Want to work in DI?

"We’ve come a long way from the early days of color correction. The question that we’re always asked is, "I want to work in DI, so what do I need?", however this question opens a number of additional questions most of which really relate to the nature of their business. Are the deliverables full-length features or commercials, or episodic? Also the facility may not be ready for DI, so jumping right in to a DI workflow may not be possible, moreover it may not be desirable."

So how do we build a bridge to DI recognizing that DI may not always be the right answer?

Let’s consider the possibilities...

DI Process

One of the most interesting and fastest areas of development in the motion picture industry today is the "digital intermediate" or "DI" process. The term, "DI" has taken different meanings in a short period of time and its definition continues to evolve. It was first used to describe the digitization of the original camera negative as it was transferred into the digital domain in the same way a film intermediate is a copy of the original negative. Once in the digital realm a number of new possibilities are available, such as color enhancement before being mastered back to film. This "film to film" workflow represents the best definition of the digital intermediate process. At first, only very short segments of a film, perhaps a minute or two, were processed in DI. Now, in many cases, entire full-length feature films are processed in this manner.

Now digital intermediate describes different variations of the originally defined process. For example, material that is captured digitally in HDTV formats and loaded directly into a server is termed a DI project by many facilities. Even when the end result remains digital and is never mastered on film, the industry may still refer to it as a digital intermediate process. So, misnomer or not, the term "digital intermediate" has stuck, and so has the concept of the DI workflow.