Press Release

Encore Hollywood provided Digital Intermediate services for
Day Watch (Dnevnoy Dozor), a Russian film from
Director Timur Bekmambetov that scored the biggest opening week box
office in that country’s history when it premiered there this month.
The project was the first to pass through Encore’s new DI pipeline and
was by all measures colossal in scale. The 142-minute film involved
more than 7 terabytes of 2K data and some 500 visual effects shots
supplied by VFX vendors located across Europe.
Day Watch is the second film in a fantasy-action
trilogy about forces of light and dark that battle in medieval and
contemporary Russia. The first film in the series, Night
Watch
, also directed by Bekmambetov, set all-time box office
records for a Russian film-records that are now being broken by the
sequel. Fox Searchlight Pictures bought international distribution
rights to the trilogy and plans to release Night
Watch
in the U.S. in February with Day
Watch
to follow in 2007.
Encore Hollywood handled color grading and final compositing for
Day Watch, and provided similar services for
Night Watch. However while post work for the earlier
film was performed with HD media, the work for Day
Watch
was conducted in high resolution data with color
grading completed in the studio’s new DI Theater.
It was a heady undertaking, according to Encore Hollywood Managing
Director Barbara Marshall, as constuction of the theater was completed
just two weeks before work on Day Watch began.”Given
the size and scope of the project, and the fact that our client was
overseas, it was a challenge as our first venture into DI,” said
Marshall. “But we were very pleased by how well our team and our room
performed.”
The workflow for Day Watch was unusual and placed
intense demands on Encore’s DI staff. The majority of the film was shot
on 35mm film and those elements were scanned to 2K data in Russia and
shipped to Encore on hard drives. Additional elements were recorded on
HDCAM and 16mm film. The 16mm elements were shipped directly to the
U.S. and scanned by Encore.
In order to make the delivery date for the film’s premiere in Russia,
color grading had to begin before the film was fully edited. Encore’s
Dan Aguilar, who conformed the film in the studio’s Discreet Fire bay,
regularly received updated cuts from the film’s Russian editor, Dmitri
Kiselyov, which he had to incorporate into the film’s master and then
pass on to the DI Theater. Color grading spanned two shifts with
Colorist Arnold Ramm working days, followed by Laura Jans at night.
“While I was assembling reel two with the assistant editor, Arnold was
next door grading reel one,” recalled Aguilar. “As soon as Arnold was
done, he’d render out the finished color and I’d send him the next
reel.”
To make data management easier, all of the 2K data for the film was
stored on a central server directly accessible to both the Fire and the
DI Theater. The studio’s infrastructure was designed to handle
high-speed data flows seamlessly. As a result, editorial changes made
by Aguilar were available to Ramm or Jans in the DI Theater in the time
it took to walk between rooms.
Still with clients located half a world away and intricate effects
elements arriving from multiple foreign suppliers, the logistics of
managing the project were intimidating. “Coordinating this whole
exercise was a huge undertaking,” noted Encore DI Producer Clif Gordon.
“We had to make sure that things hit at the right time, that the proper
elements were delivered for film recording, and that our artists made
it to screenings of the film. It was a team effort.”
Ramm, who took the lead in color grading, said it required trial and
error to arrive at the right look for Day Watch. “We
went through four distinct iterations,” he said. “I initially set a
look with the DP, but the director wanted a different approach and the
Russian executive producers had yet another idea in mind. The producers
ultimately connected me with a veteran film timer, Matvey Schatz-a
Russian à©migrà©-and together we came up with a look that satisfied
everyone. We called it our ‘Russian’ look.”
That look, said Ramm, differs from the cool, blue look typical of many
contemporary American action films. “It’s a little more crisp and
slightly on the warm side of neutral,” he said. “It has the quality of
parchment.”
Jans noted that the look conforms to the expectations of Russian
moviegoers and to the technology of Russian movie houses. “Russian
projectors generally have weaker lights than we do here,” she said.
“Too much contrast can be a problem.”
In addition to setting the color, Ramm had to reframe the film. The
film was shot with the intention of displaying it in a 1:8:5 aspect
ratio, but the producers later decided to go with anamorphic framing at
a ratio of 2:3:5. “We had to reframe every shot,” Ramm said. “We looked
at it through a matte and did a lot of vertical panning.”
Ramm said that Encore’s DI Theater offers the best coloring environment
of any facility he has seen. He added that his Russian clients were
thrilled with the ability to correct color in real time and to use
video-style tools to make subtle adjustments.
“Our Da Vinci 2K color corrector has six windows and two defocus boards
and that allows us to do just about anything,” observed Ramm. “We could
defocus highlights and see the results immediately on the projection
screen. We could decide if we liked it on the spot and move along.”
Jans was equally enthusiastic about working in the DI Theater. “It was
awesome, amazing,” she said. “It’s a non-linear process, so I can call
up any scene I want in a second. It’s such a smooth process.”
Encore Hollywood’s DI pipeline, along with other DI facilities in the
Ascent Media Feature Services Group which also includes Company 3,
differs from those at other facilities in that it encompasses the
entire post production process. Along with the DI Theater and the Fire
suite, the studio employs MTI’s Control Dailies product to prepare
digital dailies and also has an award-winning department for visual
effects work.
Having mounted a virtual round-the-clock effort to deliver Day
Watch
on time, Marshall feels that Encore’s DI team is now
battle tested. “Moving into the next project, we know we have a strong
staff with a lot of experience in managing large scale projects,” she
said.
www.encorehollywood.com