What is the Digital Intermediate process?
 In
classic film production, the camera negative is edited together
into finished reels that are taken to a film lab for "color
timing". Each cut is given a different color correction
to even out the inevitable differences in exposure and color
that would
otherwise make the movie "pop" annoyingly from cut
to cut. Recent technological advances have made it possible to
do the
color timing of the entire feature film on a computer system.
First, each reel of the feature film is scanned and the digitized
frames are written to a huge array of disk drives. A digital color
correcting system is then used to color correct each shot and the
color corrected version of each reel is rendered back to the disk
array. From there the color corrected reel is sent to a digital
film recorder to be shot back to film. This piece of film made
from
the color corrected digitized frames is the Digital Intermediate.
The current state of the technology makes the DI process a little
slower and a lot more expensive than classical lab color timing.
However, its overwhelming advantage is creative control -
the movie just looks a lot better when done as a DI. Digital color
correctors have an almost magical ability to selectively correct
virtually anything in the shot - make the sky bluer, the
flesh tones warmer, bring out the detail in the shadows, or just
about
anything else you can imagine. Over time the certain advances in
technology will lower the cost of the DI process to the point that
it will eventually become the only way to color time a movie.
Technical Director for Digital Intermediate
 The Digital Intermediate (DI) process is an exciting and interesting
field to work in precisely because it is an emerging and rapidly
evolving technology. There is an urgency due to critical production
deadlines to meet the release dates of important feature films
plus
the excitement of working on the films of such great talents as
Steven Soderbergh ("Traffic"), Taylor Hackman ("Ray"),
Spike Lee ("She Hate Me"), and Kevin Costner ("Open
Range").
 As
the Technical Director for the DI process at Kodak's
Cinesite (now Laser Pacific), Steve was responsible for addressing
a very
wide range of technical issues ranging from color science questions
to production problems to film format issues. On any given day
these
are the types of issues that must be dealt with:
-
The
client's visual effects house needs help with the linear
to log conversion parameters to convert their work from a linear
file
format such as tiff to the log format of cineon or dpx.
-
Analyze
a digital imaging problem from any department (scanning, recording,
compositing, paint), determine the cause, work out a solution,
and
sometimes execute the solution.
-
Write
Unix programs to manage the status of 60 Terabytes of digitized
film data for multiple concurrent feature films containing
over 6,000 shots and well over half a million scanned frames.
-
Evaluate
new software that the company is considering purchasing.
-
Work
with in-house engineering staff to define new software that
is needed,
then test and evaluate that software as it is being developed
and deployed.
-
Answer
whatever questions and solve whatever problem the producer might
have from how to crop a super 35 2.40 common top window and
resize it to Cscope or how to dust-bust 4k scans using a 2k paint
system.
-
Know
all film formats and create camera guides for the colorist and
outside vfx houses for even arcane formats such as 3 perf,
super 35 common
top, and super 16.
-
Test
and evaluate new Kodak film stocks as to their performance for
bluescreen and greenscreen digital effects.
Click here to see all credits
for Digital Intermediate Technical Director.
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