American Cinematographer - September 2000 - 58

Laufer

still had

not

been ironed

out.

relaxed,

[at that point] we began sweating
bullets," concedes Laufer. In the end,
however, the filmmakers' faith was

well-placed.
supervisor
Dennis Berardi

(standing) and
digital film
supervisor
Drake Conrad

digitally
a shot
of actress
Jennifer Lopez.

retouch

Toybox's artists
digitized, colorcorrected,
effected and
laser-recorded
50 minutes of
The Cell.

When cinematographer Paul

ideas for the look of The Cell, he

counting on postproduction
technology to catch up with his
ambitious visual concepts. His ideas
centered around images that were
impossible to achieve photographi¬
cally - not because they demanded
complicated visual effects, but

was

because the colors and contrast levels
he wanted could not be

produced
either in-camera or through any
current laboratory processing tech¬
nique.
images than was afforded to me
pipeline,"
says Laufer, whose background in

the

surrealistic

sequences.

the

original
negative, the print and a digital
Betacam copy of his color correc¬
tions up to Toronto, where Toybox
senior colorist Gary Chuntz matched
sent

the look. "Stefan gave us his digital
Betacam color reference, and we
matched that

more

shots for The Cell, the majority of its
work was done strictly to affect the
look of certain sequences - what
Laufer and the film's visual-effects

supervisor Kevin Tod Haug refer to
as "look only" shots.
Laufer knew he'd be sacrificing
a

certain amount of resolution to the

lower resolution [than 3K or

at

TIPS

[Toybox Image Processing
System] came into play."

treated

using a Pogle color-corrector,
up-rezzed to 4K through TIPS.
Finally, it is recorded back to film
using the Arrilaser." (For more about
current digital-intermediate pro¬
cesses, see New Products, beginning
on
page 153.)
Adds Haug, "The Philips Spirit
then

4K], it's high enough that you can

DataCine has been around for

commercials and music videos had

cheat by'up-rezzing'

already exposed him to the wonders
of digital manipulation. The prob¬

increase the resolution

years - it's
cials - but

tal tricks."

transfers in HD and

lem

was

that he had

more

than 30

minutes' worth of images
to

he wanted
play with, and scanning that much

film at full 2K

or

4K resolution

was

The

it - that is, you
through digi¬
be

subjected to
the digital process included all of the
sequences set in the inner worlds of
scenes

the characters,

to

such

as

killer Carl

a

few

ubiquitous in
now

it

can

commer¬
do real-time

immediately lay

the

images off to an uncompressed
D6 digital-tape format so that the
transfer isn't tying up equipment for
hours or days. In addition, filmmak¬
have

all of the tools

expensive and too timeconsuming. What he needed was a
way to scan the footage in real-time
at high resolution, color-correct it,

Stargher's throne room and the den
where Catherine (Jennifer Lopez)
tries to seduce FBI agent Novak

ers

(Vince Vaughn). "The goal with all of

multi¬

effects division of Command Post &

instantly
[place viewers] in another world
without going too far, because [the
filmmakers] still wanted to have a
certain level of belief," explains

color correction - contrast, hue and
saturation - as well as use power

Transfer

Dennis Berardi,

tion house

visor for

both

too

alter the contrast, do

plane defocusing for

some

one scene,
then record it all back to film.
Enter

audio
56

for

Sonnenfeld then

Conrad, who handled the HD
transfer, explains, "The original
camera negative is transferred to an
uncompressed D6 tape format [in
HD]. The images are then color-

handled

sents a

over

work with him

to

than 100 visual-effects

of

in the conventional film

control

Company 3 in Santa Monica, the
filmmakers chose

HD," recalls Drake
Conrad, Toybox's digital-film super¬
visor. "From there, our proprietary

amount

the

more

of

footage to be
eventually grew
to 50 minutes. Scanning has tradi¬
tionally been done in the service of
visual effects, and while Toybox

The

scanned for the film

digital process, but he decided to take
the hit "in order to get a far more
interesting look. While HD repre¬

"I wanted

Sonnenfeld

Stefan

tion to establish the look they wanted

"We started this film very

began formulating his

colorist

shooting schedule ticked by and
postproduction began, however,
technical wrinkles in the HD equip¬

but

Laufer

already enjoyed a long-stand¬
relationship with founder/

ing

first in standard NTSC video resolu¬

ment

effects

and

Laufer

14-week

The Cell's

recorder. As

Toybox visual

Because director Tarsem

smooth solution,

offering its
proprietary tools and custom soft¬
ware in
conjunction with newly
developed high-definition (HD)
equipment such as the Arrilaser film
recorder and the D6 HD videotape
a

September 2000

and

Toybox, the visual-

Corporation, a postproduc¬
specializing in visual and
services. The facility promised

these sequences was to

visual-effects super¬

Toybox, which has offices in
Toronto, Vancouver and Los Angeles.

access to

[featured on] the color
That enabled

us

corrector.

play with the

to

windows and do all of the things you
can do in video, but technically not
on

film."
Berardi details

some

of the

in which Laufer's direction
during the Spirit transfer affected the

ways

film's

look:

"We

custom

color-
American Cinematographer - September 2000

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