American Cinematographer - July 2007 - 78

Post Focus Pacific through the Internet via FTP. LaserPacific calibrates the cinematographer’s monitor to match the colorist’s. The name of the game for LaserPacific’s AIM is, obviously, calibration. “That has to be done routinely, otherwise these things could drift out of control,” Kennel notes. Because of this rigorous, internal scanner, telecine and display characterization and calibration, AIM is proprietary to LaserPacific and its parent, Kodak. However, it supports the ASC Color Decision List (CDL), so implementation across facilities could happen in the future. “CDL is the color communication mechanism that follows from the dailies telecine to the dailies playback in the field,” says Kennel of the ASC’s numerical annotation of nine color settings that carries through the workflow, much like an edit decision list (EDL). “With all the look-management and previsualization systems out there, the weak links are that most don’t support the CDL yet, so they lack a common communication language, and displays aren’t necessarily calibrated. Some are, but not all.” Dailies playback on set utilizes the AIM Dailies Player, which is built upon an industry-standard digital cinema platform — the Kodak Digital Cinema Server — with full color gamut and a very high bit rate to prevent compression artifacts. The Kodak server plays back encrypted JPEG 2000 files on hard drives (downloaded either from drives, or by direct data link if the location has the bandwidth) while a proprietary LUT adjusts the images in real time to mimic the projected-film look (based on the chosen print stock and print lab). Dailies are projected by a Panasonic PTAE1000U that is calibrated on site to match the AE1000U back at the ranch. Not only does the cinematographer receive and then view accurate dailies, he also is afforded printer-light control in the AIM Player. For example, At the front end of LaserPacific’s new AIM colormanagement workflow, telecine colorist Bruce Goodman grades dailies through a print stock look-up table using a calibrated Panasonic PT-AE1000U wide-gamut LCD projector. LaserPacific Aims for End-ToEnd Color Management by Douglas Bankston Color management in a hybrid filmdigital workflow is still in its infancy, meaning images frequently won’t match in appearance from one post step to the next and extra time (and money) is spent bringing those looks back in line. Factor in a shift toward digital dailies, a decidedly video affair that behaves differently than film, and surprises at the digital-intermediate (DI) and filmout stages can result. Hollywood post house LaserPacific has heeded cinematographers’ calls for accurate images by developing an end-toend color calibration system for digital postproduction, aptly titled AccurateImage, or AIM. The closed-loop system faithfully emulates a project’s film look throughout each step of postproduction, and any color decision or change made during the early stages of the project are carried through and accurately represented on digital displays. To achieve this, LaserPacific first tackles the digital-dailies bugaboo. “This is where we’ve put a lot of technology — calibrating the telecines so that they match scanners,” says Glenn Kennel, LaserPacific’s vice president and general manager of motion-picture feature film services. “That’s critically important, because we capture the whole range of the negative and lay it down to tape in a raw scan mode that preserves the flexibility for further color correction downstream.” The tape Kennel refers to is 10bit HDCam SR. “It’s like a digital proxy on SR tape of the original negative,” he explains further. “Yes, it is HD resolution, but it is at a very low compression ratio, full color sampling, full range. It has a very high-quality picture record.” Dailies telecine color grading is done through a print stock look-up table (LUT) using a calibrated Panasonic PTAE1000U projector, not a CRT monitor. LaserPacific characterizes, calibrates and builds LUTs specific to each Panasonic projector. What the dailies colorist references for grading are still-image proxies taken on set, primarily JPEGs (though other formats will work) that are treated by the cinematographer in a program such as Adobe Photoshop or Kodak’s Look Management System and sent to Laser- 78 July 2007 Photos courtesy of LaserPacific.

American Cinematographer - July 2007

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