American Cinematographer - September 2000 - 154

the tunnel chase

scene

in

Enemy of the

State, which was altered in 2K resolution
Inferno

by Mill Film in England as
proposed
process deviates from traditional visualeffects manipulation; by utilizing a Spirit
Datacine telecine equipped with a
DaVinci
color
corrector,
images
on an

a

visual effect. However, the

"scanned" at 2K
the

of

a

be colored within

in Gone in 60 Seconds," relates

McGuinness. "The difficult part

of the
digital color-timing process is the balanc¬
ing act between doing the color correc¬
tion and outputting the final film. There
seems to be a big line of confusion
between those two steps. Getting a
Spirit color correction out to a film print
involves a whole heap of steps, starting
with the collaboration between Stefan

in

me

determining how best to

create the look intended. There's kind of

tug of war between color correction vs.
output - knowing when not to crush
the blacks too much, or when to pull back
a

bit in another

area

Of course, visual-effects houses
have been performing CGI-type manipu¬
lation of

number of years,
generally arisen
out of a need to "fix" things or execute
costly effects sequences. "Digital color
correction is not just about having a 2K
imagery for

but those

cases

a
have

board," states Sonnenfeld. "There

are

plenty of other companies that can scan
a negative. This process is much more
about the collaboration between
the filmmakers

us

and

establishing a certain
comfort factor. The 2K Spirit has made
this process more accessible, affordable
and efficient - and certainly less timeconsuming. In the past, doing 2K scans
was extremely slow and expensive, [but]
this process is real-time. You see the
look you're going for immediately.
-

"What Dominic Sena and Paul

Cameron did
152

September 2000

on

Gone in 60 Seconds was

bring

so it can be output to film;
Nathan and I oversee the image quality

coloring

all the way

through the process."

"A

cinematographer
might use less filtration
shooting clean -
knowing he can achieve
the coloring and
diffusion during the
telecine process."

so

they usually wish they could do is
a side of the frame down a touch

and take

a

little bit of red out of a face

making another actor look pale,
now they haven't been able to.
This technology now gives them that
freedom. Knowing what can be done in a
telecine bay can affect the shoot as well;
a cinematographer might use less filtra¬
tion
shooting clean - knowing he
can achieve the coloring and diffusion
during the telecine process. That's why
but until

-

this has to involve
among

a

close collaboration

[the colorist, the output house

-

-

Stefan Sonnenfeld,

Company 3

of the

image only to
add it back at a later stage. Through trial
and error, we kept designing and refining
ways to ensure what we saw on the
monitors was what we were going to get
on the output film."
a

what

without

colorists do that every day on commer¬
cials. The difficult part is translating that

bay.
suggested using a 2K Spirit

between features,

very familiar with the telecine
environment and get to experiment with
all of these high-end tools. On features,

correction, then Nathan and I tweaked

Getting the

cinematographers shoot

they're

the material from there.

telecine

Datacine to color-correct the chase

and

commercials

perfect example of what this process is
for: they had 500 shots
photographed over 38 days [at locations]
all over the place and at different times
of the day, and they needed [the
sequence] to be consistent," he contin¬
ues. "So they spent a day doing color

shots to match wasn't difficult at all;

"I

scene

top feature

great

familiar and comfortable envi¬

more

rons

can

a

Sandston observes, "There is a
lot of fear within the film

community that
[digital color correction] is going to take
away from the photographic process, but
it doesn't. It is a tool to help the cine¬
matographer achieve even more. If you
look at the photography of Gone in 60
Seconds, the 90 percent of the film that
was traditionally timed is so beautiful
and saturated that there

was no reason

to do the rest of it

digitally. However, the
car chase did lend itself to the digital
process, and [the filmmakers] were open
to the new technology.
"I'm sure all of the cinematogra¬
phers we work with could make every
shot of a film look beautiful if you give
them the time," Sandston continues.

"However, they're under the same type
of

production restraints as everyone
else. Sometimes you have to shoot
when the light's not perfect. This tech¬
can give a cinematographer a
second chance to achieve what he

nology

wanted to do

on

the set."

Sonnenfeld notes, "A lot of the

and the clients]."
It should be noted that all of the

functioning controls of traditional lab
timing factor into the digital-intermedi¬
ate process. "We couldn't have done the
work

on

Gone in 60 Seconds without the

help from Technicolor," states Sandston.
"You can't just take a piece of negative
and make it look like anything you want
in the coloring. The film stock can only do
so much. We worked with [Technicolor
timer] Bob Kaiser, Stefan and Nathan [to
get the look we wanted]. As we scanned
stuff out, Bob would comment on what

going to happen to the image when
release printing, then we would
go back to address those issues.
"Also, the release prints in New
York and Los Angeles, about 300, were

was

it got to

all done

on

Kodak Vision Premier. With

most of the film

taking place at night,
highly saturated look Dorn
was going for, the Premier prints looked
great. So you definitely have to keep in
mind what is going to affect the negative
when you go to release printing."
"In utilizing the traditional print¬
ing process with a digital intermediate,"
adds Sonnenfeld, "you're almost going
from a perfectly timed element that
might just need one final, little tweak.
And that is always dependent on the
final film process and how it looks on the
screen. But it's still good to have [further
control] available. Sometimes, depend¬
ing on the amount of a tweak needed in
and with the
American Cinematographer - September 2000

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