Midnight Transfer brings innovation to DI process with 'DI from Day One'

Top London film dailies house Midnight Transfer announced today the launch of its brand new Digital Intermediate service.
Combining the company's expert knowledge of the film market gained over many years, with a £2m plus investment in new technology, Midnight Transfer will now offer a unique and innovative service. Called 'DI from Day One' this new approach harnesses the skills and technologies of FilmLight, Thomson Grass Valley, Root6, DVS and Barco to provide DI from the first day of shooting.
Designed and implemented by Midnight Transfer’s leading team of film specialists, DI from Day One offers greater control and creativity for Directors and DoPs with cost effective and timesaving solutions for film productions.
Currently all dailies are telecined onto tape, with the ultimate destination for the tape being the cutting room. This means that the look, carefully established with the DoP during the shoot, is discarded at an early stage. For preview conforms many hours are spent regrading only for that work to be lost prior to the final DI process when the grading begins from scratch.
The benefit of Midnight Transfer’s approach of scanning from the outset, with the same equipment and colourists grading both the dailies and the finished film, is that all grading elements are preserved and developed throughout the process.
"You are completing your grade with the same colourists on the same machines, using the same files and in the same suite." said Greg Barrett, Head of Production at Midnight Transfer. "This means that by the time you come to do the final grade, the whole look of the film has been firmly established in direct collaboration with the DoP, saving the production time and money while freeing up the creatives to do the work that really counts."
The DI workflow at Midnight Transfer is inherently flexible and extremely fast. To produce high quality 2K dailies, the negative is run straight through a Thomson Grass Valley Spirit 4K film scanner, which scans maximum dynamic range 2K at real time and is also available for 4k scanning. This eliminates the rocking and rolling and general stress on the negative of the conventional dailies process. The data is then passed to a Baselight finishing system from FilmLight for grading. Pin registered scanning for 2K and 4K productions or VFX work is available via the company's Northlight 16mm and 35mm film scanner. Final resolution grading for the theatrical release is achieved in a high end, purpose built grading theatre - designed by White Mark - and equipped with a powerful Baselight Eight system connected to a Barco DP100 2K projector from Bell Theatre Systems.
(GB)