American Cinematographer - December 2006 - 126

Committee and
have been

our

industry partners

"Another initiative is in the digitaldisplay area. We're beyond digital projec¬
tors. Don Eklund, an executive vice presi¬
dent of advanced technologies at Sony
Pictures, has joined our group, and his
main concern is what happens to the
integrity of images when they go into the
consumer

world of DVDs, but more

importantly Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. We
need to interact with display manufactur¬
ers to encourage them to make sure that
the calibration settings of their devices
conform to something closer to the digi¬
tal-cinema specs as best they can within
the color-gamut limitations of those
display devices. Can they accommodate
the possibility of XYZ color space? Does it
always have to be RGB? There may still
be time to still make a difference, partic¬
ularly with Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. For
instance, there could be certain metadata
information

the

Blu-Ray or HD-DVD
discs that can trigger calibration settings
on monitors, assuming that the end-user
on

doesn't override them. It could be meta¬
data that creates calibration

settings for
of LCD or plasma or DLP
display device. Garrett Smith [of Para¬
mount Pictures], co-chair of our Digital
Archiving Subcommittee [with Grover
Crisp of Sony Pictures], has been talking
about this for a long time because he
deals with digital mastering. I see some
convergences and synergies between
archiving and what happens with the HDDVD and Blu-Ray master. What are we
going to do in regards to future access to
a

status. The

Technology Committee is a
unique in the industry;
there is nothing out there quite like it.
That's one reason why people give the
forum that is

pursuing.

certain type

much of their time and

committee

so

attention.

It's

SMPTE

or

not

competing with

the Sci-Tech Council; we're

all

complementary. The role of the Tech¬
nology Committee is to try to maintain a
cohesive understanding of how the digi¬
tal and hybrid film-digital processes
integrate, with a special emphasis on
how they affect the role of the cine¬
matographer and the cinematographer's
filmmaking colleagues.
Dl Subcommittee

The focus of the Dl Subcommit¬
tee, co-chaired

by Joshua Pines of
Digital Intermediates and
Lou Levinson of Post Logic, has been
to implement the ASC's Color Decision
List (CDL), which will allow cinematog¬
raphers to assign looks to images that
will carry through the editing and other
post phases. Working with multiple
color-corrector vendors and post facili¬
ties, the subcommittee has successfully
tested the CDL methodology and contin¬
ues to work on making it as inter¬
changeable as possible.
Technicolor

Pines: "We

are

in absolute

agreement over what underlies the ASC
CDL

what the CDL

has been

algorithms are,
manip¬
ulate images - and that is the first
step. We had several different vendors
and facilities produce the same colorcorrection manipulations on test
images, based on the CDL's nine
numbers. Not every vendor has done
this, but the ones that jumped in and
gave it a shot succeeded with flying

to

colors. Based

those?
"The

Metadata Subcommittee

reinvigorated. Metadata is key
understanding how to make the workflow more integrated and efficient, and
we're working very closely with the
Academy Sci-Tech Council in that
respect. One of their big projects is file
format.
"We've been part
the

and parcel to

process, as groups and
manufacturers include us to see how

development

their

developments best serve the cine¬
matographer and the filmmaking process.
I'm very proud that we've earned that

-

what the numbers are, how they

on

recent

discussions,

we

that didn't join in
if there really is a
standard. No one has said they wouldn't
adopt it. The question is more about file
format. If you're shooting film and
making a print, you can call your lights
'Make me a print at 34-27-22' -
and you write those numbers down on
your camera report. We're looking for
the equivalent of that. Do we write
down nine numbers on a camera report?
understand the

are

-

waiting to

ones

see

That's prone to error. Nine numbers are
more than three. Some of them are float¬

ing point numbers; some of them have
signs. It's hard to write -23.7 and
ensure that number gets entered at the
minus

other end.

"This is the next step: once we
have the color correction defined, how do
attach it to a shot? If you attach it to
shot, how do you talk about it so you

we
a

can reuse

that correction

shot? There have been

a

on a

different

few suggestions

floated about file formats. The most

popular is XML. The second-most popu¬
lar is somehow modifying a standard EDL
to add a comment field. What's being
debated right now is transport mecha¬
nisms; we might end up with multiple
transport standards, with some simple
ways of translating from one to the other.
We want to make this easy for the
vendors, but if it starts getting into the
internal architecture of different colorcorrectors, we don't want to dictate or

specify that.
"This is

just the initial color
levels

correction - not, for example, five

of secondaries and six Power Windows
and

film-print emulations. This is only for

the very basic primary color correction.
We're not infringing on any color correc¬
tor's secrets about how they do tracking

of the other stuff. The idea is to
cinematographer some¬
thing he has lost: the ability to assign the
overall look very early at the dailies
stage. The cinematographer will imprint
or

any

restore to the

the first color correction for the dailies
that the editors, directors and
will

see

all

producers

through the editing

"There is

a

process.
correlation between

of the CDL parameters and printer
lights, the offset parameter. Offset para¬
meter is equivalent to printer-light
manipulation. However, many cine¬
matographers wonder, 'Why are you
limiting me to printer lights? I'm on digi¬
tal now. I want to be able to do gains and
gammas, et cetera.' So we've also
allowed that. If you limit yourself to using
the offset parameter, then you have a
direct 1:1 correspondence to printer
lights. Some facilities have actually
implemented that correspondence for

one

American

Cinematographer 117
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