Markee Magazine, January 2004

Editor Steve Panning, co-owner of 18-month old Chicago HD Corp., would like to see a bigger shift to HD post in the Windy City. "Perhaps economic reasons are holding people back, but once they try HD they're sold on it and stick with it if their budgets allow," he says.

Like his Great Lakes colleagues, Panning says independent filmmakers and corporate producers are driving HD post. Client Image Base created an eight-screen HD plasma kiosk for an upcoming Las Vegas trade show with jaw dropping images for attendees to enjoy, he reports. There is also a burgeoning demand from cable and broadcast: the company just began posting a half-hour sports series for cable's HD iNDemand network.

Chicago HD recently conformed the documentary, Edith Piaf: Her Story, Her Songs, the first HD feature from Director George Elder of Chicago's Luminair. Footage had been downconverted to SD for the off-line, and Chicago HD was hired to do the conform. But during editing a few unanticipated issues arose. "We've seen this with other clients," Panning says. "The SD downconverts can mask critical flaws in some shots that aren't seen until you go back to HD. With Piaf several shots had a nice glow about them in SD but in HD we realized they were out of focus! It was a challenge to re-edit, replacing or minimizing those shots; some we just had to live with."

Panning utilized Apple's Final Cut Pro with CineWave and Sony HDCAM decks for the documentary, tapping a Teranex Xantus to upconvert vintage PAL clips of the songstress. He delivered a partially color corrected 24p master in two versions: one in 16:9 with subtitles and one without so subtitles in other languages can be added, and a 4:3 format extracted.

"Having a 95-minute HD show with over 300 subtitles meant a lot of extra steps to get it right," Panning notes. "We rendered out practically the whole show which required lots of drive space." Luminair produced a Dolby Surround mix at Skywalker Sound in Northern California and the final color correction and film out in LA.