FilmLight Ltd. announced today that two more top Los Angeles facilities have purchased the Truelight system to ensure colour accuracy on electronic displays for film and video applications. Modern VideoFilm and Rhythm & Hues are the most recent adopters, joining other companies worldwide such as Pacific Title and Art Studio, FotoKem, Framestore CFC, the Moving Picture Company, Industrial Light & Magic, and others which have added key colour management capabilities within and across their facilities.

Accuracy Across Multiple Deliverables is Key for Modern VideoFilm

“Colour management is essential for every aspect of the post facility today – not just DI,” said Alan Hart, Executive VP of Engineering at Modern VideoFilm. “We can’t be absolutely positive about the final destination of every digital image, and we need a way to accurately convert them to the colour spaces in which the client will use the images. We chose Truelight because the science behind it is very solid, the FilmLight team is extremely responsive, and the technology gives us a flexible, repeatable way to manage colour throughout the post production process.”

Modern VideoFilm is equipped with five Truelight HD/SDI hardware systems, which are implemented in all of the company’s DI theatres as well as its Inferno suites. To input and adjust custom parameters like lab density or recording gamma and manage project variables on the fly, the company also purchased the Truelight “cube builder.” Recent projects including I Robot, Elektra, and Hitch are a few of the titles that have utilized Truelight during testing and implementation of the system at Modern VideoFilm.

Keeping Colour Accurate Throughout VFX Creation at Rhythm & Hues

Academy Award-winning visual effects studio Rhythm & Hues recently purchased two Truelight systems and the Truelight software library to maintain colour accuracy to the final film print across all of the facility’s workstations – from hundreds of Linux systems running custom compositing software to desktop PCs running Adobe Photoshop. The company plans to use the system first on the upcoming film, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

Will McCown, Rhythm & Hues’ Chief Engineer, said, “We’re still a film-in and film-out shop. Everyone who touches a project needs to be aware of the final print.” He added, “Colour calibration is of course a critical part of the process, and in the past, we built a 3-D look up table [LUT] based on our lab, stock, and other parameters. Now we’ve outgrown that LUT and with Truelight, we have an easy way to quickly create and update it without having to re-engineer the whole thing.”

FilmLight Commercial Director Peter Stothart noted, “Facilities understand the critical need for colour accuracy, but until now, they’ve had to choose between the limitations of pre-defined, 2-D lookup tables and spending R&D dollars to engineer their own solutions. Truelight gives them the flexibility to quickly check colour accuracy with the push of a button, or input their own variables into an existing application to build custom 3-D cubes. These recent purchases by leading facilities in Los Angeles are confirmation for us that we’ve provided the tools facilities require.”

Truelight has been applied on a number of films, including Cold Mountain, Deep Blue, Elektra, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Hustle & Flow, I Robot, Ladies in Lavender, Love Actually, Marilyn Hotchkiss Ballroom Dancing and Charm School, Noel, Shaun of the Dead, Smile, Thunderbirds, Tomb Raider II, Troy, and others.

Contact – Deepa Parbhoo ([email protected]) +44 20 7292 0400

Download this article