Digital intermediate costs

[Bob Burman]

Having had not much experience at all with digital intermediate, how do the total costs of DI (2k or 4k) actually compare to those of traditional post? For a case study let's assume, say, something like a 35mm feature with no tricky color-corrections or effects or anything.

[David Mullen ASC]

To be fair, you'd have to compare it to finishing a 35mm out to both release prints and making all masters for home video deliverables (HDTV, PAL, NTSC.)

 

If you're only comparing it to conforming a 35mm neg and striking prints off of it, there is no comparison.

 

Creating home video deliverables (let's say, a week of color correcting in a Spirit / DaVinci suite, creating an HD-D5 master, and then NTSC and PAL downconverts) may cost you over $50,000.

 

Creating a timed IP from A-B rolls may cost $16,000 and an one-light IN from that, $10,000. (We're talking feature-lengths here, like 10,000').

 

So that's about $76,000 not including neg conform and answer printing. You can add another $15,000 if the movie is an optical printer conversion (let's say, Super-35 to anamorphic.) That's like $91,000.

 

D.I.'s usually are in the $100,000 to $200,000 at the high end places.

 

However, if you're not budgeted to create all possible deliverables, you'll obvious spend a lot less money with a regular post.

 

These figures are pretty rough, by the way.

 

If you shoot in 3-perf 35mm instead of 4-perf, you can apply some of the cost savings towards the D.I.

[John Pytlak RIP]

Here's Kodak Cinesite:

 

http://www.cinesite.com/?122

 

http://www.cinesite.com/?1221&0&3821

 

http://www.cinesite.com/?1221&0&996

 

http://www.cinesite.com/img/Cinesite/Holly...ng/di_chart.pdf

[Bob Burman]

These figures are pretty rough, by the way.

Yep, thanks David, John, these were just about the kind of answers I was after.

 

-Bob

[Marc Wielage]

In addition to what Mr. Mullen says elsewhere, I would add that in LA, the three main DI houses (Technique/Technicolor DI, Cinesite, and eFilm) typically cost around $250,000-$350,000 for an "A" level feature. Some recent titles, such as Pirates of the Carribbean or Lord of the Rings, cost considerably more because of last-minute editorial changes, vast number of effects, and other creative issues.

 

There are some cost savings with DI's. For one, the home video correction should take considerably less time and money, since with many facilities, you can take most of the color-timing decisions and reuse them for the video (with some adjustment for color space differences). Also, the studio winds up with a digital archive of the film, which should -- in theory -- last longer than the original negative. [Though I readily concede this is a controversial area, one that raises a lot of questions about long-term data formats and soon.]

 

It's possible to do digital intermediates fairly inexpensively for low-budget features. The first one I did, about four years ago, was for a small HD film called Tortilla Soup, and I believe that was well under $150,000. Just getting six 2000' reels output from the film recorders is half that cost, right there. Unless and until film recorders get much faster, and improve in quality, I don't see that changing soon.

 

--Marc Wielage

colorist

[Mitch Gross]

The first one I did, about four years ago, was for a small HD film called Tortilla Soup, and I believe that was well under $150,000. Just getting six 2000' reels output from the film recorders is half that cost, right there. Unless and until film recorders get much faster, and improve in quality, I don't see that changing soon.

Marc--

 

I thought "Tortilla Soup" was shot on PAL DigiBeta. BTW, Kinetta and a couple of other companies are supposedly coming out with lower-cost, high quality film recorders.

[Marc Wielage]

I thought "Tortilla Soup" was shot on PAL DigiBeta.  BTW, Kinetta and a couple of other companies are supposedly coming out with lower-cost, high quality film recorders.

No. Tortilla Soup was shot on what I call "pseudo-HD," which was Panasonic 480P. (As a chief engineer/friend of mine likes to say, "that's the great thing about High Def: you have 36 different standards to choose from.") It was lit by Xavier Grobet, who did a terrific job under tough conditions; he was a pleasure to work with, as was producer Lulu Zezza, who supervised all the post.

 

We took the 480P master tapes at Complete Post and up-converted it to 1080i for final editing, which wasn't my choice but it was the route the filmmakers wanted to go to. At the time we did that film (late 2000), 24P was very new and I think everybody was a little nervous about using it for the project. We color-timed the 1080i, then used CFI's LUT to convert it to film color-space, then had one of their lab timers do some final tweaks for the final film out. Of course, nowadays, something like this would've been shot on 24P, and I think it would've looked better, but that's the price of progress. For what it was, I think it looked surprisingly good.

 

I know there are a lot of lower-cost film recorders coming out in the near future, but I'm very skeptical they can beat the Arrilaser. I think it's like buying a new car or anything else: the warning alarms go off the moment a salesman says to me "this is just as good as the higher-priced Model X," since it rarely turns out to be true.

 

--Marc

[David Mullen ASC]

They used the Panasonic 480/60P DVC-PRO camera for "Tortilla Soup". It was an odd format that upconverted well to 1080/60i but otherwise died for lack of editorial support. But it did lead the way to the 720/60P Varicam.