Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/5315
28 Post • December 2009 www.postmagazine.com tions for the client. That can be a downside, but since it also satisfies creative needs you can't really call it a 'weakness.'" OPPORTUNITIES: "In the last two years there's been a wholesale transformation in film finishing: DI is now the norm for studio and independent features. "DI has given new life to shooting 3-perf and S16mm for money-saving purposes. The Arri scan- ner and Kodak's Vision 2 and 3 family of film stocks for S16mm allow filmmakers to get beautiful-quality end products that would have been impossible to achieve with an optical blow-up process. And DI finishing on a system like the iQ is ideal for mixed- media projects; it's so easy to integrate film and dig- ital formats with different resolutions, frame rates and color spaces.That used to be a hugely complex and costly process on film." THREATS: "Conventional lab finishing has seen the threat from the DI process: DI has completely supplanted conventional film finishing and eroded the knowledge base for film handling.That doesn't have as much im- pact on new films, but older films in the archives that require remas- tering will be in serious jeopardy if there's no one around who knows how to treat film. "Economics are always a threat to DI where your standard is per- fection and extensive labor is required. That can be hard to accom- plish especially with independent film budgets. But with judicious planning and creative use of post financing, filmmakers can put some of the finishing stages on the back burner until their distribution deals are in place. "A number of lower-powered finishing tools are touting them- selves as DI solutions and more facilities are saying they're getting into DI. But to properly evaluate editorial and color grading you re- ally need a large-screen environment. In the New York City market- place only a handful of facilities have the real estate appropriate to running true DI facilities with the capability of providing accurate previsualization of the finished large-screen project." OUTLOOK 2010: "In DI everything starts with the scan: It has to be the best it can possibly be. I'm enamored of Arriscan technology and don't see anything supplanting it for better image quality in the shor t term. Creative tools for image manipulation are always being developed but they are also extraordinarily strong at this point. So I don't foresee any major technological shifts. "It will be interesting to see how many indie films will go into production next year. Those already in the workflow before the downturn have funds in place to finish, but production financing has become much more difficult for new films. Although it remains to be seen in the spring how many of them will start shooting, our sched- ule for finishing for the first half of 2010 looks very strong." JAN YARBROUGH Senior Colorist Warner Bros. Motion Picture Imaging (MPI) Burbank (www.warnerbros.com) Warner Bros. Motion Picture Imaging has devel- oped a proprietar y process to digitally restore classics from the vast Warner Bros. Studios film and television library, as well as those of third- party clients, including such titles as The Godfather, Gone With The Wind,The Wizard of Oz, North By Northwest and The Rocky Hor- ror Picture Show. STRENGTHS: "The strength of DI is the immense capabilities of the tools available that allow us to manipulate so many things and use them to great advantage on images in new films, TV series and OUTLOOK D i g i t a l I n t e r m e d i a t e s The Hangover: MPI provided the DI, d-cinema data and HD Blu-ray masters. continued on page 46