DIGITAL ARTS SHOWCASES 4K WITH BLUEFISH444, ASSIMILATE & CHRISTIE
20 March, 2014
Located in the heart of New York City, Digital Arts provides ultra-modern picture and audio finishing services for feature and high-end TV productions within a 12,000sq/ft facility. The company was established by Axel Ericson, a technology pioneer who has over 25 years of experience in composing, sound design and mixing, producing, color grading and finishing. During his career Ericson has received numerous accolades – MTV, Emmy, Promax/BDA and Monitor awards, and a Grammy nomination. Under his auspices, Digital Arts created one of NYC’s first HD infrastructures and became the finishing house for major TV brands including National Geographic, A&E, ABC, Disney, History Channel and many more.
In anticipation of the mass adoption of 4K/Ultra High Definition (UHD) technology worldwide, Digital Arts launched the first true-4K post production facility on the East Coast in 2013. This ground-breaking advance fuses the latest 4K color grading and finishing capabilities with state-of-the-art audio technologies, in a landmark, ultra-modern, environment – unleashing new and exciting possibilities for feature and broadcast producers to create and deliver compelling 4K and UHD content.
Digital Art’s realtime 4K, 2K and HD color correction and finishing facility maximizes the image quality of digital cinematography. It delivers new levels of productivity through advanced and efficient, file-based workflows for the very latest digital cameras. The infrastructure features extensive color science, including ACES, across ASSIMILATE SCRATCH with Bluefish444 4K Supernova hardware. The 27-seat DI theater combines a Christie 4220 4K digital projector with a 17ft 4K mesh screen, from Image Screens in Germany, resulting in peerless image quality. Digital Arts also provides complete workflows, including digital dailies grading, editorial, DCP mastering and LTO-6 archival.
“In designing these facilities I knew we had the opportunity to start from the ground up in our approach to image, sound and the creative working environment itself. Through a careful set of choices and a no-compromise approach to detail, Digital Arts sets a new milestone in New York. We are establishing new standards of excellence to fulfill the potential of today’s digital production technology through our new post production infrastructure,” said Digital Arts’ founder Axel Ericson.”
Realizing that the Bluefish444 Epoch 4K Supernova was the ideal solution to enable Digital Arts to work in true 4K SDI with its Christie 4K projector, Bluefish444’s tight integration with ASSIMILATE SCRATCH, made Digital Arts decision to go with a Bluefish444 solution an easy one. The Epoch 4K Supernova, combined with SCRATCH, enables real-time 4K grading. Since the installation, Digital Arts has used the Epoch 4K Supernova to showcase 4K in its world class DI Theater.
"For superior real time image 4K playback, Digital Arts has relied from the start on Bluefish444 hardware. Two years ago, I started the process of re-building our facility into the next generation film post environment infrastructure in true 4K," states founder Axel Ericson. "In order for it to become a reality, we had to rely on multiple pieces coming together. When it came time to decide on I/O hardware, it was clear that Bluefish was leading the 4K market. We were able to deploy a real time - no compromise 4K grading pipeline more than a year and a half ago thanks to Bluefish444’s early presence in the 4K marketplace. Since then we have been able to build upon this pipeline and now we have gained significant experience in 4K, streamlined any bottlenecks and we offer a superior 4K experience for our clients."
Digital Arts’ cutting-edge services have attracted a number of high-profile projects. The company provided the audio facilities for legendary sound mixer Lee Dichter to complete Woody Allen’s feature Blue Jasmine. Digital Arts was home to HBO’s music documentary Beyoncé: Life Is But A Dream, and completed the audio design and mixing on the critically-acclaimed feature Hide Your Smiling Faces, directed by Daniel Patrick Carbone. The company also conducted the DI color grade on the feature Plus One, attended by director by Dennis Iliadis and cinematographer Mihai Malaimare Jr.
Recently Digital Arts provided the audio re-recording facilities for Non Stop (Produced by Joel Silver - The Matrix) and Primero de Enero, an independent feature from Director Erika Bagnarello and EP Julio Caro (Jennifer Lopez's producing partner).
For Primero de Enero Digital Arts was specifically chosen as it offers all of the aspects of post production (both image & sound) under one roof and at the highest level. The DI was completed in true 4K, with the ability to work in real time in P3 color space on a Christie 4220 projector.
Tapping in from his expertise in both the sound and visual realms, founder Axel Ericson post supervised the DI and Sound department, from editorial, foley, ADR, mixing, as well as DI editorial, 4K conform and Grading, 4K DCP and 4K digital deliveries, all within the Digital Arts facility.
Digital Arts has furthered its 4K infrastructure and the facility now can handle numerous 4K projects at the same time. The company also just completed an additional 2000 square foot space to strengthen its editorial offering.
