10 Minute Tales And The Queen In 3D

A famous Soho facility has used its Digital Vision portfolio on a number of recent high profile projects including Sky One's highly acclaimed 10 Minute Tales, Channel 4's The Queen in 3D and Ealing comedy The Lady Killers.
The 10 Minute Tales, produced by Hilary Bevan-Jones, is a series of 11 short films that ran over a ten-day period from 21st – 31st December.
Nine of the nine minute silent shorts were graded using Film Master at Ascent 142 by Jet Omoshebi, and feature some of the biggest names in film and drama. Starring Mackenzie Crook, Bill Nighy, Peter Capaldi, Ross Kemp and a host of other well known faces, the 10 Minute Tales provide a unique and engaging look at life, loss, and love. The shorts were shot on a variety of formats including RED and graded in 4:4:4 using Film Master.
The Queen in 3D, a project for the British Film Institute (BFI), was graded using Film Master’s stereoscopic toolset and restored on Digital Vision’s DVNR.
"It's incredibly advantageous to be able to run two tracks on the Film Master simultaneously," explained Paul Collard, VP Film and Digital Services, Ascent 142.
He added: "With restoration projects you often have to cut between several sources of material. In this case we had two complete rolls of 35mm Technicolor film prints from the fifties which were made as left eye/right eye."
Collard continued: "Using Film Master we checked that both films were complete and the same length. The colourist then graded each identically in 2D using a split screen, making two complete HD masters that could be superimposed into the 3D software. The Film Master is a perfect tool for this project. The ability to see both tracks at the same time and do wipes between them significantly simplifies the process. We then restored the material by doing an HD DVNR pass."
He concluded: "The BFI wanted the look to be as faithful to the film as possible and I think we achieved that. The original film prints had good saturations, good blacks, pretty neutral and pale flesh tones that were evocative of the period."
The facility has also recently used Digital Vision's Phoenix production tool on a restoration project for Studio Canal.
The Lady Killers made in 1955 is one of the earliest Ealing comedies and stars Peter Sellers and Alec Guinness.
Digital Vision will be exhibiting at Broadcast Video Expo, February 16th – 18th 2010, on stand L30.
(BMcN/BMcC)