Avid hits a Royale Flush with Bond
James Bond movies have always been one of my favorite movies and the new Casino Royale is puts a new twist on the traditional Bond movies. We are introduced to the "real" Sir James Bond (David Niven), a retired "pure spy" who is horrified by the outrageous activities of the agent currently assigned his name and number. M (John Huston) appeals for Bond's return to active duty. Spies all over the world are being killed, and the governments of the Soviet Union, France, the United States, and England have temporarily set aside their differences to combat SMERSH, the criminal organization suspected of the murders. At first, Bond refuses, but, after M is killed, he changes his mind and agrees to come back.
The editing on Casino Royale took place on multiple Apple G4-based Avid Meridians running Media Composer, with 4Tb of Unity storage and fibre optic LANShare networking. The HD dailies were viewed via a Rushplay system, outputting HD MPEG 2 files through a Sony Qualia projector, which was supplied by Bell Theatre Services
LEM Digital also provided an Avid Unity system with 2.4Tb of storage, and a Mac G4 Avid Meridian, at Arion the facility responsible for the provided the daily film transfers. The dallies were digitized into the Avid via Digibeta and transported to location on fire wire drives. The HD dailies for projection were also shipped at the same time on separate drives before being copied to the Rushplay server for the crew screening of digital rushes.
