American Cinematographer - June 2015 - 94

Q

Stewards of Technology
were trying to understand where we stood
with what digital cameras did and didn't
do and set goals for manufacturers. Now
digital cameras have gotten to the point
where they're quite good. Focusing our
attention on DI was very important
because people needed to understand
what was required of it in order to be
effective for the creative side of making
movies.
"And that's our touch point,"
Reisner continues. "What is the technology required and what do people need to
understand to let creatives make the
movies they want to make? In the first
eight years of the Committee, we had
some significant tasks where we could
identify their critical nature. It got people
motivated and kept them focused. Still,
there are critical issues that need to be
addressed and resolved."
In addition to the positions held by
Clark and Reisner, the Committee's
current vice-chairs are Richard Edlund,
ASC and Steven Poster, ASC. Current
active subcommittees are Camera,
chaired by David Stump, ASC and vicechaired by Edlund and Bill Bennett,
ASC; UHDTV, chaired by Don Eklund;
Digital Archive, chaired by ASC associate Garrett Smith; Digital Restoration &
Preservation, chaired by associate Grover
Crisp and vice-chaired by Michael
Friend; Joint Technology Subcommittee
on Virtual Production, chaired by David
Morin and vice-chaired by John Scheele;
Laser Projection, co-chaired by Michael
Karagosian and associates Eric Rodli and
Steve Schklair; Advanced Imaging,
chaired by associate Gary Demos and
vice-chaired by Jim Fancher and associate Phil Feiner; Digital Finishing,
chaired by associate Lou Levinson and
vice-chaired by associate Joshua Pines;
Motion Imaging Workflow, chaired by
Al Barton and vice-chaired by associates
George Joblove and Bill Feightner, along
with Greg Ciaccio; Metadata, chaired by
Stump and co-chaired by Jim Houston;
and Professional Display, chaired by Jim
Fancher and vice-chaired by associate
Gary Mandle.
"Another important matter is Ultra
HD TV, a.k.a. 4K TV, with wide color

94

June 2015

gamut and high dynamic range
[HDR]," Clark says. "UHDTV needs
to be better defined regarding mastering
and content delivery, especially for the
new HDR mode of image reproduction."
As Reisner points out, "The idea
when we started work on digital cinema
was to try to come up with, ideally, a
single source master." And this single
source master, Clark adds, "is what our
UHDTV subcommittee is currently
assessing, with active participation from
several major consumer TV-display
manufacturers."

"The idea when we
started work on
digital cinema was
to try to come up
with a single
source master."

Levinson describes how the original Digital Intermediate subcommittee
segued into a subcommittee focused on
digital finishing. "We struggled with
issues surrounding the ASC CDL, and
then ACES, so we've had a more
behind-the-scenes effect than anything
else," he says. "Now that we've garnered
those awards, we'll have to find a new
morass to jump into, and there's no
shortage of those!"
The Advanced Imaging subcommittee also grew out of the original DI
subcommittee, says Demos. "When we
split off from [DI], that allowed them
to independently work out a system
architecture without the calibration and
linearization goals that we were pursuing," he explains. "Almost immediately,
the Digital Intermediate subcommittee
began pursuing the ASC CDL."
Meanwhile, the newly formed
American Cinematographer

Advanced Imaging subcommittee
started its work with a "fairly broad
survey of linearized color science," says
Levinson. "There was a disconnect
between digital movie processing in
RGB and CIE 1931-based colorscience models, which had dominated
TV system specifications. There was
deep respect for camera-negative film
and prints, especially prints from original negative, and for film's aesthetic
behavior." The subcommittee looked
into printer points and logarithmic
representations, including film density.
"However, film has the property of
desaturating colors at both bright and
dark exposure, and this raised a number
of issues for us to consider," he says.
A turning point came with a
presentation by Mark Fairchild, professor of color science and imaging science
at Rochester Institute of Technology.
Fairchild was discussing color-appearance modeling, which touched on many
of the issues that subcommittee
members had been dealing with, and
the presentation led to Fairchild's ongoing contributions to the subcommittee.
"After studying many textbooks
and journal articles, the picture finally
began to come together when Mark
told us about the CIE 170-1:2006 work
by Andrew Stockman and others to
create a parametric color model for
vision," Demos continues. "From this
point in time, we considered that
Advanced Imaging had found what we
were looking for, and that we had
completed one of our major projects."
At the same time, the Image
Interchange Framework (IIF) project
was gaining momentum at the
Academy. "IIF was later renamed
ACES, the Academy Color Encoding
System," says Demos. "The [AMPAS]
IIF committee adopted the OpenEXR
half-float and linear light, which were
both consistent with the goals and work
of Advanced Imaging. CIE 1931 was
also adopted, which was more of a
concern. However, the high level of
synergy in linear system architecture
compelled Advanced Imaging to
suspend most of its independent activi-
American Cinematographer - June 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - June 2015
