Meteor Studios gets it right in the colour world

In the world of digital film colour management, Jami Levesque is something of an anomaly. When you ask most people involved in the process about the challenges of getting film colour "right", you see the whites of their eyes. Ask Levesque the same question and you'll hear him laugh, "It's not something we have to worry about."

Having successfully delivered six major feature film projects in less than two years - including the recent blockbuster, Fantastic Four - Levesque, Director of Technology at Meteor Studios, is remarkably laid back about the whole issue. So what's his secret?

"As soon as we started our first film, we got cineSpace," states Levesque simply. "Before that, we were only calibrating for television using broadcast monitors. It was pretty basic! We decided to go with a more professional tool - we chose cineSpace."

The transition to feature films has been extraordinarily painless for Meteor Studios. Right from the start, Levesque recognised that there would be unforeseen complexities and took a pro-active approach.

"The first film we did, we bought cineSpace," he explains. "We wanted to be more professional and make sure all the colours were right. We wanted to make sure that when we sent the film out, it didn't come back!" He smiles: "It never did, actually."

Over the past two years, Meteor Studios has worked on such projects as Catwoman, Elektra and The Exorcist: The Beginning, plus more than ten documentaries for The Discovery Channel and a range of smaller projects. This experience has given them ample opportunity to make sure they're delivering consistently accurate results.

"We learned a lot when we started working with film," says Levesque frankly. "I didn't know anything about it! Honestly, there's so much to learn in that field - I don't pretend to be an expert. See, that's the good thing: I'm not an expert and we manage to do everything right. It's because we're using cineSpace.

"Calibration takes place every other week - we want to make sure we keep the colour right. In the "old days" we just worried about colour during compositing. Now we keep our colour consistent from beginning to end, starting from texture all the way to compositing."

This way of working has saved Meteor Studios from the pain of doing repeated film-out tests in an effort to hit the mark with the colour. Levesque explains, "Honestly, it's pretty much accurate, so we don't do it. We don't spend that much money doing film-outs."

For the most part, they are able to simply use the standard profiles supplied with cineSpace and the displayed images match the output very well. Where the film-out path deviates from the norm, they make use of the custom film profiling service provided with cineSpace, thus ensuring an accurate match.

"For Fantastic Four, as an example, it was very different," recalls Levesque. "(It was) sort of bluish on the screen, so we had to do a loop of the profile. But as soon as we did that, (the output) was the same as we saw on the computer screen. It was just right on. We didn't have to worry about it at all."

Levesque did look at other options before making a decision about colour management at Meteor Studios, but the choice was simple in the end, as Levesque explains: "The way we wanted to work, cineSpace was the only one." His experiences with Rising Sun Research (developers of cineSpace) have confirmed his initial impressions. "We worked with the beta version (of cineSpace), and one of the guys came to visit us and it was really great. And when we had to do a profile, it was really quick."

With so many companies facing frustrations over colour management and counting the wasted time and money spent doing repeated film-out tests, it's easy to be envious of Meteor Studios. Having found the cure for such problems in cineSpace, Levesque happily sums up the situation: "It's there, it works and we don't worry about it. Honestly, overall we're really satisfied and I wouldn't have chosen any other product."


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