ATLAB COMMITS 'DIRTY DEEDS'
SYDNEY
Post-production house Atlab recently completed in excess of 50 digital
optical effects shots on the latest David Caesar-directed feature
'Dirty Deeds'.
The story of an American businessman, played by John Goodman, with
ties to the Chicago mob wined, dined and taken bush in the late
60s by several leading figures in the Sydney underworld also stars
Australia's Bryan Brown and Toni Collete.
The Atlab team working on the project was headed up by senior colorist
Olivier Fontenay, who together with Digital Supervisor, Robert Sandeman,
recently completed work on Philip Noyce's 'Rabbit Proof Fence' and
'Quiet American'.
The digital opticals called for a large number of split screens
and picture in picture effects consistent with the movie's overall
60s motif. Had the film been produced in the 1960s, these carefully
choreographed, design-lead sequences would have been achieved using
traditional film process. However, on seeing the flexibility and
quality of the digital process, post-production supervisor Gordon
Macphail made the decision to utilize Atlab's new Digital Optical
Effects Department for all the film's optical work.
"Working in the digital realm allowed David and Gordon a lot more
freedom," said Atlab's Digital Supervisor Robert Sanderman. "With
some heavily art-directed splits and a large amount of footage,
the exercise would have been a pretty complicated and lengthy process
as a traditional film optical."
Mark Perry, the film's editor, created rough composites, which
were used by Atlab as style guides for the final shots. After lock-off
Atlab scanned all the material at ultra-high resolution via its
Imagica. Pristine quality images then remained on-call from which
Atlab were able to construct the final optical composites. Atlab's
first step was to create rough temporary opticals from these scans
and output via their in-house kine process.
"The Digital Optical process is pretty interactive," said Robert
Sandeman, "but on-screen previews will only get you so far, it's
always important to get the Director looking at film as soon as
possible in the process to get the best possible feedback. After
screening the kine temps we were able to lock-off on the basic framing
and motion and move pretty quickly towards final on-screen versions"
The precise colour and contrast match between digital and original
elements was a crucial part of the optical process and was made
easier with colourist Olivier Fontenay being next door working on
the final answer print at the time.
"We calibrate our digital services with the rest of the lab so
our colourimetry is second to none and because we also work with
maximum resolution 4K scans we are able to maintain the integrity
of the original photography," said Fortenay. "At Atlab,
having a film grading department at your disposal together with
the full back-up of some pretty experienced film technicians makes
integrating digital elements considerably easier than it would be
working outside of the laboratory context. This provides great benefits
to producer and director alike, its a much more productive process,
the digital department is able to work much closer with the film
graders and vice versa to ensure we achieve the optimum results
from both processes."
On final approval the shots were output at Atlab via its ArriLaser
recorder before being cut into the final neg conform and graded
with the original material.
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