Post Magazine

March 2016

Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/652458

Contents of this Issue

Navigation

Page 25 of 51

www.postmagazine.com 24 POST MARCH 2016 ven though the term DI (Digital Intermediate) harkens back to a time when film capture was the norm for feature films and even episodic television, it remains in use in a now largely digital age. "It's a bit of a throwback, but everyone still uses the term," says Reid Burns, president of post production services at Hollywood- based Cognition and a color timing veteran of more than 100 films. Cognition senior colorist Michael Eaves, a colorist himself for the past 23 years, agrees, "DI points back to what we've always done, whether for film or digital capture. It's still the process in between capture and delivery. It's where digital color grading, VFX, titles and opticals happen." COGNITION Relatively new on the scene under the Cognition banner (www. cognition.la), the post boutique offers a fresh, artistic and collabo- rative approach for features and episodic television, according to Burns. It has completely renovated its facility space to offer digital dailies, editorial, a small greenscreen stage, VFX, AR & VR, and photogrammetry. Color grading is performed in a 4K theater with Barco projection and 5.1 and 7.1 surround, and in a color suite with both projection and Dolby monitoring. Cognition finds it advantageous to "be involved with clients on a technical and artistic level from the get go," Burns says. "We like to meet with the producers, director, DP and editorial prior to prin- cipal photography to discuss the different formats and cameras, the looks and color, the VFX. We want to make sure everyone is on the same page early on. That makes it much easier during the post workflow for both color and VFX." Cognition is in the forefront of establishing the ACES workflow, 'DI' HAS EVOLVED FROM ITS FILM ROOTS TO DEFINE THE LATEST IN DIGITAL COLOR GRADING AND FINISHING DI: E A LEGACY NAME FOR A CUTTING-EDGE PROCESS BY CHRISTINE BUNISH Cognition's (L-R) Eaves and Burns are at the forefront of establishing the ACES workflow and expect wide implementation. the Academy Color Encoding System created by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in collaboration with leading industry technologists. It is designed to control today's complex world of multiple file formats, image encoding, metadata trans- fer, color reproduction and image interchanges. "We feel the ACES workflow is going to be widely implement- ed," says Eaves, who was involved with members of the ASC technical committee in some early testing. "ACES takes a lot of translation out of the process. It enables me to deliver to any col- or space — including future color spaces like Rec. 2020, to any format, to any deliverable with one final ACES master." Cognition uses SGO's Mistika platform for color and conform. "It's very robust with an extended dynamic range and fantastic stereo tools," says Burns. Mistika is already outfitted with the ACES 1.0 spec making the ACES workflow transparent to clients. Cognition's first project to follow the ACES workflow is the indie crime thriller with the working title, "Marauders." It stars Bruce Willis and Christopher Meloni, and was shot on Red cameras. "We have done extensive testing with a wide variety of images on this film to make sure everything was perfect in our pipeline, and we're seeing great results," says Burns.

Articles in this issue

Links on this page

Archives of this issue

view archives of Post Magazine - March 2016