Mega Playground Offering "DP Dailies" Service

March 24, 2009

Source: Mega Playground

Mega Playground is offering a process for providing film producers with cost-effective, digitally printed dailies. The DP Dailies service is a process that’s been in development by Mega Playground’s chief technology officer Terry Brown for a number of years and uses DFT Digital Film Technology Spirit 2K, Bones Dailies, DVS storage solutions, and color management tools by FilmLight.

The process allows the director and DP to screen their images with a digital emulation of a photo-chemical print. Unlike traditional electronic dailies, DP Dailies are not “telecine transferred” but are scanned as DPX files using the same process as a DI, in a 1920x1080 image size. These files can be used as source elements in the preview process, which essentially is the film’s DI, so that conforming, color for preview and DI are one in the same.

“Cinematographers have been somewhat resistant to digital dailies due to the ‘disconnect’ between what their (digital) dailies look like compared to the look of a graded print,” Brown explains. “DP Dailies provides the post process with an exceptionally consistent, accurate and creative film look. The process preserves the filmmakers’ vision, and dramatically expedites the completion–to-delivery time frame.”

Additional advantages of DP Dailies’ use of the Bones Dailies system include sound synchronized with 1/4 frame accuracy, versus the traditional telecine process, which can only sync to the accuracy of TC frame base. The solution can also rapidly re-sort the camera/scene/take order of dailies.

Mega Playground principal Eitan Hakami notes the financial benefits DP Dailies offers by archiving “raw” scans as the source for the final DI. “You’re essentially starting your DI process at the dailies stage. This ‘scan once’ process not only represents significant costs savings, but less negative handling, and a substantial time savings as well.”

Archived scans can be conformed and color corrected for digital previews with a finished look. Hakami says the process can save producers shooting over 200,000 feet of film a minimum of $100,000.

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