Side by Side Page #7

up with the cuts and saying,

"I don't know. That looked a little cyan to me," or something, and the

guy is, like, trying to write

it down- write the footage down

as it goes by, and you can't stop and- that just seemed crazy to me.

Digital color correction

tools were first used for

shorter pieces such as

commercials and music videos.

I used to do tons of

music videos, and we came up

with some of the craziest and, I think, groundbreaking visual images,

and it was just an amazing

ability to come into a room like

this and manipulate something to

create images that people had

never seen before.

Digital color correction

began replacing traditional

photochemical methods of color timing.

My job is to be able to make

sure that the creatives get

everything that they want,

so the cinematographer gets

a palette or the contrast that

he wants, and, of course, the

director gets the feeling that

he wants throughout the movie,

and make sure that we can see

all the actors' eyes and see all

of the emotion that he wants to see.

I can now start building what we

call "power windows."

In a power window, I can change

any kind of hue I want.

If I just want those trees over

on the left, I can pick the

color that I want of those trees

and I can isolate it.

Now I can change those trees to

any color I want.

The cinematographer and the

director come in and we spend

a couple weeks grading the film

and giving it that look, you

know, to make it look beautiful- however they want it to look.

I have this great feeling that

I can do just about anything you

ask me to do within reason.

Who invented this process?

You know, it was the same

technology that people used for

music videos to create all those

cool looks.

And, basically, what happened is

over the last, whatever, ten years,

it's just evolved to become a lot more streamlined.

O Brother, Where Art Thou? Was

really the first movie where

basically every single frame

was a visual effect.

So it was all color timed

digitally for the look.

So it was the first D.I.

It was just kind of- you know,

roger deakins is sittin' in the

room saying, "I can't get what

I want in photochemical because

every time I color time it this nice golden color, I lose all my blue skies.

What am I gonna do?"

It seems a little bit yellow,

doesn't it?

Oh, yeah, the trees were

a little bit more brown.

So he came in and did

testing-actually, I got to sit

with him and showed him,

"Okay, we can key it.

What we can do is, we can

basically affect everything in

the image except for the blue in the sky."

And also, they were wearing overalls, all right,

so the blue in the wardrobe.

But everything else, like the

green trees that are not in the

palette that you want, we can desaturate them and make them brown-gold."

So out of necessity of the

look for the movie and then

other people kind of catching

on, saying, "ooh, I could use

that in-" you know?

It just became, you know, more

and more popular.

Timing is a very frustrating

process on photochemical.

It's just very crude.

It's very-you can hardly do

anything.

That's the whole thing about D.I.

When I could go in and circle

little things and make a face a

little bit redder and, you know,

bring out the background or

bring-I just was in heaven.

I said, "This is amazing.

I can do anything to fix this

movie."

And what I find interesting

now looking back to the

beginning experimentation of a lot of cinematographers like myself,

going from a film original into the digital world,

seeking more control over the

image and being able to

manipulate the image more, is

that now, we actually have less

control because we then give away our negative or give away our product.

Anybody can take it after that

and can manipulate it.

The colorist is a really important aspect of the final product.

I'm the one that's pushing these buttons to make your film look a certain way.

Yes, I'm getting the direction,

but it's a lot of my own

intuitiveness to crank that

a certain amount and to push

that into a certain direction.

So I'm kind of like the last person that really gets to touch it.

It started off as being very

adversarial between

cinematographers and colorists

because it was like, "Oh, well,

he shouldn't be determining

what the look of the film is.

I do that."

The beauty of these projects

these days is, it's a team.

I think it could take power

away from the DP, but I think

it's your job as a cinematographer to try your best

to see it through to the end,

and I think they would do

everything in their power to

make sure they're present at the

D.I. and that they supervise

that so that their vision that

they originally intended was

executed.

On The Gangs of New York,

they offered me to do a D.I,

but because everything was

built for us, what we had on

screen was exactly what we wanted.

We didn't have to have a D.I.

to change everything.

What I'm trying always to do

with-in camera

and with lighting and

with filters and with lenses

but not later in the D.I.

Okay, if you have a special

story where you need to change

the reality, then a D.I. is

something wonderful, because you

can do whatever you want with

the image, which can be great,

which can be wonderful.

Once we get done digitally

color-correcting your movie,

we make a brand new negative and

then make a print of that negative.

Then we look at the print versus

the data in a side-by-side fashion.

And then we dial in the print to

match the data to make the print

look exactly the way it should.

How do you feel about-when

you do all of this work and you

have it pristine and you're

gonna have some prints that are

perfect and then some prints-

I mean, do you have to kind of

let it go once you create it?

Honestly, the truth of the

matter is, is that when you go

to a theater and you watch that

print that you spent weeks

laboring on, every theater looks different.

They have the luminance on their

projector at a different level

or, you know, there's so many

variables.

The real auteur, ultimately,

of a picture, if you want to use

the word, is the projectionist.

The sound can be loud or low,

you can see the head of the

actor or not 'cause he can

frame you out 'cause he's busy.

He's got things to do.

You know, a film will come up

and one reel will be blue;

another reel will be brown because of the projector light, you know.

But we got to enjoy that.

I thought it was part of the film.

It's always a huge disappointment now for me to see a film print.

Like, it's depressing.

It's not sharp.

It doesn't have any snap.

It's shaking.

It's dirty.

I hate it.

I put in a tremendous amount

of effort to make my images the

way I have them in mind, and

I create them, and I have them

on the finished product in the

camera.

But what happens afterwards?

The quality of film is

terrible in a theater,

and anybody in Hollywood, they say,

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