Uprezzing & printing to 35mm

[underpressure]

I'm getting close to looking into post production for the doc I'm working on, and luckily I've finally found a grant I could get through Avid. Now party of the proposal is a budget, which I would expect to include the costs of uprezzing the DVX footage and having it printed to film for showing in theaters.

Only issue is, I have never done either before, and have no idea how they're done or who to go to to get them done. I've read a few places that one can uprez using Shake, but is there an equivalent put out by Avid (I'm going to have to edit on Avid and not FCP)? Would it be easier to find someone who knows how to do it well and pay them? Anyone know of any post houses that will print to 35mm?

I've also read that uprezzing DV looks horrible; is this true?

Any answers at all will help me out here ...

 

[MichaelP]

The process can look horrible to very good - it will never match having shot the same material on 35mm film.... but what you are trying to manage is maintaining the highest quality image throughout the process. It doesn't really matter what you use for editorial since the higher quality uprez processes happen outside the editing product. This can be done in hardware such as with the Teranex or in software with applications like Instant HD from Red Giant software or Algolith with their suite of tools.

A lot of it will depend on how you shoot the material and whether or not is is 24fps and progressive to start with - starting with the same frame rate and progressive frame will yield far better results than 59.94 interlace formats.

28 Days Later was DV as well as many other movies that looked great. Rent November for example which has a theatrical release.

I am finishing up a feature now which involves uprez and I edited all on Avid with capture over FireWire... It was shot DV25 at 24p. I offlined at 14:1 and then recaptured at 1:1, did all my effects rendering so there was no decompress/recompress then export frames for uprez in After Effects. From there, the frames go to the lab for color correction and eventual film out.


Michael

 

[Bus No. 8]

Iraq in Fragments; www.iraqinfragments.com was shot on a DVX 100 and 100A and looks absolutely gorgeous.

In the production notes on the website, James Longley outlines the uprezzing process; The film was blown up to High Definition size and color corrected at Modern Digital in Seattle. Dolby Digital sound mixing took place at Bad Animals studios in Seattle. File-to-Film recording was done at Alpha Cine Labs in Seattle.

I think if you're seriously looking at theatrical release, you should look into post production houses that can do the job right, and look into getting the funding to have it done.

I'm not sure where you live, but the post production houses listed above do a lot of work for theatrical releases, not just locally. A number of DV shot, theatrically released docs (Born into Brothels, Jesus Camp) have gone to Alpha Cine http://alphacine.com/ (no, I don't work there)