sundance 2006 - Zoael

Comic Relief
The DI Pie In The Sky
WHEN HE FINISHED WRITING
the purchase order for
Digital Intermediate services,
he glanced at the date he had just
scrawled—April 1, 2005. Typical, he
thought, this whole thing feels like a
bad joke. He could only hope that his
post production partner in all of this,
DTS Digital, had a sense of humor, and
more importantly could pull off the
miracle they had both conceived.
Aurélien Bonzon, producer for
AlphaKey Productions, SA and producer
of the independent feature film
9-A had a big problem. In fact it was a
huge problem, and it was growing at an
alarming rate.
Late in the summer of 2004, while
viewing rushes, his team realized they
were in trouble. 9-A is a noir drama set
in New York City, directed by Reza
Rezai, and shot on 35mm B&W film.
While the postproduction was planned
to be completed in Europe, the negative
processing was done locally in
New York City. The stock was fine, the
camera operated flawlessly, but the
prints and processed negative came
back horribly grainy, dirty, loaded with
flicker, and covered with waterspots.
There was some sort of chemical processing
control problem.
What could he do? They couldn’t
reshoot. Talent, schedules, finances,
nothing added up. Fortunately, someone
suggested that he contact DTS
Digital Images.
DTS Digital Images (formerly Lowry
Digital Images) is one of the top film
restoration houses in the world and
they achieved that reputation by solving
the very toughest image problems.
You didn’t call them with a simple
request for a telecine transfer and color
correction. You called them when your
images had problems, tough image
problems. That’s what he had now, and
maybe, just maybe they could help.
THE PROBLEM SOLVER
Founded by television and motion
picture veteran and imaging expert
John Lowry and acquired by DTS, Inc.
in 2005, DTS Digital Images uses custom
image processing algorithms that
they develop in-house and apply with
600 Apple G5 dual processor computers.
They specialize in eliminating the
bad things that happen to film and
video through age, physical abuse, and
even problems in original capture.
More fortunate yet, the problems that
the people at DTS Digital Images had
solved on other projects, he learned,
included high grain levels, flicker, dirt,
and damage. If they were good enough
to be trusted with the restorations of
the Star Wars trilogy, the Indiana
Jones trilogy, Bambi, Cinderella,
Casablanca, Singin’ in the Rain,
Sunset Boulevard, and nearly 100
other classic films, they were probably
good enough for 9-A.
Three weeks later, by the end of
August, DTS Digital Images had completed
a series of tests to confirm that
those ridiculous grain levels, the horrible
flicker, and the dirt and waterspots could
be removed. This custom image processing
stuff was amazing. A plan was quickly
put in place to process the entire feature
film. This would be done after editing
was complete, but before final digital
assembly at a digital intermediate house
in Europe. The ship was back on course
and all was right with the world. That is,
until the other shoe dropped.
WHAT!?!
It was raining on the day that
Aurélien received the fateful call from
his European digital intermediate
house. They were behind schedule and
terribly overbooked they said. They
could not complete his DI, not on the
schedule they had promised and not
on the schedule he needed.
80
9-A was slated for its world premier
at the Cannes Film Festival in the
beginning of May and he had five
weeks to find someone else and complete
everything. He had to digitize his
film, have it image processed at DTS
Digital Images, have the digital opticals
created, conform the movie, color correct
it, output it to a digital negative,
finish sound, and print it. All in five
weeks. The insanity of it all was that he
knew it normally took six to eight
weeks just to do a simple digital intermediate.
There was really only one possibility.
There was no way to coordinate
between multiple companies and multiple
locations anymore. He had to
convince his contacts at DTS Digital
Images to do the digital intermediate
work too. And, busy as they were, he
had to convince them to do it in record
time. Maybe, just maybe, since DTS
Digital Images was a data centric facility
and had so many imaging tricks up
their sleeve, they could pull this off.
So, here he was, after a few days of
intense negotiations, writing the purchase
order on April Fool’s Day. He
had restacked the cards for one more
shuffle, but he just hoped that the joke
wasn’t on him.
Twenty five days later on board his
flight to France with two prints under
his arm, what he felt was relief. It hadn’t
been a cruel joke after all. Right now
though those 25 days were just a blur.
In fact, repairing each of 120,000
frames of damaged film and then
pulling off a full digital intermediate
this quickly had surely set a record.
His assistant editor, Annick Raoul
(she was assistant to editor Sébastien
Prangère) had spent a week directing
the conform and digital optical work
with DTS Digital’s Robin Melhuish on a
DVS Clipster. He himself, and director
Reza Rezai had tag teamed to super-
You didn’t call them with a
simple request for a telecine
transfer and color correction.
You called them when your
images had problems, tough
image problems. That’s what he
had now, and maybe, just maybe
they could help.
vise the marathon color correction sessions
with DTS Digital’s colorist Marian
Grau using Speedgrade DI, the software-based
color correction system
from Iridas. On a daily basis the entire
team had scrutinized and tweaked the
output from DTS’s image processing
pipeline with Stephanie Middler the
image processing specialist on the DTS
team. Each day had generally ended
with screenings of prints from the digital
negatives output the previous day
on DTS’s ARRI laser recorder. The
project had run like clockwork, even if
it had run around the clock.
While his mind drifted to the impending
premiere screening of 9-A, Aurélien
couldn’t help but wonder when another
project of his would take him back to
Burbank, and the image magicians at
DTS Digital Images. No one really hopes
for imaging problems, but how often do
you get to blaze new trails and set new
records in this business.
To learn more about the image
repair and digital intermediate
services from DTS Digital Images,
call them at (818) 557-7333 or write
them at digitalimages@dts.com. To
find out more about 9-A and other
films from AlphaKey Productions,
call (323) 804-4213 or write them at
contact@alphakeyprod.com.