American Cinematographer - March 2009 - (Page 64) you the illusion of retained detail. The resulting artifacts are really evident in areas of the frame that have fine detail like wispy smoke or hanging fog. With ESGR, it’s not nearly as much of a tradeoff between grain reduction and loss of detail as it used to be.” For Moxness, using ESGR was a simple addition to the DI workflow. “It’s not an all-or-nothing process,” he notes. “You can choose the percentage of grain reduction on a shot-by-shot or scene-by-scene basis. They bring up each scene and implement a pre-built formula that they think will be the best match for the specific contrast and color tones and then manipulate from there. It takes a little extra time, but it didn’t hold up our post at all.” DFC has applied the ESGR process to 35mm projects as well, according to Tocher. He estimates that the process adds one day to the total DI time on an average project; reels can be processed while the DI continues simultaneously. “We spent the better part of a year developing this process after looking at the existing real-time and rendered processes on the market,” he notes. “A lot of broadcasters have been discouraging the use of 16mm because the grain takes a serious compression hit on their digital broadcast signal, and that’s really the big fringe benefit of ESGR: the Blu-ray discs and broadcast versions derived from our masters are virtually grainless, allowing for flawless compression.” DFC plans to offer the ESGR process to the post market at large sometime this year, he adds. After grain reduction, Alien Trespass’ DI was completed at DFC using a Baselight 2K color-correction system playing out to a Christie 2K digital projector on a 13' screen. “We spent most of our six days in the DI enhancing the 1950s Technicolor look we’d set out to achieve,” says Moxness. “I come from the pre-‘fix-it-in-post’ days, so I try to deliver the best image at the end of each shoot day rather than leave it to the DI.” Alien Trespass will be distributed theatrically by Roadside Attractions. I 64 http://www.theasc.com http://www.jimmyjib.com http://www.jimmyjib.com
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