...and There's No Reason You Shouldn't Put Your Look on a Memory Stick

If you liked that moody look of a recent sci-fi hit, can you rent, license, purchase or cajole your way into applying the exact same look-up table on your indie horror film?
"Looks" as a commodity is one of the interesting ‘ and emotionally fraught – questions that arise as the idea of creating a "look" in pre-production turns digital and, therefore, more easily reproducible.
Creating a look in pre-production is nothing new. Traditionally, cinematographers have fashioned their unique approaches to film through tests and the choices they make from camera and lenses to lighting.
But what if the cinematographer's pre-production determinations are output as a look-up table and stored on a memory stick that can be taken from location to the set to editorial offline to the DI suite? That's what's happening at The Camera House, a rental facility in North Hollywood in collaboration with Creative Bridge, a newly formed company focused on digital "pre-post." These companies have created a digital workflow centered around the Grass Valley Viper recording to S.two Digital Field Recorders on S.two D-Mag.
Long before the director calls "action," The Camera House works with the director and/or cinematographer in creating, via Assimilate Scratch, a 1D LUT that will be used on-set. "This isn't for every job," explains Chad Martin, head of The Camera House's digital division. "It's ideal for any job that requires a specific look." The Director of Photographer walks out with a memory stick or any other easy storage device.

On the set, the Viper records raw data onto the S.two digital magazines, but the DP can also easily apply the "look" of his pre-determined LUT to the raw footage, right on set. "They're 'instantlies', not dailies," says Martin. "We're giving them the ability to see their look on set." That carries over to the offline edit where the LUT can be applied to footage converted to Avid OMF or Final Cut Pro Quicktime files. "Typically the editor would have gotten a one-light," Martin continues. "It's not a final color grade and it is a down-resed version with some compression applied. But the editor has more information in terms of what the DP and director are looking for with the LUT applied."
Creative Bridge clones the digital negative, using proprietary code to ingest footage off the S.two Digital Field Recorders to 2K faster than real time, onto LTO3 data tapes. With a planned March launch for a mobile truck that can go on location to supervise color and data workflow, Creative Bridge will offer an on-location state-of-the-art projection room and Assimilate Scratch to allow filmmakers to set looks, evaluate takes and view circle takes on calibrated monitors with a native 1920×1080 projector. "You can start immediately engaging in color correction decisions," says Creative Bridge president Brian Gaffney, who reports the company's two on-staff colorists (Jeff Olm and Price Pethel) can be coloring the newly captured footage in the mobile truck while the shooting day continues.
When it's a wrap, who "owns" the look that's been created in pre-pro and applied throughout the process? On that score, The Camera House president/CEO Rufus Burnham is firm. "Cinematographers will own their own looks," he says. "It's proprietary to them." The Camera House is happy to store those looks on a computer or a series of memory sticks, but cinematographers can choose to do their own storing and archiving. "They have complete control over their own looks, and they can build a library of LUTs for themselves for any given situation."