Delivering 8K VFX Shots For the Dark Knight

[akrako1]

From Slashdot:
agent4256 writes "Barbara Robertson over at Studio Daily put forth this article featuring the technical background for the production of The Dark Knight. With most of the film shot with IMAX cameras (producing a theoretical resolution of 18k), the studios could not handle the size. Instead, the cut the resolution more than in half down to 8K, the maximum resolution for scanned film. 'A single 8K frame requires 200 MB of data,' Franklin says. 'So we had to upgrade our whole infrastructure. We needed faster network speeds to move data around, massively beefed up servers, and — the most important thing — a new compositing solution.' To give you an idea of how far technology has taken us: 'In 1999, when we worked on Pitch Black [released in 2000], we needed to access 2 TB of data,' Franklin says. 'This show used over 100 TB of data.'"

http://www.studiodaily.com/filmandvi...ssue/9703.html

[harrisonford]

Sign me up for a home system next week, lack of movie sure would be a dertance sad to say the least.

But there is always hope for Christmas ............................................... 2030 if lucky year 2020

[edDV]

Sign me up for a home system next week,

I doubt even Harrison Ford would pass the credit check.

Now I'm wanting to see this in IMAX. I may need to wait a few weeks for a ticket. Maybe while at Linuxworld in SF. Local IMAX theater doesn't get it until 29 August. By local I mean within a hundred miles.

[Soopafresh]

Great article. Thanks! 8K frames.

[yoda313]

Did they finally get three hour film racks for IMAX? I know that when I saw Episode 2 on Imax they were limited to two hours so they had to chop up movies.

I remember reading they were working on getting a three hour storage capacity. Wasn't it limited because of the physical size of the film stock itself? I mean most IMAX documentaries are what, 45 or 60 minutes?