Keith Roush

Roush Media recently completed the 4K Digital intermediate color grade on the feature film Faith of our Fathers. Shot on Red and color graded with our Nucoda Film Master, Faith of Our Fathers tells the story of two men setting off on a journey to learn more about their fathers. The film stars Kevin Downes, David A.R. White, Stephen Baldwin, Candace Cameron Bure & Si Robertson.

As a finishing and mastering post production facility located in Burbank, CA, Roush Media specializes in 4K digital intermediate color grading, and DCI mastering but also provides many other post services. Roush Media’s Senior Colorist, Keith Roush, has over 10 years of experience color grading feature films, shorts, commercials and more. Roush Media chose to conform and grade the original R3D files in the Nucoda from a Final Cut Pro 7 edit. For the film’s visual effects shots Roush provided the VFX artist with a custom LUT and LOG pre-graded DPX VFX plates. Roush Media decides with the filmmaker what the best workflow will be for every project they finish, whether it is conforming the original R3D material like Faith of our Fathers or coloring from a Client conformed DPX log master.

Setting the look for Faith of our Fathers was a collaborative process for both Senior Colorist Keith Roush and Producer Kevin Downes. The film is set in two different time periods-during the Vietnam War and the present day. “Having two different time periods created a fun and interesting time in the DI Theater for Kevin and me,” says Roush. “We wanted the film to feel organic in nature and decipher the difference between time periods. That’s why we created a cold, gritty, reversal film look with the Vietnam War scenes and kept the present day naturally colorful and warm. One of the most dynamic looks we had to tackle was the film look for the Vietnam War flashback scenes. We took footage shot with the modern day digital Red camera and created an organic look that gave the footage the color and texture of an older film stock without making the footage look over-processed. Of course you can go with a bleach bypass look for a war scene but for this film that was not the intention,” says Roush. Keith developed a look with less sharpness, less natural color & less image detail to take the edge off the digital characteristic of today’s camera technology. “The idea behind this process was to make the footage look identical to what you would get with an older film stock,” Keith said. Using the Nucoda DI system’s blend modes Keith added film grain to give the footage the right texture. He wanted the look to aid the audience to feel the grittiness and emotional impact of the Vietnam War scenes.

Aside from creating the desired look, Keith had to overcome a different obstacle by mixing day-for-night with true night in some of the war scenes. He described the color session like this: “It was time to take on the next war scene. I was grading the first shot of the scene until Kevin stopped me. Then he told me that the scene we were on is intended to be night. When you’re coloring day for night it can get tricky especially when some scenes in the program are already shot for night. I placed my hand on the panels and went to town setting the look for the night scenes. I then went back to the day for night scenes and started to match the shots by adjusting color, creating shapes and using the Nucoda’s blend modes.” Once these nighttime war scenes were completed Producer Kevin Downes sat down in the theater to watch the final colored picture: “The film really felt like a much bigger budget theatrical film than it is. The DI color work really increased the production value.”

Color grading is a big part in finishing a film. You may not realize it until you experience what a good colorist does, but once you come into a color session and start working with the images by enhancing the color and creating looks you realize that it’s a whole other process of bringing your story to life on the big screen. The way you can use colors to tell a story is quite amazing and adds a lot of production value. Roush Media prides itself on their DI Color work while giving a post boutique experience for the filmmaker. Keith says, “The finished product is always a creative and collaborative process between us and the Director, DP, and Producer.” Roush Media likes to use their talent and technology to vividly bring stories to life with color. Providing an impressive color grade while do the post work right the first time is what we do best.

Roush Media is a boutique post-production company providing finishing services for Film, TV, and Commercials-catering to the needs of the smaller production company. Among the services offered are finishing & editing, DI color grading , D-cinema Mastering, file conversions & transfers, deliverables, mastering  & more.

Head over to read about an in depth article and Interview with Senior Colorist Keith Roush on Beyond the Mask!

Color Grading: An Interview with Sr. Colorist Keith Roush of Roush Media

There are many filmmakers waiting patiently to hear if their film has made it into the film festivals they have submitted to. As they wait on the tips of their toes, they finally  hear the good news or the  bad news.  For the ones who have been selected the next step would be to submit a specific deliverable for exhibition.  As you read on through the guidelines the film festival has sent you, your eyes reach the section that talks about exhibition delivery requirements. Your eyes widen as you cringe at the very moment you read at least five exhibition formats the festival accepts.

So what do you do next…Panic?!

Let’s hold off on panicking for a second because we can help you get through this stage. The best exhibition format you can choose to screen your film from is by far a Digital Cinema Package. If your scratching your head right now not knowing what this is, well here is a little information on what a Digital Cinema Package (DCP) is:

A Digital Print exists as data stored on a hard drive in the way a film print comes as rolls of film contained in cans. A Digital Print, known as a Digital Cinema Package (DCP), is a movie stored as a group of digital files that are transported to theaters on a hard drive. The files are copied to the theater’s Digital Cinema Server-a computer that stores, reads, and plays back DCP’s. From the server the movie is played back and projected onto the screen. A DCP is what is used as the content in all digital cinemas for the highest quality playback.

We have also compiled a list of the top five reasons to project your film from a DCP based on our experience.

The top 5 reasons are:

1. Superior image and sound quality over everything else for commercial exhibition ( Film, tape, Blu-ray)
2.  Huge cost savings for DCP mastering and distribution compared to Film Prints and even tape.
3.  Broad Acceptance: Nearly all cinema screens will be Digital by 2015.
4.  High Reliability and less fragile media.
5. Perfect digital copies exhibit the same quality on the 100th screening as the 1st.

Let’s focus on the number one reason, superior image quality. Why second guess yourself when many eyes will be glued onto the theater screen watching your film shot by shot as you sit in your seat focusing on the viewers response.  Provide your audience with the best viewing experience and let them see the visual art you have created the way it was intended to be seen! And trust me we have been to various Film Festivals and have seen the difference in quality!r

If we still don’t have you convinced yet, here is another fact:

Projection:

Theaters  are not use to receiving Blu-rays and DVDs and often their systems are not setup to play them back correctly for that environment. The reason; Blu-rays are for the home  and are in a different color space (Rec709) then professional projectors are set up to deal with (DCI XYZ) . There are no standard color profiles to project this in a theater an therefore they are often a bad representation of what the filmmaker intended. Common problems are lifted blacks, washed out colors, blown out high lights, interlaced lines, soft pictures and poor resolution.  When screening from a DCP, theaters are following the DCI standards and  it will look like it did when the film was mastered, perfect.

Compression:

DCI also specifies the type of compression and data rate necessary to faithfully represent images on movie screens. DCP’s are compressed at a maximum of 250 Megabits per second. This means that when your movie is displayed from a DCP it should be visually indistinguishable from your final color graded images. DCP’s are compressed at a maximum of 250 Mbits/sec with Jpeg 2000 encoding (wavelet/loss-less) and contain 12 bits of color information (4,096 steps/68,719,476,736 colors).
Blu-rays are compressed at a maximum of 35 Mbits/sec with h264 or mpeg2 encoding (both lossy) and contain 8 bits of color information (256 sterojeps/16,777,216 colors).

Just let that sink in for a while,  if you are exhibiting your film from a Blu-ray then your art is being viewed compressed and is losing it’s image/color fidelity  it should be projected as. Choose to have your  film viewed the way it was suppose to be intended and deliver a DCP!

If you need more convincing please feel free to download our  Ebook: Digital Cinema Mastering 101: DCPs done right here. 

And if you would like order a Digital Cinema Package for your film, submit a quote request at the link above and we will get a quote sent right over to you.

Roush Media provides high quality DCP’s . We have the control to check our DCP’s in our DI theater, screen them from our Dolby Cinema Server, and have our Colorist on staff check the color of your film. We like to provide our clients with the piece of mind of getting it done right the first time from all stages from editorial, color and deliverables .

– Roush Media Blogger

To get a quote on mastering a DCP :

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