Enduring Love

[Max Jacoby]

Kudos to Framestore CFC for their work on the digital intermediate on 'Enduring Love'. In general I find British DIs to be much better than American ones (less tendency to use DNR for instance) and this was the best example yet. Faces lit with warm light are usually a dead giveaway since they tend to look very plasticy but in 'Enduring Love' there were some candlelight scenes where the faces looked very natural.

 

I must say that it is getting harder and harder to spot whether a film used a DI or not if they go for a natural look without obvious color-correction (unlike 'Un long Dimanche de Fiançailles' for instance). I think now is about the time where I would like to see some side-by-side tests without color-correction (one-light-printed) to find out how far the 2 differ in look from each other .

[David Mullen ASC]

On the other hand, why go through the DI process just to make it look like you could in a regular neg-pos process? If I ever get to do a DI, I'd probably use it to stylize the image in ways not possible with normal printing, or else why spend THAT much money?

[Max Jacoby]

Good question. :D

 

The film was Super35 (and a tad grainy in places) so they might have shot in 3 Perf. There were some exterior scenes (including the begining with the balloon, as everyone who has read the book will know), so they might have felt that doing a DI would allow them to shoot faster since correcting the image later is less time-consuming than doing it on the set.

 

Emanuel Lubezki points out in the AC article on 'Lemony Snicket' that knowing that he will do a DI allows him to get the quality of the light right, but not necessarily the intensity (of a wall or background window for instance). Instea dof spending time during shooting to flag things down, he will just do it during the grading.

[David Mullen ASC]

Yes -- but it looks like he will also be using the DI to desaturate the image, something easy to do with a DI. He's not going for a normal look.

[Jonathan Spear]

Hey,

 

Forgive the ignorance, :rolleyes: , but what is D.I. and how does it effect the finished product?

 

(I'm learning.. :) )

 

Thanks,

 

-TSM

[David Mullen ASC]

DI = Digital Intermediate. Shoot on film, scan to digital, do digital post, record back to film for making prints.

 

Allows you to use digital color-correction tools like people who transfer film to video have been using for years (like with a DaVinci) but not possible with traditional RGB film printing. It becomes easier to manipulate color and contrast, either for a stylized look (ala "O Brother Where Art Thou?") or just to match shots better. Also produces a finer-grained blow-up for Super-16-to-35mm or Super-35-to-anamorphic than using dupes in an optical printer.

 

Problems are also manifold: resolution of the digital work has to be high enough to not visibly compromise the film image, digital artifacts have to be avoided (noise, compression, edge-enhancement, quantization errors, etc.) Costs are higher.