What's a digital intermediate? Ask any three people in the post/VFX
industry and you're likely to get at least three answers. Here are some
of the more popular ones we've heard:
  • The integration of film elements such as back plates
  • and/or green screen photography with digital elements that are then
  • recorded out to film.
  • An entire feature film color-timed in a digital box and ouput as
  • data, HD, or film.
  • A film acquired in DV, data or HD that's digitally color timed and
  • output to film.
  • A feature film color-timed in a digital box and output to
  • intermediate film stock.
  • Any picture information – video or film – manipulated in the digital
  • realm.
  • All of the above.
  • None of the above.
  • Your definition here.
The digital intermediate has a mongrel pedigree. Depending on who's
talking, its birthplace was the first nonlinear experiments in
primetime TV in the 1980s, the earliest days of digital VFX using
home-grown scanners and manipulation tools, or the dueling DI solutions
from Kodak (Cineon) and Quantel (Domino).
Then there's the debate over the first real DI? Do you put your money
on Pleasantville, director Gary Ross's 1998 movie that flipped from
B&W to color? How about director Peter Greenaway's revolutionary
"analog intermediate" with Prospero's Books released in 1991? Or do
you favor the wildly inventive music videos and splashy commercials of
the early 1990s?
All the differing points of view prove that DI is a moving target. And
so DI/Studio will give you the big picture as we suss out the process,
pipeline, tools, budgetary alternatives, talent and politics that are
defining what DI is today and will be tomorrow.