Working with a first-time director has its advantages. This is not the first movie on which I've worked, where the crew knows the ropes a lot more than the captain steering the ship. It's a wise first-timer who lets those who've been around the block a couple times show them the way.
One of the advantages is that I learn new stuff when the director has to be taught. The other week I had the rare pleasure of sitting in on the DI Demonstration we arranged for him. It was truly imperative that he have a good education as to what is possible in the DI, so that when we're screening VFX shots, the phrase "we'll fix it in the DI" will be meaningful. Why is this so important? Because the more he knows what is possible during that process, the more likely he is to Final a shot when we're screening it for him (which means the visual effects facility is done with it, can deliver the files, and cross it off the books).
The Digital Intermediate (DI) is a process that many—if not most—films undergo these days (as far as I know), whereby the entire film (even non-visual effects shots) is digitized and worked on by the Director of Photography, the Colorist, and the Director. They do this in a very dark screening room, wherein the Colorist sits at an array of controls that would rival any NASA console.
For the non-initiated, what you can do in the DI to film is akin to what you can do to one photograph in Photoshop, but to the Nth degree... and across a moving image, because the adjustments you make are tracked as objects move through the frame.
The software that does this is called "Lustre," and is explained by the manufacturer thusly:
Use Autodesk® Lustre® color-grading and color management software to shape color and lighting to create a stylized look for your story, and balance and maintain continuity across shots.The implications of this technology are amazing... and something I hadn't thought about, until I saw his examples from previous films. The most striking of these was a shot that he knew going in to production, they would not have time to light properly. It was an extremely wide shot with a staircase and multiple levels. It would have taken hours and hours to light the real location properly for the kind of mystery-mood they were going for. Knowing what was possible in the DI allowed the DP to shoot the entire scene lit with a more flat, brighter lighting (a quick setup during production). All the information ended up on the negative, which allowed him to work his magic later, in the DI.
He showed us another shot, where the trees were changed from green, summer leaves, to Fall leaves, because the movie was not shot in the Fall, when the story takes place. This is basic stuff using mattes, but I still find it awesome. Here is part of EFILM's DI overview, which is not where we are doing our DI (nor is the image the one our DP had worked on), but this shows exactly what I'm talking about:


The other thing that surprised me was the extent to which the audience is manipulated (in a good way), in other words, how much of the WAY the story is told is managed in the DI. If you wonder why your eye is drawn to a particular person or object in a shot, you can bet it was by design. Vignetting and defocus are used regularly to help guide the audience to look at the pertinent parts of an image, so that they don't miss the point of the shot. Essentially, this helps tell the story better.A real treat to see masters of color and light work their digital magic. Glad I got to sit in and witness the process in person, finally. Fascinating.
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