In part so you can make this:

Look like this:

Eric's an old hand at shooting for HD post, and knew well to keep his highlights in control. The raw image from the Varicam practically looks like a scanned film neg.

He then pushed the contrast in eLin, freely clipping highlights — or so it appears. In truth, those pegged values in Renée's arm and the back wall are actually only clipped in the video preview. Eric's Cineon log output preserved the entire dynamic range of the original footage, and his 35mm film print has the nice, smooth rolloff into the extreme highlights that was once thought to be the sole privilidge of film.

Plus, Eric had a great DP and is a hell of a colorist!

The LA Day demo movie covers the process in some detail. Questions? Post them on the eLin forum.

Mad stilz from One Weekend a Month coutesy of Eric Escobar