Assimilate Launches SCRATCH Play

Assimilate has launched SCRATCH Play, a free, comprehensive media player that enables film makers to create with efficiency and ease, their works of art on Surface Pro. Two well-known and highly acclaimed film producers, the Diamond brothers have been using the app on their Surface Pro to do more in their current film production.

To give you some quick background, the Diamond Bros. began their careers as analog assailants, directing music videos on 16mm film back in an era when MTV still played music. Being equal artists and technological mercenaries, the Diamond brothers tread the fine line between bleeding edge technology and storytelling. Their main focus; always looking for a better way to tell the story. Currently, The Diamond Bros. have a short film and documentary making the festival rounds. The documentary – Bring on The Mountain is a 15 year retrospective look at the career of a successful rock band struggling to maintain the climb to the top. The Diamond brothers have directed and produced numerous award winning music videos, short films and documentaries, and are the go-to team for digital filmmaking knowledge in the industry. We’re pumped to hear from the two brothers themselves how they’re using SCRATCH Play on their Surface Pro.

“Surface Pro has been great for our production. From being able to do our pre-production scheduling to looking at RED Raw .r3d’s on set, it’s been a solid tool that has just made our job easier.

The fact that the Surface Pro is a computer running Windows 8 means you can make it whatever you need it to be. Currently we have Avid Media Composer ­7, Adobe Creative Cloud and SCRATCH Play installed. This lets us start our rough cuts while we’re on the road as well as start to push our footage around for grading to get a better sense of what our options are. It’s also been a great on-set tool. For our current FILA campaign, we have a specific shot we need to get at every location so we have been loading the previous day’s shot into SCRATCH Play so that at the next location we can use it as a framing guide to ensure that we are composing the perfect frame.

There are always scheduling changes and production delays during a multiple city shoot schedule and it’s been very handy to be able to switch from looking at dailies in SCRATCH Play to a browser window to check on later flights or car rentals without missing a beat.

Our client is using one of our shots for print advertising as well so in SCRATCH Play we have been setting some basic looks for them on set and after working together to find the right frame we have been able to export stills that can be mocked up immediately.”

– The Diamond Brothers

Filmmakers that do everything need tools that do everything. SCRATCH Play is an awesome application that enables them to get the job done, you can check it out and see for yourself by downloading it today.