Quick DI

Colorist Adam Hawkey works on a scene from Crash at IO Films, using a Nucoda Film Master system.

Jim Muro's first experience with a digital intermediate took place on his first project as a DP — Kevin Costner's Open Range. For his second DP job, Paul Haggis' Crash, Muro desperately wanted to perform a DI. Unlike Open Range, however, Crash is a low-budget indie film that was, at press time, still waiting for distribution in 2005. (For more on the DI for Open Range, see the September 2003 issue.)

According to Muro, Crash's entire budget checked in around $6 million. How to make the DI process affordable, therefore, became a central issue.

“I was initially told we couldn't afford a DI,” says Muro. “But I knew this film wouldn't have nearly the amount of visual effects that Open Range had, and I was confident that we could color time the piece in about five or six days, instead of the four weeks we spent on Open Range [at Cinesite, Hollywood]. I was solicited by IO Films [North Hollywood], and they told me they could scan the film and color correct it at 2K resolution at a price we could make work. We did some tests with them, and I became convinced they were right.”

Crash represented the first major DI performed at IO at 2K resolution, after several previous projects handled at HD resolution. Company officials say their promise to Muro was made possible by IO's recent acquisition of a Nucoda Film Master, the PC-based film finishing system, along with improvements to its SAN.

According to IO colorist Adam Hawkey, who performed Crash's digital assembly and color correction work, the Nucoda system gives IO a way to move into higher-end DI projects.

“We can do color correction and assembly in one box: a PC,” says Hawkey. “It has a strong conform tool and the ability to read through various types of keycode and timecode in the files themselves. The color correction tool lets us do many of the same things you could do on more expensive systems, including secondaries, windowing, mattes, keying, and hue-based color correction, along with realtime pan and scan, and the ability to quickly compare versions of shots. It also renders quite efficiently.”

The basic pipeline IO used for Crash included the company's proprietary 2K, 12-bit area array film scanner, the Nucoda Film Master system, a SAN upgraded from about 4TB to 20TB (about 6TB of which were dedicated to Crash), an ADIC StorNext file-management system integrated into the company's pipeline by Nevada's Bright Systems, IO's proprietary database IPerf, and an Arri Laser Recorder.

DP Jim Muro (left) and director Paul Haggis on the set shortly before production wrapped.

Creatively and financially, Crash was a perfect fit for IO's quick-turnaround DI approach.

“There weren't many effects shots,” Muro says. “When you have big effects, that creates lots of hiccups with temp files and trusting other people to match things up for you. Crash was simpler. It takes place mainly at nighttime in an urban setting, so I could light it the way I wanted, keeping in mind the DI we would be performing. I knew we could keep this a simple picture to approach, in terms of the DI, and in fact, that's what sold the producers on the DI. For me as the DP, the beauty of a digital extraction is that I can underexpose a little bit and know I won't lose too much going through the printing process: The DI choice made it affordable to shoot Super 35mm. Creatively, I still get the flexibility to alter a bit of framing here and there and add colors beyond those readily available in the world of film. I pointed out that we could smooth things and make it all right in the computer, go widescreen, and do a one-light print, all in a matter of days.”

From the DI process, IO was able to build not only the release master, but also at least three HD masters for future SD downconverts, for 4:3 broadcast versions, and even for Windows Media 9 digital media presentations.

“All those versions are ready to go, all dustbusted and clean,” says Hawkey. “Whoever picks the movie up won't have to worry about any of that stuff.”