BC: Tell us about your background and how it inspired you to address technical initiatives.

CC: I started my feature film career with The Draughtsman's Contract (1982), made in England with Peter Greenaway, which was an immensely successful film that had its own technical challenges. I had to shoot numerous scenes at very low light levels using candlelight, and found that depth-of-field was going to be a problem with 35mm. I needed to be able to shoot at T1.3. I had the idea to experiment with Super 16mm, because it has an intrinsically bigger depth-of-field, and find a way to enhance the image quality of the 35mm blow-up reproduction. We kind of pioneered that process. I had a very special relationship with the film lab that helped us take the right steps, and recall getting wonderful support at the lab from Len Brown and Paul Collard. From the selection of the sharpest lenses with optimal exposure, to the way we handled the blow-up, it had to be done very carefully. The objective was that anyone who saw the finished film wouldn’t know it wasn’t 35mm origination, and it worked perfectly.

I loved the fusion of how technology finds solutions to enhance the art form. I continued to do that on almost all the films I’ve photographed, such as Alamo Bay (1985). This led to my awareness of, and being drawn to, technology solutions that best serve the art form of filmmaking, particularly cinematography.

BC: Tell us about the formation of the ASC Technology Committee?

In 2002 I was asked to form the ASC Technology Committee. The ASC realised we were entering into new world that would be filled with uncertainty and disruption during the transition from everything being shot on film and finished on film, using an end-to-end photochemical workflow, to the Digital Intermediate process, initiated by Kodak with its innovative Cineon system. But DI was just the starting point of the emerging digital imaging revolution, which then progressed to digital cinema projection and eventually digital motion picture cameras.

BC: A notable initiative was the development of the ASC Colour Decision List (ASC CDL). What impact have you seen from this, and is there more work ahead?

CC: It’s hard to find a production that doesn’t use the ASC CDL; it has become a de facto standard. Its flexibility is the secret to its success. It can be used within ACES or any colour space reference. It’s a very mature and robust technology. There’s continual suggestion and encouragement to expand it into secondary colours, and that presents a bit of a challenge. Once we start doing that we are in effect starting to develop a colour corrector.

At the moment we have most post-production technology vendors implementing our current RGB primary colour grading; it’s been a universal adoption. If we start to move into supporting secondary colour correction, then it might become a question of how readily they will continue to adopt it, because we are now starting to potentially compete with their own proprietary colour corrector grading functionality.

I see both sides. I see the rationale that says, if we extend our open platform to secondary colours, it would be a powerful tool for cinematographers and filmmakers. The other side is, we’ve already achieved what it was originally intended to do. For most dailies colour grading, you don’t necessarily need to go beyond primaries.

But the functionality could expanded to include secondary colour. It wouldn’t replace ADC CDL v1; it would be an additional option.

If we do go down that path, that’s how it would be emphasised, because it’s not an attempt to compete with colour corrector manufacturers, and their comprehensive colour grading features that are essential for final colour grading.