DI

[F Bulgarelli]

Hello there,

 

If you are shooting a film on 35mm and you want to obtain a desaturated, contrasty look, sort of like the film "Delicatessen" but doing it on a DI, should you process the negative normal and create the look during the DI.

I'm aware that I will have to do tests to determine the exposure and lighting ratios but generally speaking, I'm thinking that having a normal negative is probably a good start. Is that correct?

 

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated,

 

Francisco

[Max Jacoby]

If you know what look you are going for, I think its best if you try already to get as much as possible done during the exposing/processing. Things like bleach-bypass look still better if done for real and not emulated later in the DI suite.

[David Mullen ASC]

Yes, but some of those films did the bleach-bypass to the prints or dupe elements, not the negative, and thus the final home video version often had to digitally simulate the look of the bleach-bypass prints anyway.

 

Of course, for a film print, a bleach-bypass done to the print looks very different than one digitally simulated, and it looks different than bleach-bypass done to an IP, IN, or original negative.

 

You really have to break down what look you are trying to achieve into specifics (graininess, black levels, contrast, saturation, etc.), that will tell you how to process the negative. And how it will be printed also matters -- even a D.I. output will be printed.

 

The issue is whether you want to "bake in" the final look into the original negative.

 

For "Northfork" I flashed the negative but I did a skip-bleach to the prints for the final look, so the original negative is not representative of the final look. So when I did the final transfer for home video, I had to recreate the skip-bleach look of the prints. I could have done that a number of ways, but I ended up doing it in the digital color-correction. Though of course the movie was shot and art directed for a desaturated look -- all I had to do digitally for home video was mostly add some contrast and crush the blacks, lower the saturation a little.

 

Deakins did a partial skip-bleach to the negatives of "Jarhead" and "Jesse James" even though those movies went through a D.I. -- for one reason, that extra silvery grain is not something that a digital color-corrector can add.

[Alex Hall]

When you said that Deakins did a partial skip bleach were you refering to him using NEC on the negatives?

[F Bulgarelli]

Thank you guys.

 

We are doing a tape based DI at plaster city, basically the footage is transfered "flat" to HDCam SR 4:4:4 and color corrected on a 4K/2K Pablo and then back to tape.

 

I will eventually talk to them but I'm guessing that this system allows for more freedom and options than your traditional color timing with a Davinci. If anyone has any experience with this particular workflow I would be interested in getting your feedback. Here is a link to Plaster city's workflow info:

 

http://www.plastercitypost.com/rgb.php

 

 

Francisco