Thunderstruck Comes Alive
with Digital Intermediate

Thunderstruck is Digital Pictures Sydney's second digital intermediate feature film in as many months.
When Director Darren Ashton and Producer, Jodi Matterson from Wild Eddie Films first discussed the Thunderstruck project with Digital Pictures, they knew that they wanted a digital intermediate but didn't quite know how it could be achieved; in essence they wanted the level of flexibility that came with the digital process, which is lacking at a lab.
With Digital Pictures' depth of knowledge in film and its sophisticated range of technology, Darren and Digital Pictures Head of Film, Siggy Ferstl set about planning a pipeline which would best deliver the filmmaker's vision. After looking at 2 and 3 perf options it was decided to shoot 4perf Super 35mm. With the DI process, shooting S35mm allows the use of sperical lenses rather than anamorphics and devivers a first generation anamorphic negative avoiding the optcal blowup.
Digital Pictures acquired the latest film software 'Nucleas' from da Vinci for Thunderstruck. The new da Vinci Nucleas has a wide range of advanced tools which along with massive storage capacity became the hub of the digital process. Nucleas incorporates Revival (dust busting and restoration) and the 2K (colour correction) and can capture the 2K data scans from the Spirit Datacine onto its disk array using an EDL for absolute accuracy. Once scanned Digital Pictures used Nucleas to conform the entire 2K scans into six film spools rendering dissolves, speed changes and freezes And Once conformed Siggy had real time non linear colour correction and playback of the conformed spools.
"The system is fantastic. Colour grading in context and in real time was the greatest advantage as well as being able to zoom and reposition. And because we scanned the film in full 2K RGB log colour space we have all the information from the film available for grading. Being a hardware colour corrector, even working at 2K meant there was no hit in performance when using multi layers of colour correction, defocus or keys," Siggy said.
For Thunderstruck, the DI process wasn't used to stylize the images but to
enhance what was originally captured through colour correction. Colour and contrast were added and because of varying weather conditions having all that control helped smooth out shots for better continuity. The desert scenes had all greens removed to give a more dry and desert feel while grads were added to strengthen the skies. One scene, which was set in a small bedroom and features a conversation between two main actors, was totally relit using multiple layers of grades and vignettes to give it a more intimate feel.
Collaboration during the DI process between the colourist and director are vital. "Having all that grading power to create any look can sometimes be detrimental to the final quality of the film. With a film like Thunderstruck it was important to keep to realistic manipulations. It was about giving the film a more polished look whilst keeping its filmic look," Siggy comments.
The Thunderstruck digital intermediate is a milestone in digital filmmaking as it is the first feature film that utilizes the da Vinci conform tools to grade a whole feature from disk/data. The film is being graded in its conform state (first) and can be watched in 2k real time.
"A successful DI is when you see the results projected in a cinema and you can't tell it has been through the digital process. To me one of the keys is monitor calibration accuracy. At Digital Pictures we spent a lot of time generating look-up tables which provides the ability to colour grade in film space which accurately shows you what the images will look like once projected", says Siggy.
According to Director Darren Ashton, "I've worked as a commercials director for many years and Thunderstruck is my first major feature film project. The digital intermediate process delivered the same sort of creative flexibility that I would normally have in video, but in the film world, the flexibility the process provides is fairly unprecedented."
"Digital Pictures was incredibly supportive from a very early stage. It is really comforting to have your entire post taken care of by one company, particularly with a new process such as Digital Intermediate. You can have 3 or 4 different companies working across different aspects during post and things can fall through cracks. Digital Pictures took full responsibility for the end product. They put in 100% and it shows in the end result," says Producer, Jodi Matterson.

Thunderstruck will be released theatrically in early 2004.

• Executive Producers: Al Clark and Andrena Finlay
• Digital Post: Digital Pictures Sydney
• Digital Film Colourist: Siggy Ferstl
• Vfx Supervisor: David Booth
• Executive Producer : Jackie Lee
• Producer: Prue Fletcher
• Title design: Darrin Hanley
• Vfx artist: Mick Harkin
• Digital Intermediate Supervisor: Nick Monton

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