database, because so much of what they do is about carefully comparing versions and re-spotting dialogue, usually under enormous time pressure.” In fact, he adds, anyone who creates a database or list using time code or feet and frames can reconform, whether it be visual effects editors, grading, music, translations or mix automation.
Now that Conformalizer has seen action on King Kong, as well as The World’s Fastest Indian, Eagle vs. Shark, the German film Perfume, The Story of a Murderer and Brian De Palma’s upcoming The Black Dahlia, Webster says he will soon be implementing some unique new features that will make tracking and tracing visual effects shots much more effective on big, effects-heavy shows. “Kong was a very intense test of the program’s design, but it did reveal a few little bugs,” he says. “All you can do is keep an eye out for changes in the way people work and make adjustments as necessary. You really need to thrash an application to figure out what those things are.”
A single license purchase of Conformalizer is $599, a five-license package is $2,399, and a 10-license package goes for $3,999. The next roll-out from Maggot? “I’m running out of clichéd names to call my programs,” Webster says. “However, suggestions are welcome.”
The Recalcitrator? Flickerator? Didactifier? Squelcherizer? The possibilities are…Interminator...no, that one may be a problem.
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