AFI BLOG: Media and Technology

DI makes quicker work of timing and finishing — Hollywood Reporter

By Carolyn Giardina

Five-time Oscar nominee Roger Deakins is grabbing a lot of attention these days, having served as director of photography on three recent high-profile features: Joel and Ethan Coen’s “No Country for Old Men,” Paul Haggis’ “In the Valley of Elah” and Andrew Dominik’s “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.”

Like most studio features, all three films went through a digital intermediate, or DI, process — a method of digitally color timing and finishing a motion picture. But while DI has relatively quickly become the norm for finishing features in Hollywood, Deakins says that it still is very much misunderstood.

“It actually saves time and money on-set — I don’t think they realize that,” he says. “I also don’t think they realize why it’s so important that the cinematographer sees the project through. (The latter) is a really important point, and it hasn’t been argued enough by the different guilds and societies, and it’s not being discussed. I think it’s absolutely crucial. I will not go into a movie unless I know that I’m going to have some sort of input or control over seeing the image in the DI process.

“There is so much power in what you can do to the image,” he adds. “It’s a little bit more open to the possibility of abuse in the sense that the intention of the cinematographer can be easily be taken away.”