Beta version used in production on feature film Deep Blue
FilmLight, pioneers of digital film technology, announced today the availability of two products from its Truelight colour calibration system – The Truelight Monitor Probe and Truelight HD. Truelight is the only complete film colour management system for pre-visualising film images on electronic display devices — allowing artists, colourists, supervisors and directors to check the final film look at any point in the digital post production process, saving unnecessary matching, rework, time and effort. FilmLight also announced that London-based VTR Digital Cinema used a beta version of Truelight HD for colour calibration on Deep Blue, a BBC feature film.
The Truelight HD system is used in the Digital Intermediate process to enable filmmakers to see on computer monitors exactly what colors will look like when displayed on the projection screen. Facilities use Truelight HD in between an HD colour corrector and the HD display in the workflow. With a calibrated transform loaded, Truelight HD displays precisely how the data will print. Using the calibrated film look as the master, facilities can re-play the data through Truelight HD, providing the same film grade for HD, SD and DVD releases.
The Truelight monitor probe is designed specifically to calibrate high contrast, motion picture images on a graphics monitor. Unlike devices designed for desk-top publishing or broadcast video usage, the Truelight monitor probe is a high precision instrument able to measure contrast ratios up to 1:10,000. In addition, the Truelight probe is supplied with a sophisticated software application that allows: ‘by eye’ calibration using colour patches and tone curves for when the probe is not available.
It also provides guidance for setting monitor white points, brightness, contrast, rgb gains and bias, and the ability to construct Truelight profiles for combinations of film-recorder, print stock, viewing conditions and projector.
Now in general availability, the Truelight system was used in production while still in beta release by VTR Digital Cinema on “Deep Blue”. The feature-length version of BBC’s award-winning natural history series, “The Blue Planet,” will premiere at the San Sebastian Film Festival in September.
Mick Vincent, Director of Digital Imaging at VTR, noted, “We had to compile and grade a variety of footage, all in different formats, and it was extremely important for us to do this in real-time. I knew that the film contained lots of blues and aqua’s and without a 3D LUT it would be impossible to get an accurate print. Using Truelight we were able to feed the images into the HD monitor, the 10 bit log data was graded on the Spectre with a Pogle MegaDef without the need to convert into any other format. Not only did Truelight enable us to view the final output on the monitor, we were able to use one grade for the HD deliverables and our first print was correct without any printer light changes in the lab. All the grading was done in real time without the need for processing, absolutely fantastic!”
He added: “We were impressed with the time-savings it gave us, but more importantly, when Alastair Fothergill the Director saw the first full screening of Deep Blue he said ‘Thank you, what I have just seen on the screen was what I saw on the Spectre monitor at VTR when grading with Mick Vincent’. He was impressed with Truelight, and so are we.”
Contact – Deepa Parbhoo ([email protected]) +44 20 7292 0400
