Noise Annoys

Cinnafilm’s Dark Energy creates a cleaner and more filmic look out of video

By Iain Blair

Labels: Cinnafilm

This Article Features Photo Zoom

With the arrival of the ARRI ALEXA, RED and Canon HD DSLRs, Cinnafilm CEO Lance Maurer wanted to tap into the artistic vein of the digital camera marketplace.

“I believe the most exciting business comes when you integrate technology with talent that can find new ways to use it beyond what you had envisioned,” says Maurer. “I’m a big fan of putting these tools in the hands of dangerous artists.”

Hurlbut stresses that after some trial and error, “We found the correct method is to do your color correction first, then bring in Dark Energy—that’s the only recipe for success.”

As for the weak H.264 codec, Hurlbut notes that Dark Energy strengthens it by getting rid of compression. “We’re taking our footage and sending it through Adobe CS5,” he says, “and that, in turn, brings out a latitude in the codec few people have seen before. So we’ve really blazed trails in both production and post.”

Dark Energy is already available in post houses world-wide, including FotoKem and Performance in L.A., Cineric (New York), Digital Film Central (Vancouver), Ascent 142 (London), Éclair (Paris) and ARRI TV (Munich), to name a few.

For a weak codec like H.264, cinematographer Shane Hurlbut, ASC, feels that Dark Energy strengthens the HD DSLR codec by eliminating some of its compression.

“You can go in with your Canon feature, and it’s just like a color-grading session,” says Maurer. “I want this technology to be accessible to people shooting digital because it’s important to me that their films look good for generations to come. It works great on the HD DSLRs and on film scans, which is where we cut our teeth, and the fact is, nothing is noiseless—even modern digital cameras.”

With its broad applications, Dark Energy is well suited to restoration work, too. “There’s an entire century of content that has to be modernized,” notes Maurer, “and we’re trying to get a foothold in the file-based workflow. We have a very high-quality toolset that allows you to optimize any visual asset for any type of delivery—and think how many platforms are out there now.”

Cinnafilm has been smart in also teaming up with such partners as Quantel (putting the technology in their Pablo system) and Rhozet (putting it in their Carbon Coder), and signing new global resellers to distribute and integrate their products.

“It hasn’t been easy because of the recession,” Maurer admits, “but I believe quality will always win out in the end.”

For more information on Dark Energy, visit Cinnafilm’s website at www.cinnafilm.com.

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