Data Driven

“Less than 50 percent of [major studio feature films] per year are finished with a digital intermediate,” estimates Joe Matza, president of Efilm, Hollywood, Calif. “But by the end of next year, I suspect that number will be close to two-thirds. The transition is gathering a full head of steam.”

Efilm is among the facilities pursuing a data-centric workflow—from preproduction to post—by becoming involved in digital dailies and introducing other new services into its pipeline.

As president of Efilm, one of the world's biggest purveyors of DI and related finishing services for feature films, Matza keeps tabs on such trends while overseeing Efilm's infrastructure, which is continually evolving in order to keep up with DI's rapid uptake within the filmmaking process.

Like most of the world's top DI providers, Efilm has been bulking up its storage capacities and adding 4K scanners in pursuit of 4K DI pipelines in recent months. It has also invested in a wide range of software-based color-correction tools and opened sophisticated digital theaters with high-end 2K digital projectors (and is now investigating Sony's new SRXR110 4K digital cinema projector).

Chief among the ancillary services many of the world's top DI providers are adding or expanding are several digital dailies options that facilities are now attempting to plug seamlessly into their DI pipelines. This approach of creating a data-centric workflow that starts during production and dailies, continues through production of preview versions of films, and ends with DI and other finishing services appears to be a strategic goal of some of Hollywood's DI players in response to changing market forces and rapid technological advances.

Officials at several facilities suggest this is all part of the next, big, overall trend in DI — a near future aimed at transforming all digital image manipulation into a never-ending data path in which images, metadata, and settings travel seamlessly through what Matza calls “a ubiquitous pipeline from one system to another” from the earliest days of preproduction to the final moments of the finishing process.

“As an industry, we're not quite there yet, but we will be in the next year or so — making all the color and editorial adjustments relating to the entire film available for use in the next step in the post process,” he says. “People are already doing it for parts of the workflow, but not for the entire path. This will change the process because it will ultimately link together dailies and digital previews with the metadata flowing seamlessly throughout the process. We'll also get involved with previsualization and various emulations — and, in fact, Efilm is already doing this on some films. This is all coming very soon; the transition is well underway because that is what filmmakers want.”

Leon Silverman, president at LaserPacific, Hollywood, says, “[This concept simply means] the plan for finishing the movie must start at the beginning of the project and continue through all phases. To do this, there are literally endless workflow scenarios that we are all working on. But what is ironic is that, in the recent ‘old’ days, we hardly ever used the word ‘workflow’ to begin with. Everyone already knew what the workflow was in the photochemical process. It was well understood. But, today, there are so many options for filmmakers that the notion of workflow takes on new importance. We all need to offer a variety of options for getting there, depending on the needs and budgets of the filmmakers.”

That drive to offer options in order to achieve the aforementioned ubiquitous pipeline has led, in recent months, to a number of new services at major DI facilities. In some cases, these services take advantage of new technology and system design; in other cases, they are based on technology that has been in development or in use for some time.

A screen shot of a prototype of Kodak''s Look Manager System, version 2, which is slated to be released this month. LaserPacific uses the system for on-set previsualizations and dailies work, among other things.

At Technicolor, Camarillo, Calif., its digital pipeline includes dailies, previews, and digital intermediates. The newest addition to this pipeline involves addressing a key issue that has long been lacking in the film-digital equation: providing cinematographers with a measurable method for communicating with dailies colorists in the terminology they know best — the language of printer lights. According to Marco Bario, VP of theatrical postproduction at Technicolor Creative Services, the company decided to answer a call to action from ASC President Richard Crudo late last year. Crudo told the industry in a variety of venues that it was time to offer DPs the electronic equivalent of calling lights on a Hazeltine negative analyzer.

“That's how cinematographers have always explained their exposure needs and other photography requirements during principal photography and film printing for the dailies process,” says Bario. “We have developed a new, proprietary system we are calling Digital Printer Lights, which allows us to offer virtual printer light settings that emulate what a negative would look like at a given printer light setting. It's basically software that creates a 3D LUT that comes between the telecine and HD dailies deck for DPs who want to do digital dailies, but still communicate in the language they are most comfortable with.”

Josh Pines, VP of imaging research and development for Technicolor, was a key architect of Technicolor's answer to Crudo's challenge, along with Chris Kutcka, director of imaging production at Technicolor Digital Intermediates (TDI), Burbank, Calif. Pines suggests that giving DPs back their control during digital dailies sessions not only responds to an industry demand, but also permits the establishment of quantifiable settings during those sessions that can be replicated later during the DI.

“Unless he is able to supervise the colorist transferring the video dailies at 4 a.m., the DP has lost control over what he is looking at with video dailies,” says Pines. “Then, those video dailies go over to the Avid, and that is what the editor and director see. If a good shot was transferred badly, they might not realize that and throw it out for being too dark or too green, and that was really driving DPs crazy. And then, even if there is no DI, they take those projects to the lab for final timing, and there they call printer lights. But if the dailies colorist did something with his knobs in a funny, nonlinear way, they may not be able to translate that in the lab or during a DI. There was this disconnect between what dailies and the final film would look like.

“So [Crudo] just said, ‘Why can't we have something like printer lights as part of the digital process?’ We thought it was a reasonable request.”

Pines and his colleagues built a series of 3D LUTs based on Technicolor's lab chemistry that correlate pixel values of digital files to densities on film negatives. The process includes calibration of Technicolor's scanning and film recording equipment in relationship to those LUTs and a new GUI interface created by Pines.

Cinematographer Daryn Okada, ASC, put the system through its maiden voyage on his recent film Stick It. Pines says Okada is not planning a DI for that film, but was committed to digital dailies, and so, for testing purposes, he printed some shots at a lab and simultaneously put them through the Digital Printer Lights process at Technicolor's Hollywood facility.

“He called lights and got film prints at the lab, and then blindly sent us the same numbers, and we inputted them into our system and made him some HD dailies,” says Pines. “There was a very close match, and Daryn was happy enough with it to use the system throughout production.”

Next, Pines says, Technicolor hopes to improve the system by matching up physical telecine controls with the terminology and numbering system of printer light emulation.

“That way, the video equipment will have the numbers attached to it, and we can more easily call out gain and gamma and saturation and things, and come up with a metric, a set of numbers, so that the telecine operator, the colorist, and the DP will all be able to communicate using that same set of numbers,” he says. “Then, if they bring the project into our DI pipeline, those dailies and those settings will mean something concrete during the digital intermediate work.”

Efilm and its parent company, Deluxe, are currently building what Matza calls a new 2K dailies pipeline. He says, “I think [it] will be revolutionary in the sense that it is a data-centric process. The notion is to maintain the full quality of the original film, especially in terms of dynamic range and color, from the dailies process all the way to the finish. We intend to maintain a record of the color and editorial settings, and apply them at each step of the process — dailies, the digital preview, the DI, and so on. Primary color correction, secondaries, windows, editorial information, and metadata all will be part of this system.”

Matza says the company expects to have the as-yet-unnamed system up and running by June 2006, and Deluxe is planning to headquarter it in a new building it recently acquired for Efilm in Hollywood.

Some of the components of Efilm's new dailies system include its Thomson Grass Valley Spirit 4K; a high-speed SAN network; computer-based logging, slating, and audio synching; lossless compression; and an array of output options. The entire system will be managed by Efilm's internally developed production database and file management system.

Matza points out that Efilm also recently instituted an emulation and previsualization process called ColorStream for digitally captured projects to give filmmakers an on-set preview system that provides a clear vision of what their imagery will look like on film during exhibition. Once again, the concept is to have Efilm capable of participating in projects long before the DI stage, even before dailies, as part of the inexorable march toward a single data pipeline.

ColorStream was recently used for the first time on the feature Click, a movie shot by Dean Semler using Panavision's Genesis camera system and slated to open next summer. “The movie will be released on film,” says Matza. “How is a cinematographer supposed to know how the piece will look on film if he is shooting digitally and his dailies are digital? ColorStream let us emulate the look of the film output for Dean while he was shooting on set, and that is what I mean when I call it an emulation process.

“We take the Genesis data — the digitally originated image — and put it through a process that allows it to be displayed on a projector or monitor as though it were a particular film stock at a particular light. The lights or stops can be varied by the DP. We can do the same thing throughout production for dailies, allowing filmmakers to better gauge their final product. I believe the kind of accurate emulation we did for Dean will soon be a requirement for all major productions.”

Matza says Efilm has other types of additional services and options in the works for clients, and emphasizes that such innovations have two primary aims: to keep imagery consistent all the way through the process, and to allow filmmakers to create and see imagery as they are used to seeing it, on film.

“Most filmmakers aren't looking for an entirely new look; they are seeking ways to maintain and build on traditional looks using new digital processes,” he says. “DPs and directors are very sophisticated, and they know the film technology that has supported them for years inside and out. They know what their films should look like. We are not there yet in terms of exactly and easily digitally replicating their film, but we are very close. The key to achieving their look, and a more cost-effective post process, is to make sure dailies, preview screenings, the DI, and everything in between contains smart information that seamlessly connects each step of the process. That's the big step our industry is trying to take right now.”

LaserPacific is targeting new approaches to digital dailies as part of a larger digital intermediate strategy. In this case, the company has launched a new initiative called “inDI” to offer what Silverman calls “an affordable end-to-end workflow” for independent filmmakers on limited budgets who are interested in seeing high-resolution dailies and previsualizing their work as they work toward a digital intermediate.

Silverman says the basic concept of the process is to scan film on a Spirit DataCine through a new Kodak image science calibration system to make HD dailies emulate the look that would result from a film scanner, and then preserve that data as an HD RGB 4:4:4 source master. That master can, in turn, be used as the template source for DI color grading and film recording without requiring re-scans of film selects.

“It's the equivalent of a data scan, and you then watch dailies through a simulation of Kodak print film, storing the images at RGB 4:4:4, [and] watching high-def dailies that simulate Kodak print film,” says Silverman. “And then, the original dailies scans are used as the DI source. That lets indie filmmakers do high-resolution HD dailies and a DI for less than the price of what many places would charge for a DI alone. The ability to create, in essence, a telecine scan that is equivalent to a data scan is a big step forward for video dailies, and gets a lot more filmmakers into the game. It's true these are HD-resolution dailies, but, with the Kodak image science calibration used during the scanning and dailies processes and having full dynamic range with RGB 4:4:4, the resulting images are very much a quality alternative to a 2K DI for a filmmaker on a budget.”

LaserPacific recently used the process on an indie film shot by Shane Hurlbut for Focus Features called Something New, and Silverman expects several other projects to be using the system by early 2006.

He also points out that nothing in the process prevents filmmakers from later performing a DI from 4K or 2K scans, if they so choose and can afford it. Silverman emphasizes that LaserPacific also offers a host of other tools to improve the efficiency of the dailies process generally, including Kodak's Look Manager system for on-set previsualizations.

“This is the trend — to establish the look of the movie from day one,” he says. “Sometimes, that means previsualizing on-set for your dailies. Sometimes, that means a DI where the process starts with the HD preview version — sometimes from scanned negative. We are doing a project right now where the DI is beginning with a preview screening for the director, where we are scanning the negative in 4K, and the director will make any changes based on that preview, and those changes will be re-conformed in the DI. In other words, by the time the previews are done, the DI will be almost finished. The point for facilities like ours is to offer flexibility depending on the client's needs, but the workflow has to be capable of going end to end on the project, from the set to the color-correction suite.”