Kodak Technology and Innovation at the 2010 Annual SMPTE Conference

Every year the Motion Picture Industry gathers together at the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) annual conference to share the latest technical developments in the entertainment marketplace.  In keeping with Kodak’s long-standing commitment to innovation in the entertainment industry, we presented three papers this year. They reflect Kodak’s ongoing investment in both film and digital technologies – representing a number of new advances that are highly synergistic with rapidly evolving digital workflows. 

In “Enhanced Image Recording Capability: Novel Light Management Technologies Applied to Camera Origination Color Negative Film Design”, Merrick Distant, Drake Michno and Sharon Johnston describe the set of technologies that enabled the improvements in the Kodak VISION3 family of films.   By the use of advanced dye layering technology and optimized sub-micron emulsion technology, they were able to achieve significant improvements in both signal –to-noise ratio in low exposures while expanding dynamic range.  These improvements allow film-makers to operate effectively in low light levels and capture scene content from the brightest highlights to the deepest shadows.  This is particularly useful in combination with the powerful digital intermediate toolset.

The increasing use of digital workflows to produce feature films has made possible ever more spectacular and seamless special effects.  The movie experience for audiences today is very different from that of just a few years ago.  From Harry Potter to Alice in Wonderland to Avatar, filmmakers have new creative freedoms that produce amazing results for today’s moviegoers.  The industry has also benefited from the many efficiency gains associated with digital post. 

Right now it’s still a hybrid world with filmed or digitally-originated images feeding into a digital intermediate process which is then recorded out to produce film prints or a file for digital cinema display.  Recording out to produce film prints usually  requires an intermediate film.  From the infancy of the digital intermediate process, Kodak Vision Color Intermediate Film has been the standard used to record out images from those digital files for film distribution and display.