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MillimeterColor Control DPs on Digital Intermediate
Nov 1, 2002 12:00 PM, by Jon Silberg
Digital mastering for a feature film still comes at a premium. Facilities estimate that today it can add anywhere from $100,000 to $500,000 to a post budget. As more films go this route, however, people are discovering advantages that could help offset some of that cost and improve the final product demonstrably.
In terms of cost, there is the issue of effects shots that would all be scanned, manipulated, and recorded out anyway. When a whole show is digitized as a matter of course, those kinds of costs for specific effects or dissolves are no longer an issue. Meanwhile, on the back end, a producer can theoretically walk away with a 2K master for video and DVD without later having to suffer the added expense of retiming the neg during an entirely new telecine session.
Perhaps the most interesting area in which producers could defray costs is during principle photography. Andrew Lesnie, who took home an Oscar last year for Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring, was able to work a little differently on the second Rings feature, The Two Towers. Although a large portion of Fellowship was digitally timed because of the number of effects shots, that film was still essentially timed in a lab. For Towers, Lesnie knew that he would have the power of digital grading for every shot. (For more on lighting and shooting Two Towers, see “In the Rings,” page 16.)
“It definitely affected the way I photographed the film,” Lesnie says. “If you're outdoors in New Zealand, you can guarantee the weather's going to change a lot. Having seen what we could do in post, I was encouraged to push on at times I would normally have been keener to stop. When you know you're going to a facility where you have infinite control over your contrast and color and every aspect of the image — infinitely more than you do when you're timing at a lab — you go on and shoot even if the weather changes radically.”
Rodrigo Prieto (Amores Perros) shot back-to-back features that were digitally timed at EFILM, Hollywood. For the first of these films, Frida, directed by Julie Taymor, the decision to go that route wasn't finalized until photography had been completed, so Prieto had to shoot within the parameters of what could be finished photochemically. But for the gritty urban drama 8 Mile, directed by Curtis Hanson and starring rapper Eminem, Prieto was able to count on a digital finish and factor that into his every decision on set.
“The shooting style of 8 Mile is handheld, very realistic in tone, giving the camera and the actors freedom to move around,” Prieto says. “The cast is diverse, with very different skin tones. I couldn't use specific lighting for each character because we felt that would seem artificial and would restrict the movement of the actors and the camera. Later, in the digital suite at EFILM, we were able to brighten or darken a particular actor's face or wardrobe and ‘attach’ that correction to just a feature of the face, so it would automatically follow the movement in the frame. This was a very useful feature for this particular movie.”
Jeffrey Jur (My Big Fat Greek Wedding) went to Technique, Los Angeles, a digital postproduction extension of Technicolor Labs, to digitally master Showtime's Last Call, starring Jeremy Irons as novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald. Although this feature was made for the cable network, the producers also needed a film print for international theatrical distribution.
“In a pinch,” says Jur, “when you're on the set and you want to darken a huge building in the frame, and you know you're going to go through post this way, it can be much faster and cheaper to do that work in post rather than having the grips rig something or change your whole lighting setup.”
DP Christian Sebaldt knew he would be posting the high-tech horror flick FearDotCom at Cinesite's London bureau. During the shoot in Luxembourg, the cinematographer found himself in a situation where, because of a problem getting a specific set of bulbs, he had to mix pure HMI light with pure tungsten light — a potential disaster because of the drastically different color temperatures. “We mixed the colors without any problems,” he says, “and later we reduced those rich oranges or rich blues to our taste in post. This, of course, would not have been possible with traditional timing.”
French cinematographer Michel Abramowicz recently completed work at Duboicolor, Paris, on a film called Sweat for director Louis-Pascal Couvelaire. For Abramowicz one of the nicest things about the process was the ability to shoot outdoors and hold detail in an actor's face and wardrobe while also getting a nice, rich sky. Normally, unless there is time to bring the light level up on the actor, this is impossible. A carefully exposed negative would be able to capture detail in both the actor and the sky, but traditional printing methods would require choosing to retain maximum detail in either the highlights or the shadows.
“At Duboicolor,” he says, “we could get both. I think soon we will see only beautiful skies in movies. Maybe one day, people will get tired of that, and the fashion will go back to a burnt-out look for the sky. But we will have the choice.”
Abramowicz warns that digital timing, for all its potential improvements, does not automatically offer the possibility of an improved final product. “With a good DP and director,” he says, “it will make the movie go in a good direction. With a bad DP and a bad director, there are more ways to ruin things.”
Lesnie concurs. “With a lot of these systems,” he says, “there's such a plethora of choice that you've got to beware of people just making all sorts of absurd suggestions. It's more important than ever to have a clear vision about what you're trying to accomplish, to strive for a sense of integrity about the look of the project because it's easier now [in the digital suite] to go off in some other direction that doesn't fit in with the film as a whole. Many DPs have ended up horrendously disappointed in advertising when they go into the telecine sessions to find the room packed with people all throwing their two cents in.”
The DPs warn that the capabilities of the digital suite should never be seen as negating the importance of a well-lit, well-exposed image in the first place. “You want to fine tune images that are good to begin with,” says Prieto. “I have found that if you try to alter an image too much, you start getting artifacts such as noise. The result somehow looks ‘electronic’ or manipulated by a computer. This might be an effect you are looking for, but I think normally it's very important not to try to go too far in the manipulation of the original images.”
Prieto warns that during shooting, it is as important to be as aware of what can't be done later in the digital timing suite, as it is to understand the wonderful things that can be done to an image. “You can light faster under certain circumstances,” he says, “but of course you can never become careless on the set. There is only so much you can do, even in digital timing. You can't change the placement of the lighting units, and you can't change the camera angle.”
Finally, it comes down to the talent and expertise of the cinematographer to determine how digital timing will and will not affect what they do during production. “Directors of photography have to be as smart as anyone on the set when it comes to this,” says Jur. “There's always the attempt to try to cut corners. ‘You don't need this lens?’ ‘Why do you need that light?’ Sometimes these people might be absolutely right. Other times, it's your job as a cinematographer to convince them that something is worth the time and money. That's always been true in production. It's nothing new.”
“Hopefully,” adds Sebaldt, “the producers and the director will listen to the DP when he says what can and what can't be in the [digital timing] suite. The DP, after all, is usually the one on the set with the most experience because he or she can shoot more movies than a producer is able to produce or a director direct.”
