film -> HD questions

[Miska Draskoczy]

Hi,

 

I am soon going into post on a short film that was shot on 35mm. My plan is to transfer to HD on the Spirit in a supervised session with a colorist, then do downconverts to miniDV and do effects and edit the project on my own system, finishing at SD resolution. If money and interest build in the future I plan to go back and do a conform edit of the HD masters and possibly even an output to film.

 

I've been doing research on the process, and one thing I came across is that when transferring, one would use different settings on the telecine depending on if it was meant to be finished on film or broadcast. I am curious as to how true this is and if so what the best course of action is. I have to be honest and say that a film out is a hazy possibility at this point, whereas I know that I will end up with at least an SD broadcast version, possibly HD too, so if I have to make a choice I would go with transferring for broadcast specs. Is there anyway to insure that my transfer will work for both circumstances? Would it help to transfer to uncompressed frame files instead? (don't see how this could be feasible for 1.5hrs of footage)

 

Also, any general advice on the film->HD workflow would be appreciated, its seems like everyone I talk to has some caveat. I know I've seen this in the archives but they don't seem to be accessible at the moment unforunately. Thanks...

 

-miska

[David Mullen ASC]

Make it look good in HD for HD broadcast. The people doing the film-out can make adjustments to their look-up tables if needed to transpose this to film and keep the same look. Mainly you're just giving up some ability to hold detail over 100 IRE.

 

Just remember that HD is not a great intermediate format compared to 2K data.

[Miska Draskoczy]

Ok, thanks, thats what I was hoping would be the case. I know HD intermediaries aren't the best, but as far as I know 2k scanning would be prohibitively expensive. I think they charge more for 2k scanning over HD. Plus I assume I would have to do 1-lights first to do selects which is an added cost. It doesnt seem feasible to scan all 1.5hrs of raw material as it would take up an enormous amount of disk space and time to copy off the framestore. Then I'm not even sure how you would do an offline edit of the material, since there isnt the usual tape/burn-in edl situation. Next time....:)

 

Right now I'll be happy to have an SD edit, thrilled if we get the money to conform to HD, and a film-out would be icing on the cake. Just trying to be smart and hedge my bets as best as possible while working on a limited budget.

 

-miska