Digital intermediate
Encyclopedia
Digital intermediate is a motion picture finishing process which classically involves digitizing a motion picture and manipulating the color and other image characteristics. It often replaces or augments the photochemical timing process and is usually the final creative adjustment to a movie before distribution in theaters
. It is distinguished from the telecine
process in which film is scanned and color is manipulated early in the process to facilitate editing. However the lines between telecine and DI are continually blurred and are often executed on the same hardware by colorists of the same background. These two steps are typically part of the overall color management process in a motion picture at different points in time. A digital intermediate is also customarily done at higher resolution
and with greater color fidelity than telecine transfers.
Although originally used to describe a process that started with film scanning
and ended with film recording
, digital intermediate is also used to describe color grading
and final mastering even when a digital camera is used as the image source and/or when the final movie is not output to film. This is due to recent advances in digital cinematography
and digital projection technologies that strive to match film
origination and film projection
.
In traditional photochemical film finishing, an intermediate is produced by exposing film to the original camera negative. The intermediate is then used to mass-produce the films that get distributed to theaters. Color grading
is done by varying the amount of red, green, and blue light used to expose the intermediate. This seeks to be able to replace or augment the photochemical approach to creating this intermediate.
The digital intermediate process uses digital tools to color grade, which allows for much finer control of individual colors and areas of the image, and allows for the adjustment of image structure (grain, sharpness, etc.). The intermediate for film reproduction can then be produced by means of a film recorder
. The physical intermediate film that is a result of the recording process is sometimes also called a digital intermediate, and is usually recorded to internegative (IN) stock, which is inherently finer-grain than camera negative (OCN).
One of the key technical achievements that makes the DI possible is the look-up table
(aka "LUT"), which can be made to mimic how the digital image will look, once it's printed onto normal release print stock. DI facilities generally allow comparing the digital image directly to a print on the same screen, ensuring precise calibration of the process.
The digital master, created during the Digital Intermediate process, can be recorded to very stable yellow-cyan-magenta (YCM) separations on black-and-white film with an expected 100-year or longer life.
The digital master is often used as a source for a DCI compliant distribution of the motion picture, for digital projection as well.
tools to electronically capture film images are nearly as old as broadcast television, but the resulting images were widely considered unsuitable for exposing back onto film for theatrical distribution. Film scanners and recorders with quality sufficient to produce images that could be inter-cut with regular film began appearing in the 1970s, with significant improvements in the late 1980s and early 1990s. During this time, digitally processing an entire feature-length film was impractical because the scanners and recorders were extremely slow and the image files were too large compared to computing power available. Instead, individual shots or short sequences were processed for special visual effects
. In 1992, Visual Effects Supervisor/Producer Chris F. Woods broke through several "techno-barriers" in creating a digital studio to produce the visual effects
for the 1993 release Super Mario Bros.
It was the first feature film project to digitally scan a large number of VFX plates (over 700) at 2K resolution. It was also the first film scanned and recorded at Kodak's just launched Cinesite facility in Hollywood. This project based studio was the first feature film to use Discreet Logic's (now Autodesk
) Flame and Inferno systems, which enjoyed early dominance as high resolution / high performance digital compositing systems. Digital Film compositing for Visual Effects
was immediately embraced, while optical printer use for VFX declined just as quickly, and never came back. Chris Watts
further revolutionized the process on the 1998 feature film Pleasantville
, becoming the first visual effects supervisor
for New Line Cinema
to scan, process, and record the majority of a feature length, live-action, Hollywood film digitally. The first Hollywood film to utilize a digital intermediate process from beginning to end was O Brother, Where Art Thou?
in 2000 and in Europe it was Chicken Run
released that same year.
The process rapidly caught on in the mid-2000s. Around 50% of Hollywood films went through a digital intermediate in 2005, increasing to around 70% by mid-2007. This is due not only to the extra creative options the process affords film makers but also the need for high-quality scanning and color adjustments to produce movies for digital cinema
.
– Chicken Run
was the first feature film in Europe to use the Digital Intermediate process, digitally storing and manipulating every frame of the film before recording back to film.
Movie theater
A movie theater, cinema, movie house, picture theater, film theater is a venue, usually a building, for viewing motion pictures ....
. It is distinguished from the telecine
Telecine
Telecine is transferring motion picture film into video and is performed in a color suite. The term is also used to refer to the equipment used in the post-production process....
process in which film is scanned and color is manipulated early in the process to facilitate editing. However the lines between telecine and DI are continually blurred and are often executed on the same hardware by colorists of the same background. These two steps are typically part of the overall color management process in a motion picture at different points in time. A digital intermediate is also customarily done at higher resolution
Image resolution
Image resolution is an umbrella term that describes the detail an image holds. The term applies to raster digital images, film images, and other types of images. Higher resolution means more image detail....
and with greater color fidelity than telecine transfers.
Although originally used to describe a process that started with film scanning
Film scanner
A film scanner is a device made for scanning photographic film directly into a computer without the use of any intermediate printmaking. It provides several benefits over using a flatbed scanner to scan in a print of any size: the photographer has direct control over cropping and aspect ratio from...
and ended with film recording
Film recorder
A Film Recorder is a graphical output device for transferring digital images to photographic film.All film recorders typically work in the same manner. The image is fed from a host computer as a raster stream over a digital interface...
, digital intermediate is also used to describe color grading
Color grading
Color grading or colour painting, is the process of altering and enhancing the color of a motion picture, video image, or still image either electronically, photo-chemically or digitally. The photo-chemical process is also referred to as color timing and is typically performed at a photographic...
and final mastering even when a digital camera is used as the image source and/or when the final movie is not output to film. This is due to recent advances in digital cinematography
Digital cinematography
Digital cinematography is the process of capturing motion pictures as digital images, rather than on film. Digital capture may occur on video tape, hard disks, flash memory, or other media which can record digital data. As digital technology has improved, this practice has become increasingly common...
and digital projection technologies that strive to match film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
origination and film projection
Movie projector
A movie projector is an opto-mechanical device for displaying moving pictures by projecting them on a projection screen. Most of the optical and mechanical elements, except for the illumination and sound devices, are present in movie cameras.-Physiology:...
.
In traditional photochemical film finishing, an intermediate is produced by exposing film to the original camera negative. The intermediate is then used to mass-produce the films that get distributed to theaters. Color grading
Color grading
Color grading or colour painting, is the process of altering and enhancing the color of a motion picture, video image, or still image either electronically, photo-chemically or digitally. The photo-chemical process is also referred to as color timing and is typically performed at a photographic...
is done by varying the amount of red, green, and blue light used to expose the intermediate. This seeks to be able to replace or augment the photochemical approach to creating this intermediate.
The digital intermediate process uses digital tools to color grade, which allows for much finer control of individual colors and areas of the image, and allows for the adjustment of image structure (grain, sharpness, etc.). The intermediate for film reproduction can then be produced by means of a film recorder
Film recorder
A Film Recorder is a graphical output device for transferring digital images to photographic film.All film recorders typically work in the same manner. The image is fed from a host computer as a raster stream over a digital interface...
. The physical intermediate film that is a result of the recording process is sometimes also called a digital intermediate, and is usually recorded to internegative (IN) stock, which is inherently finer-grain than camera negative (OCN).
One of the key technical achievements that makes the DI possible is the look-up table
3D LUT
In the film industry, 3D LUTs are used to calculate preview colors for a monitor or digital projector of how an image will be reproduced on the final film print. A 3D LUT is a 3D lattice of output color values. Each axis is one of the 3 input color components and the input color thus defines a...
(aka "LUT"), which can be made to mimic how the digital image will look, once it's printed onto normal release print stock. DI facilities generally allow comparing the digital image directly to a print on the same screen, ensuring precise calibration of the process.
The digital master, created during the Digital Intermediate process, can be recorded to very stable yellow-cyan-magenta (YCM) separations on black-and-white film with an expected 100-year or longer life.
The digital master is often used as a source for a DCI compliant distribution of the motion picture, for digital projection as well.
History
TelecineTelecine
Telecine is transferring motion picture film into video and is performed in a color suite. The term is also used to refer to the equipment used in the post-production process....
tools to electronically capture film images are nearly as old as broadcast television, but the resulting images were widely considered unsuitable for exposing back onto film for theatrical distribution. Film scanners and recorders with quality sufficient to produce images that could be inter-cut with regular film began appearing in the 1970s, with significant improvements in the late 1980s and early 1990s. During this time, digitally processing an entire feature-length film was impractical because the scanners and recorders were extremely slow and the image files were too large compared to computing power available. Instead, individual shots or short sequences were processed for special visual effects
Visual effects
Visual effects are the various processes by which imagery is created and/or manipulated outside the context of a live action shoot. Visual effects involve the integration of live-action footage and generated imagery to create environments which look realistic, but would be dangerous, costly, or...
. In 1992, Visual Effects Supervisor/Producer Chris F. Woods broke through several "techno-barriers" in creating a digital studio to produce the visual effects
Visual effects
Visual effects are the various processes by which imagery is created and/or manipulated outside the context of a live action shoot. Visual effects involve the integration of live-action footage and generated imagery to create environments which look realistic, but would be dangerous, costly, or...
for the 1993 release Super Mario Bros.
Super Mario Bros. (film)
Super Mario Bros. is a 1993 American action film directed by Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel. Based on the Super Mario Bros.video game and its entire franchise, the film features Bob Hoskins, John Leguizamo, Dennis Hopper and Samantha Mathis. It tells the story of the Mario brothers, Mario and...
It was the first feature film project to digitally scan a large number of VFX plates (over 700) at 2K resolution. It was also the first film scanned and recorded at Kodak's just launched Cinesite facility in Hollywood. This project based studio was the first feature film to use Discreet Logic's (now Autodesk
Autodesk
Autodesk, Inc. is an American multinational corporation that focuses on 3D design software for use in the architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing, media and entertainment industries. The company was founded in 1982 by John Walker, a coauthor of the first versions of the company's...
) Flame and Inferno systems, which enjoyed early dominance as high resolution / high performance digital compositing systems. Digital Film compositing for Visual Effects
Visual effects
Visual effects are the various processes by which imagery is created and/or manipulated outside the context of a live action shoot. Visual effects involve the integration of live-action footage and generated imagery to create environments which look realistic, but would be dangerous, costly, or...
was immediately embraced, while optical printer use for VFX declined just as quickly, and never came back. Chris Watts
Chris Watts
Chris Watts , is an American inventor, businessman, award winning filmmaker and Visual Effects Supervisor. Currently the President of located in Los Angeles, California, he began his film career with in 1989. Watts originated, invented and implemented the Digital intermediate process in 1995...
further revolutionized the process on the 1998 feature film Pleasantville
Pleasantville (film)
Pleasantville is a 1998 American fantasy comedy-drama film written, produced, and directed by Gary Ross. The film stars Tobey Maguire, Reese Witherspoon, William H. Macy, Joan Allen, Marley Shelton and Jeff Daniels. Don Knotts, Paul Walker, Jane Kaczmarek, and J. T. Walsh are also featured.The film...
, becoming the first visual effects supervisor
Visual effects supervisor
In the context of film and television production, a visual effects supervisor is responsible for achieving the creative aims of the director and/or producers through the use of visual effects...
for New Line Cinema
New Line Cinema
New Line Cinema, often simply referred to as New Line, is an American film studio. It was founded in 1967 by Robert Shaye and Michael Lynne as a film distributor, later becoming an independent film studio. It became a subsidiary of Time Warner in 1996 and was merged with larger sister studio Warner...
to scan, process, and record the majority of a feature length, live-action, Hollywood film digitally. The first Hollywood film to utilize a digital intermediate process from beginning to end was O Brother, Where Art Thou?
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a 2000 comedy film directed by Joel and Ethan Coen and starring George Clooney, John Turturro, Tim Blake Nelson, John Goodman, Holly Hunter, and Charles Durning. Set in 1937 rural Mississippi during the Great Depression, the film's story is a modern satire loosely...
in 2000 and in Europe it was Chicken Run
Chicken Run
Chicken Run is a 2000 British stop-motion animation film made by the Aardman Animations studios, the production studio of the Oscar-winning Wallace and Gromit films...
released that same year.
The process rapidly caught on in the mid-2000s. Around 50% of Hollywood films went through a digital intermediate in 2005, increasing to around 70% by mid-2007. This is due not only to the extra creative options the process affords film makers but also the need for high-quality scanning and color adjustments to produce movies for digital cinema
Digital cinema
Digital cinema refers to the use of digital technology to distribute and project motion pictures. A movie can be distributed via hard drives, optical disks or satellite and projected using a digital projector instead of a conventional film projector...
.
Milestones
- 1990 – The Rescuers Down UnderThe Rescuers Down UnderThe Rescuers Down Under is a 1990 American animated film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures and Buena Vista Distribution on November 16, 1990...
– First feature-length film to be entirely recorded to film from digital files; in this case animationAnimationAnimation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
assembled on computers using Walt Disney Feature Animation and Pixar's CAPSComputer Animation Production SystemThe Computer Animation Production System is a proprietary collection of software programs, scanning camera systems, servers, networked computer workstations, and custom desks developed by The Walt Disney Company together with Pixar in the late-1980s...
system.
- 1993 – Snow White and the Seven DwarfsSnow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937 film)Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is a 1937 American animated film based on Snow White, a German fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm. It was the first full-length cel-animated feature in motion picture history, as well as the first animated feature film produced in America, the first produced in full...
– First film to be entirely scanned to digital files, manipulated, and recorded back to film. The restoration project was done entirely at 4K resolution and 10-bit color depth using the new CineonCineonCineon System was a computer based system, integrating a film scanner and recorder hardware, digital software for compositing and effects, image restoration, color management and the development of a proprietary file format designed by Kodak. These components were created to support the work flow...
system to digitally remove dirt and scratches and restore faded colors.
- 1998 – PleasantvillePleasantville (film)Pleasantville is a 1998 American fantasy comedy-drama film written, produced, and directed by Gary Ross. The film stars Tobey Maguire, Reese Witherspoon, William H. Macy, Joan Allen, Marley Shelton and Jeff Daniels. Don Knotts, Paul Walker, Jane Kaczmarek, and J. T. Walsh are also featured.The film...
– The first time the majority of a new feature film was scanned, processed, and recorded digitally. The black-and-white meets color world portrayed in the movie was filmed entirely in color and selectively desaturated and contrast adjusted digitally. The work was done in Los Angeles by CinesiteCinesiteCinesite Ltd is a digital visual effects and post-production facility in London and one of the largest such companies in Europe...
utilizing a Spirit DataCineSpirit DataCineSpirit DataCine is a telecine and/or a motion picture film scanner. This device is able to transfer 16mm and 35mm motion picture film to NTSC or PAL standards or one of many High-definition television standards. With the data transfer option a Spirit DataCine can output DPX data files. The Spirit...
for scanning at 2K resolution
- 2000 – O Brother, Where Art Thou?O Brother, Where Art Thou?O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a 2000 comedy film directed by Joel and Ethan Coen and starring George Clooney, John Turturro, Tim Blake Nelson, John Goodman, Holly Hunter, and Charles Durning. Set in 1937 rural Mississippi during the Great Depression, the film's story is a modern satire loosely...
– The first time a digital intermediate was used on the entirety of a first-run Hollywood film which otherwise had very few visual effects. The work was done in Los Angeles by Cinesite utilizing a Spirit DataCine for scanning at 2K resolution, a Pandora MegaDef to adjust the color and a Kodak Lightning II recorder to output to film.
– Chicken Run
Chicken Run
Chicken Run is a 2000 British stop-motion animation film made by the Aardman Animations studios, the production studio of the Oscar-winning Wallace and Gromit films...
was the first feature film in Europe to use the Digital Intermediate process, digitally storing and manipulating every frame of the film before recording back to film.
- 2004 – Spider-Man 2Spider-Man 2Spider-Man 2 is a 2004 American superhero film directed by Sam Raimi, written by Alvin Sargent and developed by Alfred Gough, Miles Millar, and Michael Chabon. It is the second film in the Spider-Man film franchise based on the fictional Marvel Comics character Spider-Man...
– The first digital intermediate on a new Hollywood film to be done entirely at 4K resolution. Although scanning, recording, and color-correction was done at 4K by EFilmEFilmEFilm is a post-production house in Hollywood that specializes in the digital intermediate process and other digital motion picture technologies.-eFilm Workstation:...
, most of the visual effects were created at 2K and were upscaled to 4K.
- 2008 – BarakaBaraka (film)Baraka is a 1992 non-narrative film directed by Ron Fricke. The title Baraka is a word that means blessing in a multitude of languages....
– The first 8K resolution digital intermediate by FotoKemFotoKemFotoKem originated as a motion picture film lab located in Burbank, CA. Founded in 1963, it is now the largest independently owned post production facility on the west coast having expanded its services over the past several decades to meet the demands of the ever-evolving film and digital motion...
of a 65 mm negative source for the October 2008 remastered DVDDVDA DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
and Blu-ray DiscBlu-ray DiscBlu-ray Disc is an optical disc storage medium designed to supersede the DVD format. The plastic disc is 120 mm in diameter and 1.2 mm thick, the same size as DVDs and CDs. Blu-ray Discs contain 25 GB per layer, with dual layer discs being the norm for feature-length video discs...
release, as well as for producing new 70 mm prints. The scan produced 30 terabyteTerabyteThe terabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. The prefix tera means 1012 in the International System of Units , and therefore 1 terabyte is , or 1 trillion bytes, or 1000 gigabytes. 1 terabyte in binary prefixes is 0.9095 tebibytes, or 931.32 gibibytes...
s of data and took 12–13 seconds to scan each frame, for a total scan time of over 3 weeks.
External links
- The Digital Intermediate Guides – DI Guide, & Scene-to-Screen – Light Illusion, DI Consultancy.
- DI Guide – A Digital Intermediate Guide – By Phil Green, DI Specialist & Colourist.
- Digital Intermediates For Film and Video – a book on the subject.
- Color grading on King Kong – Video about color grading done on KingKong.
- "Data or Video" article about data vs video for color grading