HUGO filmmakers break creative and technical ground with Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 Production Premium software

Filmmaking past informs filmmaking future

Viewers would not normally expect to see Martin Scorsese as the director of an adaptation of a popular children’s book. But that is one of the many delightfully unique things about HUGO — a lavish adaptation of Brian Selznick’s best-selling period novel, The Invention of HUGO Cabret — in which a young orphan living in a Parisian train station unwittingly befriends the pioneering and brilliant silent filmmaker, George Méliès.

Oscar winner Rob Legato, whose numerous credits include Apollo 13, Titanic, Harry Potter, The Aviator, and The Departed, is the film’s visual effects supervisor, second-unit director, and second-unit director of photography. For this project, Legato broke new ground, including HUGO’s application of genuine 3D, the use of the ARRI Alexa camera, re-creation of sets and techniques used in 1905, and research of filmmaking history, as well as the film’s 800 highly-stylized visual effects shots — each fine tuned for discrete right and left eyes. In all his various capacities on the project, Legato relied on Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 Production Premium software, including Adobe After Effects CS5.5, Adobe Photoshop CS5, Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5, and Adobe Media Encoder CS5.5 software.

“The future of filmmaking is art — and art is flourishing because young filmmakers can adopt affordable desktop tools like Adobe Creative Suite Production Premium to make hundreds of films, much like George Méliès made hundreds of films,” says Legato.

Working hand in hand with Scorsese
In addition to his traditional role as VFX supervisor, Legato applied an HD-based workflow methodology that he has been refining on commercials and on Scorsese’s films in recent years. He personally acts as a bridge between production and post-production by managing a file-based assembly line. read more...