1 The Director of Photography – an overview

Digital intermediates 97
With the DI route things are different, for as we have seen the copying
process here is loss free, so it is perfectly reasonable to suppose
that starting with a 2k scan, and manipulating it at this resolution, it is
still easily possible to show the final scan out to film on the cinema
screen with 1.2k resolution; thus, the audience should not be able to
tell any difference in quality between photographic intermediates and
digital intermediates.
If, at the end of the DI process, we were to show the stored digital
images directly onto the cinema screen via a high-quality digital projector,
it is now possible to show all of the 2k image on the screen,
arguably producing a higher quality image than a film print is capable of.
The 16 mm DI route
Blowing up a 16 mm negative to a 35 mm print never looks as good as
a 35 mm negative. Using the DI option it is possible to scan the 16 mm
master at 2k, or even 4k resolution, though the latter will be appreciably
more expensive. If you do that and write out the DI to a print, the
results can be quite remarkable. This is because a 4k scan of a 16 mm
master will result in at least the required 1.2k resolution on the cinema
screen.
Deliverables
A considerable advantage of working with a DI is the multitude of
versions that can be taken from the DI master. You can create simultaneously,
or at any later date, a film copy, a digital data file that may,
for instance, be delivered on a server to a cinema, a standard definition
tape in any standard for transmission on television, an HD video copy,
a DVD, have the ability to access the movie on the web and many
more formats that exist now or may come into being in the future.
Remember, the DI master will produce a picture for any screen and,
as we have seen, it will more than satisfy the acutance of the human
eye – quite an argument for a DI master being a reliable way to futureproof
the movie.