Technicolor has extended its color grading capabilities in Hollywood with FilmLight’s Baselight X system. Baselight X is the latest and most powerful implementation of the Baselight colour grading and finishing system.
HDR color grading services are available at Technicolor’s postproduction facilities globally, but its Hollywood center obviously represents a major film and television production market. The expansion in Baselight grading in this location reflects the increasing demand from the local industry to deliver an uncompromised finish that still pushes creative boundaries. Baselight X provides exceptional power and performance for HDR projects, along with color space management.
HDR is not the only technology where Technicolor is very active. Over the past few years, the group has made a significant commitment to the growth of several next-generation entertainment formats, such as 120fps stereo 4K, 8K UHD and other custom display formats. The architecture of Baselight X ensures Technicolor can rise to the challenge to work at the maximum resolution through every stage in the process–from the original source material to the final deliverables.
Technicolor’s sr. supervising colorist, Maxine Gervais, has worked with Baselight for many years. “Of the many things that are important to better serve my clients, one is to work directly from raw camera files,” she explained. “The ability to debayer these files live not only saves time, but it preserves image detail that can be accessed and manipulated during the DI.”
The Ultra HD video output – available on all Baselight systems – provides a full 4K 4:4:4 display output at frame rates up to 60p, allowing the user to view 4K work at its native resolution. Additionally Baselight X also incorporates a large, ultra high-speed storage system that connects directly to the internal image processing components, addressing Dolby’s requirement to play 4K 4096×3112 16-bit film scans and cache the results to disk at the same time.
“As camera technologies evolve, it’s become common for shows to capture and deliver 6K raw files,” added Gervais. “And some shows are moving towards a 4K VFX workflow too. The additional processing power and storage capacity of Baselight X is essential in allowing me to work with today’s larger files, without sacrificing the real-time playback with complex colour grading and compositing that my clients have come to expect.”
Technicolor and FilmLight have a long history of collaboration, with Technicolor facilities in Montreal, New York, Los Angeles and London all offering Baselight as part of their DI pipeline. This gives Technicolor’s colorists and color scientists ultimate real-time control over high-resolution, high-bit depth HDR grading and finishing.
Writers of “Conclave,” “Say Nothing” Win Scripter Awards
The authors and screenwriters behind the film “Conclave” and the series “Say Nothing” won the 37th-annual USC Libraries Scripter Awards during a black-tie ceremony at USC’s Town and Gown ballroom on Saturday evening (2/22).
The Scripter Awards recognize the year’s most accomplished adaptations of the written word for the screen, including both feature-length films and episodic series.
Novelist Robert Harris and screenwriter Peter Straughan took home the award for “Conclave.”
In accepting the award, Straughan said, “Adaptation is a really strange process, you’re very much the servant of two masters. In a way it’s an act of betrayal of one master for the other.” He joked that “You start off with a book that you love, you read it again and again, and then you end up throwing it over your shoulder,” crediting author Robert Harris for being “so kind, so generous, so open throughout.”
In the episodic series category, Joshua Zetumer and Patrick Radden Keefe won for the episode “The People in the Dirt” from the limited series “Say Nothing,” which Zetumer adapted from Keefe’s nonfiction book about the Troubles in Ireland.
Zetumer referenced this year’s extraordinary group of Scripter finalists, saying “projects like these reminded me of why I wanted to become a writer when I was sitting in USC’s Leavey Library dreaming of becoming a screenwriter. If you fell in love with movies, or fell in love with TV, chances are you fell in love with something dangerous.”
Special guest for the evening, actress and producer Jennifer Beals, shared her thoughts on the impact of libraries. “If ever you are at a loss wondering if there is good in the world,” she said, “you have only to go to a... Read More