Understanding Digital Cinema

The definitive work on digital cinema by all the Hollywood insiders!

Color and Mastering for Digital Cinema explores the implications for motion picture post production processes and changes required to the supporting equipment and software. While a new concept to the motion picture community, the selection of the wide gamut, output-referred XYZ color space for digital cinema distribution is based on decades of color science and experience in other industries. The rationale for choosing XYZ and the other color encoding parameters is explained and the book also provides a full case study of the development of DLP Cinema® projectors by Texas Instruments. Finally, this book explores how the XYZ color encoding concept can be extended to support enhanced display technologies in the future. This book contains: * Brilliant 4-color illustrations that compliment the color science explanations * Never before published industry information from author Glenn Kennel, a world leader in digital cinema color technology * Descriptions of key issues and background on decisions that were made in the standardization process By Glenn Kennel, Glenn Kennel is VP/GM of Feature Film Services at Laser Pacific Media Corporation, a leading provider of a full range of post production services for television and feature film. Recently, he worked for the DLP Cinema group of Texas Instruments in a role that included technology and business development. Previously, in a twenty year career with Kodak, he led the development of the Cineon digital film scanners and laser recorders and the prototype HDTV telecine that became the Spirit Datacine. As a consultant, he helped DCI draft the technical specifications for digital cinema. Kennel also chairs the SMPTE DC28 Color ad hoc group and the DC28.20 Distribution working group. He is a SMPTE Fellow and has received the SMPTE Journal Award. He is also a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

This introduction to contemporary digital cinema tracks its intersection with video art, music video, animation, print design and live club events to create an avant-garde for the new millennium. It begins by investigating digital cinema and its contribution to innovations in the feature-film format, examining animation and live-action hybrids, the gritty aesthetic of the Dogme 95 filmmakers, the explosions of frames within frames and the evolution of the ‘ambient narrative’ film. This study then looks at the creation of new genres and moving-image experiences as what we know as ‘cinema’ enters new venues and formats.

Explores how film analysis can take account of the presence of digital images in cinema. Not just for digital effects enthusiasts, this book is essential for anyone interested in how to approach film critically: it is a toolbox for contemporary film analy

Avatar. Inception. Jurassic Park. Lord of the Rings. Ratatouille. Not only are these some of the highest-grossing films of all time, they are also prime examples of how digital visual effects have transformed Hollywood filmmaking. Some critics, however, fear that this digital revolution marks a radical break with cinematic tradition, heralding the death of serious realistic movies in favor of computer-generated pure spectacle. Digital Visual Effects in Cinema counters this alarmist reading, by showing how digital effects–driven films should be understood as a continuation of the narrative and stylistic traditions that have defined American cinema for decades. Stephen Prince argues for an understanding of digital technologies as an expanded toolbox, available to enhance both realist films and cinematic fantasies. He offers a detailed exploration of each of these tools, from lighting technologies to image capture to stereoscopic 3D. Integrating aesthetic, historical, and theoretical analyses of digital visual effects, Digital Visual Effects in Cinema is an essential guide for understanding movie-making today.

In this groundbreaking collection, Dr. Jenna Ng brings together academics and award-winning artists and machinima makers to explore the fascinating combination of cinema, animation and games in machinima (the use of computer game engines to produce animated films in cost- and time-efficient ways). Book-ended by a preface by Henry Lowood (curator for history of science and technology collections at Stanford University) and an interview with Isabelle Arvers (machinima artist, trainer, critic, and curator), the collection features wide-ranging discussions addressing machinima not only from diverse theoretical perspectives, but also in its many dimensions as game art, First Nations media art, documentary, and pedagogical tool. Making use of interactive multimedia to enhance the text, each chapter features a QR code which leads to a mobile website cross-referencing with its print text, integrating digital and print content while also taking into account the portability of digital devices in resonance with machinima's mobile digital forms. Exploring the many dimensions of machinima production and reception, Understanding Machinima extends machinima's critical scholarship and debate, underscoring the exciting potential of this emerging media form.

Have digital technologies transformed cinema into a new art, or do they simply replicate and mimic analogue, film-based cinema? Newly revised and expanded to take the latest developments into account, Cinema in the Digital Age examines the fate of cinema in the wake of the digital revolution. Nicholas Rombes considers Festen (1998), The Blair Witch Project (1999), Timecode (2000), Russian Ark (2002), and The Ring (2002), among others. Haunted by their analogue pasts, these films are interested not in digital purity but rather in imperfection and mistakes—blurry or pixilated images, shaky camera work, and other elements that remind viewers of the human behind the camera. With a new introduction and new material, this updated edition takes a fresh look at the historical and contemporary state of digital cinema. It pays special attention to the ways in which nostalgia for the look and feel of analogue disrupts the aesthetics of the digital image, as well as how recent films such as The Social Network (2010) and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)—both shot digitally—have disguised and erased their digital foundations. The book also explores new possibilities for writing about and theorizing film, such as randomization.

With the milestones of Digital TV and HDTV, there arelots of questions to be asked about television of today...Understanding Digital Television explains complex technical systems and solutions in an easyto comprehend manner along with visual 3D graphics. It helps non-technical individuals such asmanagers, executives, general media professionals, as well as TV and home cinema enthusiastsgain a practical understanding of the equipment, technical aspects of digital television, and various

With its huge cost-saving potential, digital cinema is the biggest thing to happen to the movies since sound -- this book details how each phase of the digital movie-making process, shooting, postproduction, delivery, and exhibition -- differs from film and provides clear answers to the cost vs. quality controversy. * Nonlinear editing -- software, basic technique, cost savings * Digital video color correction * CGI -- changing the shot after the shoot * Digital composition for film * Universal mastering (film, DVD, TV, Internet) * Digital distribution and exhibition

Hollywood is going 3D, readers learn how to adapt their production skills to this hot new medium so they can be part of the movement.