American Cinematographer - March 2011 - 17

This diagram illustrates the various steps involved in the IIF-ACES workflow.

at Sony Pictures, concurs. “With film, cinematographers could learn what to expect — how Deluxe processes were different from Technicolor processes, how Kodak was different from Fuji — but with digital, it’s the Wild, Wild West.” To address these problems, the SciTech Council formed the Image Interchange Framework Committee, a group of color scientists, engineers and representatives from various manufacturers and facilities, and challenged them to create a forward-thinking new framework for production and post. Chaired by Houston, the IIF Committee has worked to devise a system that could preserve the information captured in a raw image all through post, make it possible for different departments and facilities to easily exchange files and information, and provide a color-managed workflow for productions mixing digital media and film. The new architecture also had to be able to support both the filmstyle workflow and the digital-style workflow, so that users could choose to work in either one or mix them. The result is a set of components known as the Image Interchange Framework. Last year, an evaluation program began, with post facilities testing the IIF system and manufacturers making proto-

type implementations. But the team still needed a production trial. Meanwhile, Francis Kenny, ASC was prepping the second season of Justified. He had shot the first season with Sony’s F35, and when he looked at the raw footage from the camera, he realized that there was far more information available than what was ending up in the final version of the show. “Last year, we were losing everything on both ends of the images, the shadows and the highlights,” he recalls. “It was sad.” Kenny consulted with Curtis Clark, ASC, the chairman of the ASC Technology Committee, to see if Clark had any suggestions about how to enhance the look of the footage. Clark and the Tech Committee had been actively supporting the Academy’s work on the IIF architecture, and he saw in Justified an opportunity for the framework to make its real-world debut. The Academy team was already working with Clark, Autodesk, Sony Electronics and others on developing and testing the lookup tables and pieces needed to implement the IIF system with the Sony F35 and SRW9000-PL cameras configured for S-Log/SGamut, which enable both cameras to capture an extended dynamic range of scene tones with a wide color gamut.
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Kenny had shot a demo for the Sony SRW9000-PL and timed it at Colorworks using the facility’s custom LUTs. He thought they improved the look of his piece, and he decided the next step was to use IIF LUTs. Knowing Kenny would be using the Sony SRW-9000-PL for the new season of Justified, Clark helped Kenny set up tests with Encore, the post facility that had worked on the first season. Encore, and especially the show’s colorist, Pankaj Bajpai, embraced the idea of using the IIF system and did multiple tests on existing material to see if the results would meet Kenny’s expectations. Bajpai, Clark and Kenny incorporated the IIF framework, collaborating with Sony and Autodesk, the manufacturer of the Lustre, which Bajpai uses to color correct the series. The incorporation of the framework was simple: it used the standard IIF transforms rather than any particular “secret sauce.” Bajpai notes that the framework has worked without a single hitch so far, while pointing out a consideration that’s unique to TV shows using the process: even when shows were shot on film, they suffered a severe loss of data after they went through the telecine process and were converted to video linear — so severe, in fact, that the conversion radically curtailed the benefits of film’s
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American Cinematographer - March 2011

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - March 2011
