American Cinematographer - August 2008 - (Page 70) Post Focus Near right: Alvin (Seymour Cassel) gives a hard time to Evelyn (Alfre Woodard) and anyone else who happens to be nearby in the feature Reach for Me, which was shot in 4K with the Dalsa Origin. Far right: Director LeVar Burton on the set with Cassel. The movie recently screened in Los Angeles, where it was projected in 4K with a Sony SRXR-220 Digital Cinema Projection System. Reach for Me Tests Dalsa 4K Workflow by Jon Silberg In the rapidly evolving world of digital cinematography, camera technology can precede by months or even years any practical post workflow. That was the case with Dalsa’s Origin, which has been capturing images with its single Bayer-pattern (GRGB) CCD, comprising 4096 pixels x 2048 pixels, and outputting 16-bit uncompressed raw data in 4K since 2006. Finally, thanks to a close collaboration between 70 August 2008 Dalsa, Post Logic in Hollywood, and a committed group of filmmakers led by director LeVar Burton and cinematographer Kris Krosskove (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Charmed ), the camera was put through the paces on the featurelength indie drama Reach for Me. Reach for Me tells the story of an old man (Seymour Cassel) in a hospicecare institution who learns to appreciate his remaining days through the positive influence of his optimistic young roommate (Johnny Whitworth). Given the story’s few locations and the filmmakers’ desire to keep the camera on a dolly, the project provided an optimal proof of concept for the Origin, which has been criticized for being too bulky for typical productions. (Dalsa’s new Evolution camera promises to be significantly smaller and lighter.) During preproduction, the filmmakers met with the Post Logic team — Larry Birstock, CEO; Denis Leconte, vice president of software engineering; Mitch Bogdanowicz, executive vice president of imaging science; and Corinne Bogdanowicz, digital-intermediate (DI) colorist — to discuss how the Origin’s raw-image files could be recorded, stored, turned into a format suitable for editing, conformed, colorcorrected and delivered. The entire workflow was open to debate; the goal was to maintain all the information in the raw files without sacrificing anything to compression along the way. The filmmakers recorded the Origin’s raw files to a Codex Digital Portable Recorder, which records to
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