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Our People James Bartle: Executive Director Picscan LS. James Bartle, an award-winning Cinematographer with an international career across a broad range of commercial, television and feature film projects, has developed Picscan as the strategic response to the film to digital revolution. James’ numerous commercial credits include; Air New Zealand, The National Bank, Tower, Steinlager, Fruju, Mainland, KFC, McDonalds, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Shell, Continental Airlines, DB Draught, Friskies, National Mutual and More Magazine.
Adam Fresco: Sales Director. HISTORY Film to digital…the problem. Like all DPs there is a wall that you hit sooner or later… and it’s usually when you’re on location far off in foreign lands where the dailies take 7 days…this was where I hit my wall and had an epiphany. The 40 thousand candles lighting the cathedral all seem to be burning at a cool 3200k and the light smoke SFX had disappeared completely leaving the actors faces pale and light. I was losing the warm, dark and mysterious interior that I had envisioned. I was aggravated…you know you need better reference than a grey card (certainly of no value in the case of diffusion or smoke SFXs). Sure I fixed it, four decades in film saw to that, but there had to be a better way… a way to ensure that what you see is what you shot… and what you shot is what you get…every time! My personal bottom-line was to be able to see what I had shot on the Dailies, exactly like a fixed printer light setting, so that I could ensure that I was getting accurate feedback and allowing me to know how far I could take my work whilst knowing what was on the negative with no ugly surprises in final timing. I set about creating a system to ‘finger print’ the negative in such a way as to enable the colourist to easily reconstruct the full dynamic range of the image which would be exposure and colour specific. Another vital step was to simplify communication with a common stable reference to the final gamma setting. This setting controls the look of the photographic density without effecting highlights or shadow detail. What you shoot is what you get... photochemical film information reassembled faithfully in digital imaging… finally! The extremely diverse history and application of photochemical and digital imaging, with their exclusive languages, has been instrumental in creating a separation between these two disciplines…until now. Picscan finally bridges the gap, with an innovative and simple process, enabling DP’s and Telecine professionals to solve the film to digital conundrum by fully integrating both technologies for the first time. With the motion picture industry heading swiftly toward even more digitisation, with projection in theatres, expediency in the reduction of printed rushes and even release prints, this is a technology designed to assist the creative process whilst saving time and money. How can the system serve the cinematographer’s needs whilst translating traditional visual information into the language of digital imaging? During the robust testing phase, designed to demonstrate an optimal understanding of best practice telecine procedures and set-up requirements, Picscan was applied to over 600 days of shooting and transfers. The results speak for themselves, proving the creation of a solid full system dialogue enabling photochemical film information to be reassembled, in a smooth transition to digital imaging, in addition to delivering the stability and flexibility required by cinematography or digital color timing.
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“I developed this stable yet extremely flexible system specifically for DP’s,
Telecine Artists, Post-Production Supervisors and Editors using my knowledge
of motion picture film technology, combined with my experiences of digital
image construction, so that what you shoot is what you get… every time”.
Son
of photographer Monte Fresco MBE (who was for 30 years Chief Sports Photographer
for Britain's 'Daily Mirror' newspaper), Adam was Director of the ITV Television
Workshop in the UK for ten years where he gained extensive experience
in television and short film production. In 2006 Adam relocated to New Zealand
with his wife, child and two dogs, where for three years he was Course Director
for Auckland based South Seas Film and Television School, where he continued
to write, direct and produce short films (including the Kodak NZ Award Winning
short war film, A Cold Beer).