By Anonymous on Tuesday, July 24, 2001 - 11:05 am:

Cinesite's new European facility completing Band of Brothers

Cinesite's new Soho offices in London are handling digital intermediate mastering for Band of Brothers.
Cinesite (Europe) and Kodak are currently in full production on the high definition master for all ten one-hour episodes of the forthcoming HBO mini-series Band of Brothers. The digital intermediate mastering is taking place at Cinesite's new Soho, London offices which opened earlier this year. This new service is currently the only facility in the UK to house both the Philips Spirit DataCineTM and the Spectre Virtual Datacine and has made a substantial investment in customising software for image conversion, colour grading, conforming and queuing control.


Band of Brothers, based on the book by Stephen Ambrose, follows a regiment in the US Army through training to battlefield experiences in World War II. Cinesite provided digital effects including compositing and computer animation to bring battle scenes and aerial dogfights to life. Executive producers for Band of Brothers are Tom Hanks (who also directed one episode) and Steven Spielberg. Directors of Photography are Remi Adefarasin and Joel Ransom. The production is scheduled for broadcast this September on the HBO network. The BBC has also bought the miniseries for broadcast late in 2001. Work started on the digital mastering and intermediate this January and is due for completion late summer.

Bruce Richmond, VP of Original Programming Production at HBO, said, "Band of Brothers was a project of immense scale not only in physical production but also post-production. Because many formats were required for many different deliveries, ultimately devising a 2K intermediate process made a lot of sense. In the beginning of our talks with Cinesite, we wondered how we could not only satisfy the requirements but also maintain the quality of work we had created on the original film. The skills that Cinesite and Kodak brought to the process both technically and creatively made their company a perfect combination to execute this emerging technology. They brought a very ambitious task to fruition and pieced together all of the technical aspects of a process that could satisfy the needs of the miniseries. Going forward, I believe many companies will look to this process to supply multi-formats in multi-markets in an efficient and highly creative environment."

Cinesite's new facility is digitally grading and mastering all ten episodes in real-time interactive sessions with the clients from HBO. This permits highly creative grading which can affect the whole look and visual style of a production. The seamless integration of Kodak Vision 5289, 5279 and 5274 film stocks in the scanning process was critical in capturing enough contrast, range, colour gamut and resolution to support all future film, high definition and video distribution requirements.

"Band of Brothers is a very prestigious first project for this new service," said Courtney Vanderslice, Head of Production at Cinesite. "We are very pleased to open the service with such a big and challenging production and to have HBO working with us enthusiastically while we develop the pioneering technology. Capturing the full dynamic range of the camera negative film was essential for Band of Brothers and it was important for HBO to work with both Kodak and Cinesite to truly optimise the integration of both film and digital technologies."

Kodak's European Regional Business General Manager for Entertainment Imaging, Greg McKibbin concluded, "This project has proved that the real value in the digital intermediate and mastering processes is not simply in having the right equipment; it is in the knowledge and expertise of film, colour sharpness and density that only Kodak has, and the ability to effectively and artistically handle the huge amounts of data involved, which is Cinesite's special expertise."