Color-Coded Sonnenfeld

For Stefan Sonnenfeld, the image impresario at the helm of Company 3,
working in high-resolution became the rule, rather than the exception,
this year. That means having to deliver HD and 2K masters at the same
time, or integrating 2K elements into an SD job. "You worry about
broadcast at the same time you’re worrying about the Internet and
downloads for iPods," he says. "The multi-resolution and
multi-deliverable mix has really transformed our business, and we’ve
had to cater to that."

As an example, he cites a campaign, by telecommunications company SBC,
that had to accommodate a half-dozen different markets globally with
film-outs and deliverables for broadcast TV and the Internet. "We did
the whole job scanned at 2K, conformed it all, and used my DI theaters
to color the footage for the actual film-outs," Sonnenfeld says.
"Through the use of our proprietary LUTs, we took that data and
provided high-definition masters that were color-accurate to the film,
and they were able to downconvert to any type of deliverable necessary
for the job, worldwide. That’s the kind of stuff changing our world
right now."

Shortform work- spots and music videos- has been Company 3’s bread and
butter. But now, with producers of TV series and feature films
increasingly delving into the talent pool from commercials and music
videos to scout new directors and cinematographers, Company 3 gets more
calls from creatives who are already familiar with a DI-style workflow.
"The music video and commercial directors are so used to working in
this environment that they’re almost at a loss if they can’t do it," he
says.

Some of them are also dazzled by what they see when crackerjack
color-grading hits the big screen, as it did with the release of
Domino in October. With a DI supervised by
Sonnenfeld, Domino has an intense, surreal color
palette that makes the vibrant, hyper-realistic work he did on
Man on Fire look almost conservative by comparison.
"Someone yesterday said they were inspired by seeing
Domino –
they wanted to know,‘What stock was that?’ and‘How did you make it look
like that?’ It encouraged them to try different things and come up with
different looks and processes for their own work. That’s a wonderful
thing to hear."

If Sonnenfeld is the standard-bearer of envelope-pushing DIs, he and
other DI artists are also at the nexus of some anxiety over the idea of
color decisions being made digitally, behind the locked door of a
telecine suite, with the DP essentially shut out of the process.
Sonnenfeld has little patience for such hand-wringing. "I think that’s
ridiculous," he says. "I think all the DPs I work with are happy to
hear that one of our colorists is working with them, because all we’re
there to do is to enhance the work. We’re not creating what’s on the
film. They are. They’re skilled artists and technicians, and they’re
shooting on set and storing the image on film. We’re there to make
things better, to help things out, and to create new looks that aren’t
technically possible to accomplish on location. But if there’s a DP out
there who thinks the technological advances aren’t going to help him, I
think they’re going to have some problems going forward."

Sonnenfeld’s M.O. varies from project to project. If he’s not working
with both the director and the DP, he may end up working with just one
or the other. Circumstances often dictate exactly how things come
together. "If the DP happens to not be there – if he’s off working on
his next project- what can you do?" he asks. "If he wants to be there,
he needs to be there. And it’s not just the DP – the director
has a lot to do with how the movie looks, too. The art director has a
lot to do with how the movie looks."

And as far as the idea that new systems like Kodak’s Look Manager will
let cinematographers lock in look decisions during production that will
carry all the way through to the timing suite, well, color him
skeptical. "That’s what color charts are for," he says. "It’s not
difficult to understand what someone’s going for. The trouble is, it’s
impossible to get the same variety of looks you can get in telecine
just by shooting or photochemically timing in the lab.

"It’s also a little strange to say you should only get one shot at
[setting a look]. When you’re cutting a movie, you may have intended to
convey something when you were shooting, but when you go into the
cutting room you may be manipulate it in a different direction and come
up with something more fantastic. It’s the same with coloring. Maybe
you go blue with one scene, then you go warm, and then green, and then
neutral. You can see 16 different versions of the scene in 10 minutes
and decide which one works better. But how are you going to decide on a
look if you can’t see it?"

Finally, despite his forward-thinking approach to the moving image,
Sonnenfeld expressed some reservations about the new crop of
high-resolution cameras. Working with Michael Mann on pre-production
for Miami Vice, he says he got to test the range of
cutting-edge shooting options, including the Panavision Genesis, but
the production settled on Sony HDCAMs and the Grass Valley Viper, along
with film. "All these new cameras are terrific, but I think they need
more work," he says. "If you don’t know what you’re doing, they can be
very cumbersome and tricky and inefficient. You can also end up with a
product that doesn’t look very good. When people are saying, across the
board, that they’re flexible and easy to use, more people will start
doing it."