Marc Wielage

I agree with both of the above comments about the daVinci 2K vs. the 8:8:8. I would add that the 8:8:8 is ancient technology at this point, and as far as I know, the software on that system hasn't been updated much over the past 7 or 7 years. The 2K has a lot of advantages in terms of processing power, multiple power windows, and other effects, and I would also give it the edge in terms of producing "cleaner" pictures. I also particularly like the 2K's built-in still-store system, which makes it much faster and easier to match complex shots. We routinely use the 2K on even standard-def jobs, so don't think of the daVinci 2K as being intended mainly for 2K projects. I think of it more as an HD color-corrector that internally processes material at 2K. --Marc W.

It can look great, provided the 16mm negative is shot well. My usual advice to DPs is to overexpose the negative about 1/3-1/2 a stop, to provide as thick a negative as possible, and avoid underexposure whenever possible. I think this is generally good advice for shooting for TV as well, provided you understand that the colorist can always add contrast and density when necessary. But brightening underexposed shots is often problematic at best. I'd advse that you avoid using mini-DV for post and instead use DVCam, because your timecode options are generally more flexible with the latter. I know of very few LA post houses that can handle telecine transfers going to mini-DV. DVCam is no problem. Transfer all the film in standard-def, using a best-light setting, and capture all the keykode, video timecode, and audio timecode information. Have the facility imbed the visible timecode and keykode numbers into the video (preferably in the black matte area outside the picture area) as a backup. Once all that's done, do your offline edit, and then have your editing system generate a "negative cut list," providing all the keykode numbers for the specific frames needed. (This is a standard feature of the newer Final Cut Pro and Avid systems, and there are workarounds for other editing systems.) The Aaton code will only facilitate your audio syncing in telecine and has no bearing on scanning or editing per se. At this point, have your post facility just do 2K scans the specific takes required, based on the keykode numbers. I generally tell people to give us at least 10-frame handles before and after each shot with 16mm, to be on the safe side. You can try to conform all of this yourself, but you'll need a lot of storage and expertise in order to do it. There are pros and cons to all scanners out there. I've had experience with Imagica scanners, Northlight scanners, and Cineon scanners, and I've scanned several miles of film myself on Spirit scanners (old Spirit and the newer Spirit 4K's). It's possible to get good results from all of them. I think the Spirit 4K is hard to beat for the best combination of speed, picture quality, and economy, particularly for S16mm. I would strongly advise that you avoid trying to do any color-correction yourself unless you've done lots of tests with the company doing your filmout recording. No two DI companies in LA use the exact same LUT, so the color-corrected files you create may not yield predictable results. Expect to do some tweaking at the facility before the filmout is created. Bear in mind you'll also have the chance to do some minor touch-ups at the lab if necessary for the final prints. Note that although I work for Technicolor, all of the above is strictly my opinion. Your miles may vary, etc. --Marc W.

I've always been told that the Rank ADS solid-state machines were problematic and didn't put out very good pictures. I never knew for certain, because as far as I know, nobody in LA bought one in the last 20 years. I have a friend who used to work for NASA in Cape Canaveral, and he used one on a weekly basis. He told me it spent more time being broken than it was working. If I were you, I'd be very careful buying a potentially maintenance-intensive machine like this. You might be better off just making a deal with a small (hungry) post house, and allow them to transfer your material at odd times of the day and night. As long as the material was handled by competent people, and the equipment is OK, it should be fine. I would think that, unless you have many miles of footage, it'll be a fraction of the cost of a complete telecine system. Don't forget that in addition to the telecine, you need scopes, good monitors, tape machines, distribution amps, audio gear, test equipment, spare parts... it goes on and on and on. I can't imagine setting up even a basic broadcast-quality system for under a couple of hundred thousand dollars. --Marc W.

The Bosch Quadra is a very, very old machine at this point. I'm guessing it's at least 10 years old, maybe earlier. Your best bet is to transfer the film from a good color-timed Interpositive, on a Grass Valley Spirit (the much-improved HD version of the Quadra). There are some who prefer the look of a Rank C-Reality, but I would lean more towards the Spirit myself. Each can yield good results in the hands of a competent colorist. The "Digitized" look you speak of may have to do with noise-reduction artifacts or a set-up problem within the machine. Jagged edges in diagonal lines are a problem due to Aliasing, which (in superficial terms) is a lack of available resolution to create a straight edge. We've found you get better results with a machine that runs internally in HD (like the Spirit) and then outputs NTSC or PAL. For some reason, the results seem to have fewer Aliasing artifacts than transfers done from a native NTSC machine. Note that for DVD release, we typically do a slight 25% squeeze so that the 2.35 image is rendered correctly on a 1.78 aspect-ratio monitor. This is what it means when you see "optimized for 16x9" on a DVD box. Technically, it's a slight compromise because the pixels are expanded out horizontally slightly, but in real-life, it looks fine. And at least it uses up a little more of the available resolution on a 4x3 transfer. I thought for sure there were more than two post houses in San Francisco that did telecine. I'll try to check around and find out. --Marc W.

Colorists have different personalities, and we're all different people. My gut feeling would be, avoid doing the job on D5, because the bandwidth isn't great enough to preserve all the information for a really top-notch DI. Ask the first facility if they have any other colorists available, and audition them. Bear in mind that, much of the time, colorists work under the thumb of the cinematographer (and/or any other creative filmmakers present in the session). What you see of their work may not necessarily represent what the colorist wanted to see. When in doubt, ask the colorist why the film looked a certain way. If you hated it, tell them; maybe there's a reason why it looked that way. If a client tells me, "I want this shot pea-green," far be it from me to argue with them. Colorists can make tactful suggestions up to a point, but the bottom line is, it's the DP's (and the director's) film, not the colorist's. If the filmmakers deliberately want the film to look a certain way, our job is to give that look to them. I've often said, "our job isn't to make the film look good -- it's to make the client happy." Ideally, you can find a way to do both, but the latter is far more important. At the same time, if the colorist's opinions are asked, we'll be glad to give them. And I will speak up if I think the filmmakers are about to "drive off the road" visually and get into an area that's going to cause technical problems. This is more of an issue in video, where you get some foreign distributors (particularly Canal Plus in France or Network 10 in Australia) who''ll raise warning flags with ultra-dark sequences. In those cases, I routinely ship a memo with the master videotape saying, "this scene is dark due to creative intent by the director!" Nine times out of ten, that shuts them up. I say, if you can see it on the monitor in the control room, it'll play at home for regular viewers on DVD. Much of the time, though the toughest chore is finding a look and then maintaining it seamlessly throughout a sequence. But the "look" isn't the colorist's -- it's the filmmakers. --Marc W. colorist

I think as long as there are data archives being made of each film, you won't have a problem. There will always be ways to convert old files into new file formats, without loss. The DI facilities refer to this as "data migration" -- moving features from one format to another -- and it's something you should ask about when doing any project. As one example, just the other day I had to ressurrect a 1989 Pagemaker file, and bring it into a 2004 version of inDesign. Oh, it took me about 20 minutes, but eventually I was able to get it all back, and all the artwork, photographs, and so on were exactly where they should be. Absolutely no loss. Same with getting back old Microsoft Word files from the mid-1980s. No problem. Also, as long as the studio archives 35mm IP's and Negatives of the material, you can always work with that. Given good storage conditions, I think a decent IP should last at least 50 years, probably a lot longer. I've personally transferred 50 year-old IPs of some titles, and they actually held up pretty well, considering the circumstances. I would worry far more about video formats. Look at NBC's use of the MII component video format, for almost a decade, in the 1980s. There are thousands of hours of programming archived on that format, and getting MII tapes to play back today is a real problem, since nobody makes the machines anymore. I suspect it will be very, very difficult to play back a D5 or HDCam videotape in 50 years, simply because I don't think the machines will be available -- and that's assuming the cassettes survive OK. Note that if you do shoot 1080 24p, there's no harm in asking the facility to create a data archive of those files. I believe the data tapes only cost about $75 each, and they'll hold up to one reel of film. I think archiving an entire feature as data could cost as little as $500. Again, you'd have to make the facility responsible for migrating the data to new formats as time goes on, but the data should survive for the forseeable future -- potentially, longer than 35mm film. --Marc W.

That's essentially correct. Kodak's Telecine Calibration System does a surprisingly good job at showing you essentially what's on the negative -- based on Kodak's own color science. The box will automatically detect what stock is being used, and adjust itself automatically. (The operator can also intervene, in case the box is malfunctioning or in case there's a problem with the Keykode.) The only problem I can see with the TCS is, you're at the mercy of the accuracy of the lab in developing the negative correctly. And woe be to you if you deviate from normal exposure and density. As long as the negative is OK, what you get out of the TCS box is pretty close. (Note also that I believe a good, experienced colorist can duplicate the effect of the TCS box, given enough time and talent. We typically will come up with a specific set-up for the telecine equipment for each project, and use that same machine and set-up for the duration of the shoot, assuming the same emulsion type. There might be a "day exposure" and a "night exposure" setting, with some variations, plus matching A&B cameras, but that's all.) At the same time, you then run into the problem of, "do you want to actually see what's actually on the negative, or do you want to see a pleasing picture that will show the director and editor how the image will actually look on a print (or on TV)?" In my experience, the two things are not always the same. I consider it a major job of the telecine colorist to help make the cinematographer look good. If I ever see a problem in dailies, I'm on the phone to the DP or the gaffer in 30 seconds warning them that I see a problem. By the same token, as long as the DP sends me notes (or indicates notes on camera reportsor on slates) that he or she wants a specific look, we'll bend over backwards to make it look that way, and retain everything that's shot on the set. It does help us when the crew shoots grey scale charts and so on at the start of each new lighting set up, and to pull any filters so as to at least give the colorist (and lab technician) an idea as to what "normal" exposure is. Kodak's charts are as good as any; I personally don't like color charts, but if a job is going to go through conventional lab color-timing, it makes sense to have those at the head of every shot, for the lab timer. --Marc W. colorist

In addition to the comments from others, there are a lot of problems with your idea that I don't think you take into consideration: 1) keeping the film clean as it gets scan; just getting an ultrasonic cleaner is more trouble than you can imagine. 2) color space, LUT specifications, and a 1-light setting that retains the full dynamic range of the film. Some of these are jealously guarded by companies in the scanning business. 3) the need for a large, fast drive array capable of dealing with 13 megs a frame (for a 2K file), which is about 400 gigs per 20-minute reel of negative. You also have to be able to backup these files, do fixes (when necessary), and delivery the files in different file formats to different companies. 4) the ability to digitally conform the negative to match an EDL. Scanning negative can be a nightmare of complexity, because there's so many obstacles to hurdle. If it were easy, everybody would do it, and it'd be fast and cheap (which it isn't -- yet). I suspect by the time negative scanning becomes dirt-cheap, half of all features will be shot on a digital format. --Marc W.

That's not true at all. You can absolutely do a 16mm scan at 2K on Northlight scanners. This is an option that's only come out recently, but it does work -- they were demonstrating it at NAB a few weeks ago. Also, I've output Super 16mm from Spirits at 2K res, and the image is acceptable. It's certainly greater than HD resolution -- bearing in mind that there are limitations in color bandwidth and image stability with the Spirit. --Marc W.

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

Depends on the Rank and the operator, but in general, I would say YES, the Spirit will deliver a better picture than an average Rank like an Ursa or (god forbid) a Mark IIIC from the late 1980s. :blink: I think the Spirits are more inherently stable, have far less gate weave, plus they tend to show far less grain in underexposed scenes, assuming identical material. A lot depends on the color-correction system and the colorist using it; I'd recommend a daVinci 2K (preferably a 2K+), and request that you have a still-store available in the room with which to use for matching scenes. Some facilities offer the newer Rank C-Reality, which can also produce beautiful pictures from 35mm; I'd say the C-Reality and Spirit are a "Mercedes/BMW" comparison, each having pros and cons, neither beating the other in every way. You mention you're going to DigiBeta. I would recommend instead that you transfer to HD 24P (like to D5), since that way, your film is available for distribution in high-def. Later, you can use this tape to generate DigiBeta tapes for both North America and the rest of the world -- NTSC and PAL, respectively -- with no compromises in quality. Note that you will need to do multiple aspect ratio transfers. I would recommend you at least do one in 2.35 letterbox, and one in 1.33 (aka 4x3) pan/scan, and possibly a third version in 1.78 (aka 16x9), which more and more studios are requesting. That way, you have every possible base covered. Of course, you'll need to supervise and approve the recomposition as needed, but better you do it than an unknown technician. All of this will cost somewhat more money, depending on the facility. Deals can be had, particularly if you're not picky on the time of day the job takes place. If you approach a facility at a time when they're not terribly busy, they might cut the costs considerably. Shop around and see how the rates at different facilities stack up. --MFW

Yeah, I've seen this problem often, particularly in shots that didn't have enough fill light for video, or in cases of underexposure. There's ways we can minimize the grain and eliminate the blue haze that typically comes up there, but a lot depends on the quality of the transfer equipment and the skill of the colorist. I've color-timed film on nearly every device that exists, for more than 25 years, and I think that you'd be hard-pressed to beat the Spirit, particularly for 16mm (or Super 16). The degree of grain is reduced quite a bit on this device, particularly when the film is well-exposed. If you're on an older Rank (like a Mark III or an Ursa), they're going to be noisier and the film won't be as steady -- as a general rule. The newer C-Reality's are pretty good, but I would still give the edge to the Spirit for 16. My advice would be to ask for another transfer (with you present at the session), and ask the colorist to try some different set-ups to see if that improves the exposure for video. At worst, you can ask for some grain-reduction, which is typically available in a real-time box (like the DVNR or Scream) or as a rendered process (like DRS). All grain-reduction processes can result in artifacts and visual flaws, so they have to be used very carefully to minimize the drawbacks. I find a little goes a long way. At worst, you might find that you need only retransfer the really grainy shots on different equipment in order to improve the look. Also, be sure you watch this footage on carefully-adjusted, broadcast-quality monitors. If your DV is being played back on a regular consumer set, what you see may not quite be what you've really got. --MFW

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

That's a huge topic! Without inflating the role of the colorist too much, it's almost like saying, "I need some basic tips on lighting and shooting film to get the best results." :rolleyes: But I can refer you to some good books on the subject: Film Into Video: A Guide to Merging the Technologies by Stuart Blake Jones, Richard H. Kallenberger, and George D. Cvjetnicanin Published by Focal Press (ISBN #0240804112) Color Correction for Digital Video: Using Desktop Tools to Perfect Your Image by Steve Hullfish, Jaime Fowler, & Steve Hullish Published by CMP Books (ISBN #1578202019) Video Color Correction for Non-Linear Editors: A Step-by-Step Guide by Stuart Blake Jones Published by Focal Press (ISBN #0240805151) Some of these are a little dry, plus they're all a little outdated (because of the quickly-changing nature of the video post business). But there's still some good overall information here and there in them. Probably a better ploy would be to ask a fellow cinematographer who has experience in supervising telecine sessions to let you come along and observe what goes on. I don't think it takes long to pick up on the basics: how far exposure can be pushed in video, how to translate video terms into photographic terms, what compromises you will encounter in video (vs. film printing), and so on. This can quickly show you when a good colorist can help photographic problems, when they can't, and what the limits are in terms of correction range. (A colorist friend of mine's joke is, "we can always make it different, but not necessarily better.") There are also many differences in color-corrector technology out there, ranging from units made by daVinci, Pandora, Digital Vision, and many others, as well as workstation-based systems from discreet, Filmlight, and Quantel. Each of these has strengths and weaknesses, but all are capable of making good pictures (or bad ones, depending on who's running them). Ask the colorist at the session to give you a demo as to what they can do in terms of color saturation, density, white adjustment, black adjustment, unusual looks (like bleach-bypass, vignetting, defocus, etc.). Also note how the image can be changed in terms of framing, doing digital blow-ups or repositions if necessary. And pay close atttention to what happens with black detail and white detail in over- and under-exposed situations. And don't worry about the technology. I generally tell my clients to ignore the scopes, knobs and dials; 90% of what we're concerned about is what we see with our eyes on the monitor. Like a race car driver, the scopes just tell us when we're about to drive off the road -- or in the case of video, when we're about to get into distortion or other problems that may not look good on broadcast TV or DVD. Finally, before you begin a major project, ask the facility if they'd be willing to give you a short session for tests -- an hour or less just to try out different looks, based on a test exposure roll you've shot beforehand. That way, when the project begins, you'll have a good idea in advance what will work and what won't. I usually tell DP's, when in doubt, over-expose at least 1/3 of a stop to give us as thick a negative as possible. Underexposure can be a problem, unless that's a look that you specifically want. Film stock, too, is a major factor in the look of the finished product; I really like the new Vision2 stocks, and have been impressed with how well they hold up for both video and DI projects. --Marc Wielage colorist

Well... there sort of is. Toshiba's D6 format, though not widely used, is uncompressed, though I'm not sure whether the color is sub-sampled (like 4:2:2) or not. But the bottom line is that real 2K output is widely available at fairly affordable prices now. I know of a DI feature done recently in LA for around $150,000, which is almost half what it used to cost in 2K. The key lies in making very few editorial changes, going into the color-correction session with a clear intent of what you want to get out of it, and getting the work done quickly. It can be done -- albeit with some compromises -- but I think it's a reasonable workflow, even for a low-budget feature. --Marc Wielage colorist