On November 1, the Hollywood Post Alliance (HPA) held its debut awards ceremony at the Skirball Museum. Awards relevant to the DI world include:
  • Digital Vision won an Award in Engineering Excellence for its Digital Vision Optics (DVO) software.
  • Steve Scott at Efilm won Outstanding Color Correction-Feature Film in a DI Process for The Illusionist.
  • Siggy Ferstl at R!OT won Outstanding Color Correction-Television for Afghan Women's Soccer
  • Steve Mottershead from Outside Editorial won Outstanding Color Correction-Commercial for Jaguar "Gorgeous."
Two other Awards in Engineering Excellence went to MTI Films for its Control Dailies and Sony Electronics for HDCAM SR. Post-production visionary Emory Cohen was honored with an Outstanding Contribution to Advancing Post Production.
A 65mm Demo Reel
On November 8, the ASC and the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television opened the doors of the UCLA James Bridges Theatre to showcase imagery photographed by Kees Van Oostrum, ASC, who recently directed and shot George Washington, which is showing at the Mount Vernon Visitors Center and Bill Bennett, ASC, who directed and shot a test for ARRI.

The point of the demo was to show the superiority of 65mm film for panoramic and establishing shots, and to prove that this material could be seamlessly integrated with 35mm. Footage was shown as a 35mm anamorphic print that utilized a DI; a 70mm contact print from the original camera negative without a DI; an uncompressed 4K digital file; and as DCI-recommended compressed images with the Sony SXRD 4K digital projection system.

Exploring Post Pathways
And UCLA grad film/TV students in editor Nancy Richardson's "Post Pathways" class had a chance to follow a project shot in three different ways through different post pipelines. That included a DI in Complete Post's Incinerator suite, by colorist Wayne Hampton. Most important lesson? What happens-and doesn't happen-in the DI suite (students learned that VFX and dust-busting is best done elsewhere). Most crucial: however tempting, don't take shortcuts in production with the idea you can "fix it in post." Say amen, someone.