Featured Article: The Darwin Awards

Finn Taylor's "The Darwin Awards" Puts Monaco's New DI Suite To The Test

(From Art Adams’ "Digital Intermediate Comes of Age in the Bay Area")

Director Finn Taylor and Director of Photography, Hiro Narita, ASC, have completed posting Taylor's latest feature "The Darwin Awards" at Monaco Digital Film Labs. The film stars Winona Ryder and Joseph Fiennes. The project made full use of Monaco's new Digital Intermediate Color Correction Theatre and DI workstation.

"The people I trust aesthetically told me I would have more flexibility in the look if I finished the film through DI," says Taylor. "I've been involved with Monaco on three film projects. Previously we worked entirely on film and had fun changing looks by printing on different interpositive stocks. But this film has a lot of special effects and originated on a lot of different mediums, including 16mm, 35mm and high definition video."

"This is the first film I've done with DI," says Narita. "I've known that the ability to blow up 16mm negative to 35mm through DI is much better than blowing up the image optically. Honestly speaking, I can't tell the difference between digitally blown-up 16mm and 35mm."

According to Monaco's digital intermediate supervisor Jim Moye, "the flexibility of the DI workstation allowed us to bring all formats for this project – super 16mm, 35mm, Sony HDCam and standard definition video – into the same timeline. After scaling and conforming the source material in the workstation, transition effects such as dissolves, wipes, repositions, flops and speed changes were added. Afterwards we focused on titling, color correction, and dirt and scratch removal as needed. As the final reels were completed they were digitally projected for approval, then rendered for output to 35mm on the laser recorder."

Colorist Gary Coates worked with Monaco's recently purchased Scratch digital intermediate system and explained the benefits of large screen projection in the DI process. "I've done DI color grading in a video environment, but the DPs can't tell what it will look like in a movie theater because the color space on a video monitor is wrong. With (Monaco's) digital projection we can finally see the colors in a projection color space and filmmakers can see their work the way it will really appear."

"This was the shakedown cruise for DI at Monaco," Taylor notes, "and we've gotten extra attention. It's been great and the process went very smoothly."