The subject of high definition (HD) commercialmaking is vast. Forces from technological changes to new creative options to government mandates to budgets have collided and certainly caused confusion. But today, while not all is ironed out, a path is becoming more apparent.
In the broadcast world, the topic started a flurry of activity back in December ’96 when the Federal Communications Commission mandated that today’s analog transmission system be phased out and replaced with one that is digital. Despite a sluggish transition and much confusion–and what appears to now be a goal of 2009 to complete this transition–it looks like HDTV, an option afforded by the new digital transmission system, has been embraced. Domestically, CBS and ABC now offer their entire primetime episodic series lineups in HD, and NBC offers a large portion. As well, an increasing number of special events including NFL football, MLB, and the Academy Awards are offered in HD. This lineup will include next year’s Super Bowl and Winter Olympics. Meanwhile, an increasing number of HD cable stations have launched, including HBO, Showtime, ESPN, and HDNET.
The global market is also beginning to embrace HD, with HDTV programming already available in countries including Japan, Australia, Canada, and parts of Europe.
To take advantage of the higher resolution offered by HD broadcasting, commercialmakers would need to deliver HD spots. But today, broadcasting is only one reason to look toward HD production.
The ability to create a higher quality deliverable for the growing cinema advertising market makes a compelling reason to look at HD.
Meanwhile, consumer awareness and acceptance are kicking in. Sales of HD-ready television sets are on the rise, and a next generation consumer high definition DVD format is in the works. Meanwhile, in the prosumer market, one can now get an HD camcorder for under $5,000, and edit HD on a Mac or PC with off-the-shelf software.
HD capabilities are pretty much standard in today’s professional equipment, and these tools–including Apple’s Final Cut Pro that offers professional HD editing on a Mac–are both maturing and affordable.
PRODUCTION
To produce an HD commercial, a spot needs only to be finished in HD and delivered in an HD tape format. This process can vary little from today’s production process if one chooses. In fact, production needs do not have to change at all. (However, for HD production and post, one does need to consider aspect ratios, which often shift from 4:3 to 16:9).
Film is, by definition, a high definition medium. This means commercialmakers can continue to shoot film and then simply do an HD transfer for postproduction. Cinematographers also have an expanding range of options in some of the new HD and digital cinematography cameras available on the market. Some of these have already been tested by leading cinematographers and used on actual commercial shoots, including the Panavision Genesis, Arri D-20, Thomson’s Grass Valley Viper and Sony’s F900/F950 cameras.
Organizations such as the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) Technology Committee, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) Technical Council are involved in further testing of such technologies. Other efforts have included a test led by Bill Bennett, ASC, and Russell Carpenter, ASC, last summer as part of Cine Gear Expo.
In post, options are enormous. Today, most post technology supports HD, from inexpensive desktop tools to high-end HD and data pipelines.
Companies such as New York-based Nice Shoes are trying to move commercial work to higher resolutions, and charge the same for HD or SD finishing. Other companies charge premiums that have been estimated to sit at around 15 percent of an SD budget.
An informal survey of major commercial post houses suggests that the major reason for HD finishing today is to offer higher resolution to those spots planned for theatrical release in cinemas.
Other reasons are client input, says Optimus partner/senior colorist Craig Leffel. “What is driving most of our current HD is a demand from the agency client,” he explains. “More and more brand managers, VP’s, CEO’s, CFO’s, et cetera, are starting to get HD broadcasts delivered to their homes. They are starting to wonder why their ‘HD’ commercials don’t look very good. In many cases, the ‘HD’ being shown on an HD broadcast is just an SD commercial that’s been up-rezed.”
THE DIGITAL INTERMEDIATE
Clients are also finding advantages offered by new Digital Intermediate (DI) style workflows, reports Joe Bottazzi, principal/director of engineering at Nice Shoes.
In Hollywood, DI generally describes the process of scanning film into the digital realm for all postproduction, including color grading, to create a digital master that would be used to recorder back to film, as well as to all other required media for distribution. But in the commercial world, production doesn’t always begin with film nor does it always end there. And variations of the process using tools developed for DI work are now used in commercial post not just in the U.S., but also in countries including New Zealand, the Netherlands, Spain and in the UK.
Some of these sites are also going to resolutions higher than HD by working with data–where frames are now files.
There are three main qualities of an image: the number of horizontal lines of resolution, which is measured by “pixels” in the data world; vertical lines of resolution (also “pixels”); and bit depth (the number of bits representing the value of each pixel).
In today’s world of standard definition video, NTSC video is displayed at 640 X 480 lines of resolution; in high definition, the most commonly used format is 1920 X 1080 lines.
Some pundits believe that when data production gets off the ground, commercials may be produced in “2k” data, or 2,048 X 1,556 lines. This is the resolution commonly used today on features for digital intermediate work. From here, clients have a high resolution “digital master” from which all deliverables can be created, including NTSC, PAL, HD or film.
A key advantage to this process in commercial post is flexibility, as data offers the entire post process–including color correction–a nonlinear experience like creative editing.
Companies such as Nice Shoes and Company 3, Santa Monica and New York, are already offering these options to clients.
Company 3’s Santa Monica location even boasts two DI theaters, which are used for features, as well as trailers and commercials. In fact, Company 3 managing director/colorist Stefan Sonnenfeld today has a steady flow of feature clients, and he recently served as DI colorist on such motion pictures as Michael Bay’s The Island and Ridley Scott’s Domino.
Others sites with DI theater environments, such as Technicolor Content Services (formerly named Technicolor Creative Services), New York, use their suites for commercials and trailers as well as a steady stream of independent films, that often are finished in HD.
It’s the flexibility of nonlinear color correction that is prompting additional sites. For instance, a DI suite is currently under construction at The Mill’s London base (it also maintains a New York locale). The effort is being led by veteran colorist Mick Vincent (whose DI feature titles include The Upside of Anger), who reports that the data workflow and nonlinear color correction services are key to the new environment.
These sort of services are more complex to add as there are still unresolved workflow issues, particularly interoperability between developing software-based color correction and DI-finishing applications.
Some of the more problematic ones are being addressed by the ASC Technology Committee’s DI subcommittee, which is focusing on look management control by encouraging all color correction system vendors to agree on certain minimum standards to enable a post professional to set a look on one vendor’s color correction system and move it to another and get the same results.
The group is currently encouraging the adoption of what is being called an “ASC CDL (Color Decision List)” that would be offered as an upgrade to existing color correction systems and would enable a colorist to read and exchange information from other systems. “Pretty much everybody that you can think of is involved,” reports DI subcommittee chair Lou Levinson, who is a colorist at Hollywood and New York-based Post Logic.
Levinson says he expects the first announcements of these developments to begin in the pre-NAB time frame next winter.
LOOKING AHEAD
Today further advancements in the development of DI/color grading tools are being driven by work coming from the Hollywood community in the developing area of digital cinema; and this work will likely impact future releases of production and post technologies. The seven-studio consortium Digital Cinema Initiatives (DCI) published its recommendations last summer. Meanwhile, the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE)–a standards-making body–is working on setting digital cinema standards that some on the committee expect will be completed by the end of 2006 (see story, p. 1).
All of this work will result in expanded tools and creative options for filmmakers. Meanwhile, new business models are forming. As a result, 2006 is shaping up to be a year when both tools and processes will go through great change.
SHOOT first stepped up to the plate to provide education in this complex area by introducing its “DTV and Advertising” series of special supplements in ’98. With ’06 clearly poised to be another year of rapid change, SHOOT is preparing to publish several special HD reports next year to provide further education and analysis. And as always, SHOOT will be working closely with you, our readers, in these efforts as the industry moves forward. Watch for more information on this project in the coming months. Or contact Carolyn Giardina, SHOOT’s senior editor, technology and postproduction, for additional information (cgiardina@shootonline.com).
