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MillimeterThinking in Color: New ideas for 2K and HD Telecine
Oct 1, 1999 12:00 PM, Cynthia Wisehart
Right now, the transfer/color process is one of the most dynamic areas of postproduction and has become a touchstone for new business, technical, and artistic ideas. That is in large part because of its position in the postproduction pipeline. The transfer point is where film-captured images enter the digital domain and digital filmmaking can begin. The transfer point is also where both film and video-captured images become data, ready for life as a multi-format master or a multi-purposed asset.
So it's not surprising that across the production spectrum from corporate to features, people are creating new transfer and color correction services and solutions. These new ideas, though far from accepted, raise the potential for greater artistic success and ultimately more efficient workflow.
One of the most thrilling of the new ideas is developing around telecine at the very high end. In Los Angeles, Cinesite and Rainmaker Digital Pictures, are completing rooms and systems that are designed to give feature film directors and DPs the ability to manipulate footage for color the way commercials directors do. The artistic and storytelling implications of being able to paint with color were tantalizingly clear in the elegant tests that Roger Deakins did in collaboration with Cinesite. But, as they say, this is only a test.
At the moment, says Forrest Fleming, Vice President Conversion Services at Cinesite, directors and DPs who test drive the room immediately get the point. And almost as quickly they have to face reality-from a producer's POV this new capability looks like an invitation to noodle on a giant scale.
Of course, Fleming has a case to make to producers about what they get for their (typically) $400,000. The process, which Cinesite calls "Digital Intermediate Mastering," is based on a Philips Spirit DataCine and a da Vinci 2K desk. While the filmmaker watches on an HD monitor (soon to be a Digital Projection projector and screen), a colorist can dial in selective, shot-to-shot color corrections in realtime, change densities from head-to-tail of a shot, and even slightly recompose a shot by enlarging it a field or two. During the conversion process, images can be sharpened, de-grained, and re-grained. The digital master is created in the 10-bit Cineon file format, making use of Kodak's calibration expertise and look-up tables that were perfected on Pleasantville. The output to an IP (or IN) provides a single pristine source for all subsequent releases in film and video formats and serves as an archival master. The digital data file becomes the master for downconversion to HD or other video formats.
But there's more. "Let's model the savings, " Fleming offers. First, he says, filmmakers will only need to telecine once and color once. Video releases do not have to be re-colored. "There would still need to be repositioning, but color is 70 percent of the work of preparing a video release," he notes. Material for trailers and titles is immediately available in digital format. "If you match your light correctly through Cineon you won't have to do color timing, which also represents a savings in answer prints." Simple opticals such as dissolves and wipes can be created in the color session, he says, adding that for complex visual effects, the process eliminates all the scanning and recording that normally falls to the visual effects sub.
"For most jobs, scanning and recording is bundled into the effects bid and represents about 20 percent of the total cost. You could potentially save those costs," he says, but he acknowledges visual effects houses would have to come to trust the process, which won't happen overnight.
Perhaps one of the most persuasive cost savings and quality-control arguments comes for films that require bleach bypass or CCE. These chemical processes would no longer be applied to each print, but would be done once, in the color session. Deacons' test also highlights how a filmmaker who wants to apply color effects to a single shot or grade an effect over a sequence can execute such effects selectively and interactively in realtime. This eliminates the iterative testing process to achieve the look with chemical-based effects, or the render time required for digital effects. The digital intermediate process also streamlines the process of translating Super 35 onto the screen and eliminates one generation loss. And, Fleming has one more card to play-the digital intermediate process provides an efficient way to do simple restoration tasks, such as eliminating the reel-long scratch that turned up on one filmmaker's project.
At the moment, the digital intermediate process begins with scanning a conformed negative with the Spirit. Fleming envisions a time when filmmakers will scan in selects and conform electronically, minimizing negative cutting.
For all his enthusiasm Fleming agrees that introducing this new service is an educational process. He points out that the savings don't readily correspond with traditional budget line items. Rather the savings show up in reduced costs on services such as tests that are often lumped with other budget items.
And, although filmmakers are understandably drawn to the artistic potential, they retain a basic suspicion of video, even HD, standing in for film. "We have a lot of experience in the color space and translating it to the Vision color stocks," Fleming says reassuringly. "But there's no doubt it's been an application learning curve."
For demos call Alison Caiola at (323) 468-2144. Rainmaker Digital's Peter Sternlicht agrees that color calibration is the fundamental challenge of this new process. He's referring to both the challenge of translating the color session from video back to film and the challenge of creating accurate working environments for colorists. "Just like people's hearing is slightly different, their color perception is different." Sternlicht says the suite is tuned individually to the colorists' eyes so that they can feel confident with the relationship between the digital image they see and film.
"It's still an interaction between digital technology and photo-magnetic technology-it's truly digital film. You have to be able to relate the film and the digital in the same space."
Sternlicht echoes Cinesite's comments about the potential savings of the process, the value of a flawless IP, and the flexibility to support multiple formats with a single master. But at Rainmaker the process is based on slightly different technology. Most notably, Rainmaker is Philips' official beta test site for the Specter Virtual DataCine. Sternlicht says that once the Specter was on board he couldn't resist the pull to develop this kind of transfer/color system for feature films. Through months of collaboration with Pandora, SGI, Ciprico, Digital Projection, Panasonic, and Sony, Rainmaker helped bring the various technologies together into a working system. "The Specter is the core, but it has to be part of a total system of data management." (Sternlicht also points out that although at the moment a Spirit is the engine behind the Specter, the system would work equally well if fed by a C-Reality telecine.)
One of the most important elements of the system is the SAN aspect, which allowed for the creation of two suites fed from one telecine. One of these suites looks very much like a standard telecine suite-but with a high-def monitor. The other is a mini theater with a Digital Projection projector. "At different stages of the process we work in one suite or the other," Sternlicht explains, noting that the Specter (along with Philips' Spatial Interpolater) can deliver the same footage to multiple locations simultaneously in multiple formats.
Sternlicht emphasizes that in addition to the system's role for new features, it is a powerful restoration tool that will give more films a second life electronically, even as it allows both new and old films to be distributed and repurposed in multiple media from one transfer.
And while there are compelling reasons for this system to attract filmmakers now, Sternlicht sees this investment in light of a longer range shift to a completely digital film distribution system. "On the short side, five years," he speculates.
In the meantime, these new systems at Cinesite and Rainmaker offer an artistic promise that many directors and DPs will find hard to resist once they see it.."
