Hybrid process

[Vasu]

Hi Master Roger & David & Everyone in the forum.

Recently i was re visiting the hybrid process of DP Greig Fraser on the films Batman & Dune 1. I read that they posted the color corrected digital files on inter postive stocks vision3 5254 and took prints out from them. What i didn’t understand is that did they post it on negative and developed into a postive like the way they shoot in film or is it different from that. it would be great if you share details in brief about this process

Thank You

Topic

[Roger Deakins]

I would be interesting in knowing the technique myself – not that I might ever use it as the expense alone would put me off.

[Stip]

CPC in London call it ‘Truegrain’:

“We use our state-of-the-art technology to record your digital content to positive 35mm motion picture film and scan back to digital to achieve authentic film grain and texture”.

They do not use negative film stock, only positive film stock.

I don’t know who made the print for ‘Dune’ but would assume it was a similar or the same process.

[dmullenasc]

Intermediate dupe stock is a “negative” stock in the sense that it creates the opposite density of what it is copying, unlike a reversal (aka slide) stock. So one can create a positive or negative intermediate depending on what you record from digitally. So it’s not really accurate to call it a “positive” stock, it’s either. It can create a positive image if it’s a copy of a negative image. Same goes for print stock — the image is positive only because it’s a copy of a negative so naturally the densities get reversed.

 

[dmullenasc]

Generally what they mean when they say they don’t use negative stock is that they don’t use camera negative stock, which is much higher in ISO (and grainier) than lab intermediate and print stocks.

[Vasu]

Fotokem did the work for both the films and Senior colourist Dave cole was supervising the whole process.

[Author]

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