The Colorists

been six years since the first feature film color graded on a computer rather than in a photochemical lab, opened the doors to a new process, a new market for hardware & software vendors, increased creative possibilities for directors & cinematographers, and new careers as colorists for digital artists. “Digital Intermediate” or DI, which describes the digital files used for color grading as well as the process itself, is well on its way toward replacing color correction in a photochemical lab. While DI once referred to the step between scanning film and recording the digital output on a film recorder, with the advent of HD cameras and digital projectors, the term now describes color grading for feature films regardless of source or destination. The DI becomes the final master. In fact, the relative ease with which digitally color corrected files can be output from a DI master to a variety of media, From DVD to film stock, makes DI irresistible to an increasing number of film productions.

On the creative side, DI gives film directors and cinematographers the flexibility to interactively adjust color and contrast that has long been available via telecine in the broadcast world. Until recently, there simply wasn’t enough computer power to handle the tons of data required for the higher resolution and broader color range in film.

And, it seems, color and contrast are only the beginning. “I’ve watched DI, over the last six or seven years, move from a novelty to a streamlined product,” says Technicolor colorist Jill Bogdanowicz.

“It will become almost unheard of for people to use traditional labs, especially with 4K resolution in and out.” 4K resolution is important not only for sharper images now, but for archiving films in anticipation of a future 4K projection standard.

Disney was the first studio to record digital files for an entire feature-length movie onto film. The year was 1990; the files were those for ‘The Rescuers Down Under’, the first Disney animated feature for which all the elements were created in a digital environment. Disney and Pixar developed the software, CAPS (computer aided production system), which ran on Pixar Image Computers.

In 1998, director Gary Ross and cinematographer John Lindley digitally color-corrected portions of New Line Cinema’s film ‘Pleasantville’ to introduce color slowly into a black and white 1950’s small town in America as its people became enlightened. In fact, the filmmakers shot ‘Pleasantville’ in color. They selectively removed the color (desaturated) using systems developed in-house.

This was developed by the production unit’s visual effects team as well as through the services of such studios as Cinesite and the Computer Film Company (now Framestore CFC). The live action film most often credited with starting the DI revolution, though, was ‘Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?’. Directors Joel & Ethan Coen and cinematographer Roger Deakins had the entire film scanned and digitally color graded at Cinesite in Los Angeles.

“It was shot in Mississippi in the summer, when it was green and lush,” says Bogdanowicz, “but they wanted a postcard sepia look. They went to a lab and tried to find some sort of process to get the feel they wanted, but they couldn’t achieve it. Color timers in a traditional lab would have used a heavy yellow-red color correction, which would have changed the blue in the sky and the denim jeans. So, the only way to achieve the look was digitally. Cinesite did a chroma-key on the green and turned it to brown gold.”

Bogdanowicz had been an intern at Eastman Kodak in Rochester, New York learning about film stocks and doing comparisons between HD and film when Cinesite brought her to Los Angeles to assist on Oh Brother. “I didn’t do timing - I took care of all the film and video assist and ran the data management, but I did get to play around with the machine with Roger Deakins,” she says. Following that film, she worked her way up the chain, doing trailers, partial DIs, and soon, full features.

Her first feature was ‘Hart’s War’ in 2002. More recently, at Technicolor, she handled the DI for ‘Scary Movie 4’, which was shot in HD on Panavision’s Genesis Digital Camera System, and for ‘The Sentinel’, which required mixing and matching film and video.

Although most people think of Oh Brother as the first film to use DI, Framestore CFC colorist Adam Glasman, also points to ‘Chicken Run’, the first feature film directed by Aardman’s Peter Lord and Nick Park, as in the forefront. People think of ‘Chicken Run’ as an animated film, which it is, of course, so it’s easy to forget that the directors filmed the stop-motion animation - that it’s a live action film; it’s just that the actors are clay figures filmed a step at a time rather than humans.

David Alex Riddett was the supervising director of photography; Glasman conformed the film at the Computer Film Company (before it joined with Framestore). “There were also some people in Scandinavia involved in doing DI for features taking 35mm in and going back out to 35mm,” he says, “but we were right in there.”

For those who care about such things, it’s a very close call. ‘Oh Brother’ premiered at Cannes on May 13, 2000, but didn’t roll into theaters until August in France. The film spent the autumn in Europe and finally landed in the US in December. DreamWorks released ‘Chicken Run’ on June 21, 2000 throughout the US. The film raced through some parts of Europe in the summer and autumn, and landed in France in December.)

“With stop frame animation, when they make errors in the animation, they put a card in front of the camera that says to go back four frames and start again,” Glasman says. “So, if they had gone the traditional route, the negative would have been cut into many pieces. And, of course, there were other aspects to it as well – it takes so long there are problems with the lights aging and changing color - so it was easier to fix everything in one place with DI.”

At the time, the Computer Film Company’s R&D department had been working on a system that would handle the real-time requirements of grading film. “With the equipment we used then, you could only really move tone curves around to make an overall change to the image,” Glasman says. “For example, we could only change color, brightness and saturation overall.” The R&D department has since founded a separate company, Filmlight, which is one of the leaders in the DI world, making the Baselight system for color grading, Northlight scanners, and the Truelight color management system. And now, Glasman, who is currently completing work on Anthony Mingella's ‘Breaking and Entering’, is one of many customers using the Baselight 8 system. “We can now work on discreet parts of the frame and grade through them,” he says. “We can key things, track shapes, draw shapes, and do composity types of things in the grade.”


When a DI process is used, it’s the last thing that happens to a film; the color labs make sure the colors match the master, but no longer make creative color changes with photochemicals. The digital colorist usually sits in a grading suite, sometimes called a “digital mastering suite,” with the cinematographer and others - the director for final approval, perhaps editors and visual effects supervisors. Sometimes, the production allows as much as six weeks for color grading; often, the process happens in the last two weeks. “The name of the game for color correction is speed,” says Doug Delaney, a colorist at Post Logic. “We’ve got to get through 200,000 frames on a movie.” Moreover, the sessions must be interactive & because the goal is to conform the colors throughout the film, the entire film must be available. As has been the case in many computer graphics applications, the first color grading systems were “black boxes,” that is, proprietary hardware-based systems. Those evolved into hybrid solutions such as the Baselight 8 that have programmable software running on proprietary hardware. More recently, software companies have introduced software-only solutions such as Autodesk’s Lustre.	Of course, some studios such as EFilm, which has arguably produced more DI’s than any other facility, have developed their own proprietary processes. “The advantage that hardware color correction has is speed,” says Delaney, “but the hardware systems are limited in capability. The software systems are more flexible, but some still require rendering, although that’s becoming less and less of an issue with systems like Lustre, Incinerator and Baselight 4 or 8 coming on-line. We're using Baselight at Post Logic, which is a hybrid hardware/software color corrector, so we can grade any reel of the film at any time at 24fps. Realtime color correction is a much more visceral experience for both the colorist and client." At Technicolor, Bogdanowicz uses a Da Vinci system, which is hardware based, and a Lustre. “It’s still a little faster for us at the moment to use the Da Vinci, but the Lustre gives us more freedom. The biggest difference is that Lustre is resolution independent, so we can do 4K DI if we want. Creatively, they have many of the same tools, although Da Vinci has a fixed number of power windows depending on which boards you buy and with Lustre, there is no limit. Also, with Lustre, you can draw whatever shape you want for power windows, which Da Vinci can’t do.”

With most grading systems these days, colorists can do far more than change color and contrast; the systems include tools for rotoscoping, matting, keying and simple compositing.“You might not want to do all that in a color room,” says Delaney, “but there are times when you’re down to the wire and you need to get those last five shots out tonight. They might be visual effects shots that have been finaled but the cinematographer wants to know if we can darken the edge in DI. We can, and still stay good friends with the VFX supervisor. We respect the visual effects work: We complement it; we don’t fix it.”

Delaney grew into his role as a colorist through visual effects, starting in the scanning and recording department at Dream Quest Images. There he started grading plates for VFX and doing some compositing. In 2002, he began beta testing a grading system from Colorfront in Budapest and evenutally moved to New Zealand where he used that system for DI on Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. In 2003, Autodesk announced a strategic alliance with Colorfront that resulted in Autodesk’s Lustre system.


Has the addition of visual effects and compositing tools changed the work that colorists do? A little. “We’re still doing the same thing – establishing a look,” Delaney says. “We import alpha channels from compositing and keep foregrounds and backgrounds separate and color correct through the alpha channel. Maybe it’s a day for night sequence, or in a wide shot we want to focus on actors so we brighten them and darken the rest of the frame to control where the audience looks. I’ve also done cosmetic work on actors, removed pimples, and brightened eyes. When you’re doing paint and roto, there’s a blurry line between visual effects and DI. But, generally we don’t paint and we don’t composite.”	Instead, a colorist acts more as a high-powered digital darkroom. “We’re dodging, we’re burning. It’s like having Photoshop on wheels because we’re working with moving images not just single frames,” Delaney says. “The beautiful thing is that it’s animate-able over time.” At the moment, although vendors might continue adding more visual effects and compositing tools, for the most part the colorists don’t see their work moving very far in that direction. For one thing, in addition to the color grading system, a DI suite includes massive data storage systems for online work as well as archival, film scanners, film recorders, monitors, projectors and so forth. The going rate for the DI process can easily run around a quarter of a million dollars.

At Framestore CFC, however, Glasman was involved in some state-of-the-art work in the color suite for the film ‘V for Vendetta’. Because the Guy Fawkes mask the character V wore throughout the film was stark white and his clothes were black, lighting the mask was tricky. Moreover, the filmmakers wanted to use shadows on the static mask to enhance the actor’s performance and go beyond shadows captured on set. To make this possible, Framestore CFC’s visual effects crew scanned the real mask, created a 3D version, match-moved the digital mask into the live action plates and then used CG lights to generate the desired shadows. Then, rather than composite the shadowed CG mask into the live action plates, they fed a rendered matte into the DI suite.

The reason? It was faster. The digital effects supervisor and visual effects supervisors sat with colorist Adam Inglish and finaled the shots in the grading suite. Framestore CFC also used a combination of visual effects and grading to add smoky atmosphere to a sequence in the film. Because the atmosphere would be affected by the grade, it was simpler to create the composite in the Baselight system using smoke mattes, generated in Shake rather than go back and forth from compositing to grading. The DI side of the studio had earlier worked with the visual effects group to finesse shots for the film ‘Thunderbirds’ and other projects, but this type of work is not yet common. For one thing, it’s expensive. “Should we do something just because we can?” asks Delaney. “Of course not. Clients often ask if we can do all these other things and often my answer is yes, but do you want to?

The Inferno costs a lot less and might be more appropriate.” Bogdanowicz agrees. “I could see simple stuff like adding atmosphere and shadows would become more common, but I don’t see us compositing greenscreen shots any time in the future.” She believes that DI will stay focused on helping the creative team make the photography as good as they can. Adds Glasman. “They work in realtime while the client is sitting there. But for film, our compositors might work on one shot for a week. I can’t think of why we’d ever want to do that in a grading suite, even if the technology weren’t so expensive. For me, spending a long time on a shot, if it is a particularly tricky shot, would be a half hour.”


The bigger changes are happening in the worlds that connect to the DI suite – to the way cinematographers work, for example. “At the beginning, we needed to explain the technique,” says Glasman. “For example, the traditional way of shooting day for night is to underexpose the shot. But, that’s not necessary when a DI is part of the process. We can underexpose our digital negative by grading it down. So, the more information the DP can give us when they shoot, the better the quality will be at the end.” Bogdanowicz has watched the purpose of DI change from that of creating a very different look, although that still happens, to one of refining the cinematographer’s work and condensing the workflow. “I can color time a movie for film and all we have to do to have it ready for video and D cinema is to run it through a conversion. We can have all the video masters ready to go within a week,” she says. “We still create different looks, but that’s not the only reason people want to use DI.” One example of that different kind of look, was for ‘The Sentinel’. “It’s a thriller, so they pushed the look farther and there are quite a few looks,” she says.	Everything in the White House is elegant and traditional, for example, and everything in the field has higher contrast with greens and gold and high saturation so it really brings you into the moment of the movie.” Another change she and other colorists have noticed, and encourage, is color timing the plates before they go to visual effects houses. “That way, they don’t have to worry about the color timing,” she says. “I did that on ‘Shaggy Dog’ and I’m starting to do it right now for ‘Santa Claus III’. If you have 10 different visual effects houses and none of them need to touch the color, the color is consistent when it comes back to us.” Delaney adds, “In visual effects, people look at individual shots; it’s a challenge for them to judge the context, color and flow for an entire scene. So, if we can work together to color correct the plates at the beginning, it’s a better way to communicate.” That isn’t always possible – often, work on visual effects has started before the DI facility has even been chosen. And it’s easier for visual effects studios such as Framestore CFC, which has DI suites plus scanning and recording equipment on site.	“Some of the effects people now have Baselights here, too,” says Glasman, “and do a lot of grading of visual effects plates. “It’s something I just did for our next job, ‘Blood and Chocolate’ - I’ve gone through and graded all the background plates for some sequences being done in-house– so that the effects shots will be perfectly consistent. We’ve been doing that for years.”Delaney also sees the role of colorists moving up stream with the look of the film considered in pre-production and passed on through dailies. “The boundaries between pre-production, production, and post production are crumbling,” he says. “If you can deal with the creatives at the beginning of the project, you can establish the look and make sure everyone is on the same page.” Otherwise, he points out, the director and editor sometimes become used to the images they see on the Avid, which may not match the look the cinematographer intended. “If we can get involved before dailies, we can protect the cinematographer’s vision all the way into final grading.” And, sometimes the cinematographer has moved onto a new project by the time the film has moved into the DI suite. That’s one reason why many colorists like Delaney are actively working on color standards that would, someday, allow directors to view the same colors on their laptop screen as Delaney sees on the screen in his DI theater and that the director saw in dailies.


	As more and more productions rely on DI, as films land on more and more media, and as digital equipment becomes more prevalent for shooting features and projecting them, standards such as those Delaney is working on become increasingly important. Also, the role of the DI colorist, a career possibility that is only six or seven years old, is likely to expand. And, companies will be hiring more and more colorists. So, how does someone become a colorist – and why would someone want to rather than become, say, a matte painter or compositor? Delaney moved into the DI suite after working in the scanning and recording department of a visual effects studio. Bogdanowicz, a painter, took her degree in physics and art to Eastman Kodak, where she interned for two years. Glasman left a photography business that he had run for 12 years to study digital imaging science before joining the Computer Film Company more than 10 years ago. But more often, colorists move into the film world via broadcast working on equipment in a telecine environment. However, in addition to knowing color and learning the equipment, colorists need to love working with people.	“The thing I enjoy most about my job is the process of course, but I really enjoy the people I work with,” says Glasman. “A compositor doesn’t often see that side of it. We can suggest something to the DP or the director and see it up on the screen. And that’s great.” “We’re the last people to touch the color,” says Delaney. “It’s very exciting and challenging because of that.” Bogdanowicz is equally enthusiastic. “I love it,” she says. “I love collaborating with the directors and cinematographers and creating interesting looks. I just love coloring. I love my job.” Post Logic Technicolor LA Framestore CFC Eastman Kodak Autodesk Lustre da Vinci Resolve