Report by Philippe Ros AFC, co-chair IMAGO Technology Committee.
During the Camerimage 2018 edition, the Imago Technical Committee (ITC) had an extensive agenda.
Sunday morning, the second bi-annual meeting started with two hours dedicated to internal affairs, including the way the Committee will treat the huge amount of data provided by the international survey launched at the beginning of this year.
The IMAGO Technology Committee members, with Netflix representatives Photo: Daniele Siragusano |
This survey named ”Request to Manufacturers” is giving ITC members a precious amount of information on the way cinematographers would like to change the methodologies provided by the manufacturers in the industry. Results will be officially given to manufacturers at Camerimage 2019 after concertation with all our interlocutors.
Following on the agenda, we had the great privilege to host Dr. Charles Poynton the famous internationally well-known color scientist. His presentation, an ”avant-premiere” was focusing on the specificities of noise in the digital image. Far from our expectations, we discovered amazing facts which lead to reconsider the way we analyze the cause, the structure and the side effects of the noise and specifically its link with the photon. Important research which will soon be officially released.
Ending the morning activities we received a delegation of Netflix representatives, Michael Keegan, Jimmy Fusil, Kate Morrison-Lyons, and Richard Smith, who came to explain the different strategies deployed by this very important new actor of the media industry. It was an intensive discussion in which all questions have been asked. We received important confirmation on how the artistic decisions of directors and cinematographers should be maintained in the process of actual productions. The technical specifications of Netflix requesting 4K cameras created an interesting debate including on the famous interrogation: ”should we be driven by numbers?”. All this meeting discussion will soon be entirely transcripted to the Imago website.
The afternoon was totally dedicated to a live presentation on the new technical assets of the Filmlight grading system to control the texture. Lead by Daniel Siragusano and Andy Minuth, a clever educational part introduce the live demo of these amazing tools which also allow controlling the side effects of HDR applied to color grading. Filmlight will deliver a complete presentation of this afternoon for the Imago Website
The rest of the week, many encounters with the numerous manufacturers who attended Camerimage have allowed us to meet new artistic and technical assets. We are proud to announce that we will soon be able to communicate about new parameters requested by ITC.
One of the important goals of ITC was also to prepare the annual Camerimage meeting with ASC. This year the topic was on… Netflix.
To be sure that we all understand the specificities of the company, several meetings have been organized between ITC, ASC, and Netflix the days before. It leads us to launch the idea to wipe out the fake news about the company and to give more time to Q & A.
On Thursday, during the meeting with the audience, the conference room was full. Moderated by Suki Mendencevic ASC, we had the pleasure to host cinematographers: Dan Laustens ASC, DFF, Richard Procter and Manual Claro DFF. Netflix was represented by Jimmy Fusil and Michael Keegan, Imago by Philippe Ros AFC. The debate was intense especially with funny questions from Manuel Claro to Netflix on the specification guidelines.
Last but not least, one of the main activities of all the ITC members was to attend the great number of conferences, seminars and overall screenings of films which makes this festival dedicated to cinematography so unique.