I just made a comment on CML about DIT’s and once again I get a backlash from DIT’s.
Lets get this straight, I do not wish DIT’s harm its just that I think that for the majority of shoots their’s is a job that may have been required during the transition from film to digital but that in the majority of cases it’s no longer needed.
A message to me of “that”s not how we do it in Hollywood”is utter nonsense.
For one thing a huge amount of very low budget films are made in Hollywood and they cannot afford a DIT.
Second, the working practices of huge budget films bears little relationship to what is done in the real world. Anyway, most of those huge films are no longer made in Hollywood.
Which brings me on to my third point, Hollywood is to film-making as Detroit is to the car industry. Once the great centre of production but no more.
So lets get back to crewing…
I believe that the cinematographer is responsible for the overall image and together with their collaborators is the one who creates the look of the movie.
Those collaborators include the conventional camera and lighting crew, the colourist and the production designer.
The jobs that the traditional camera crew do may have changed, ie the AC may well be using all kinds of focus assist tools that he didn’t in the past. The 2AC may be responsible for unloading rather than loading, ie simple copying of data cards to multiple HDD using something like Shotput Pro.
On movies or TV series with a budget of less than $10M there is no time or budget for onset colouring.
The best approach is to frame, light and expose it properly in the first place.
If the project requires an overall “look” then this should be created with a colourist in pre-production. Not a whole bunch of looks, a maximum of 4.
The simplest way to keep control of the image and to know what you are actually shooting is to work withing the ACES workflow. This is a predictable, repeatable way to show your images. Any post house using ACES will get the same look if your material is loaded with standard IDT’s & ODT’s.
To make it simple to reproduce thsi look on set Nick Shaw of Antler post & I have created a series of LUT’s for most cameras that takes the log output of the camera and replicates the look of the ACES workflow on a standard 709 monitor on the floor.
What you see on the floor is what you will get in post, no DIT, no onset colourist. It’s possible to create these LUT’s in such a way that they contain the look that you may have created in prep.
Personally I prefer the vanilla versions and will then use, err, oh yes, lenses, lighting and exposure to get the look I want.
Bravo!