ACES | POST- PRODUCTION
L et us begin by saying it’s totally acceptable if you know of ACES, but don’t understand what it truly means. Because in an industry full of acronyms, this one comes up trumps as most obscure. It translates to the Academy Colour Encoding System – and most will understand it as the standard for colour management in production, post-production and delivery of images. But colour management wasn’t the reason for ACES’ conception. The system actually derived as an incentive from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences because, with the introduction of digital technologies in filmmaking, maintaining its diverse and extensive collection of motion pictures by continuing to preserve digital films had become much more complex and, dare we say, political? Before ACES, there was no standardised format for archiving digital images. Archiving was previously done by the top studios and much of their colour science was based on their preference of a particular camera manufacturer’s colour science. “But like remastered versions of old movies, is it right that they are done so without the author’s consent; does doing remastering take away the creative intent?” questions Pablo Garcia Soriano, managing director and colour supervisor at Cromorama. Realising this brought to light more issues, because the tyranny didn’t stop with the look. Having a manufacturer bias demands an expertise for their particular colour science, whether it be Arri’s or Sony’s. But not all studios have access to colour scientists and, in fact, it’s a rarity that they work full time within one studio. This meant that smaller vendors weren’t getting work. Furthermore, a camera, like a brush to a painter, is a creative tool. But unlike mixing brushes, mixing cameras didn’t create a work of art. “With no standardised colour
space, many filmmakers would work in the same colour space as the camera, whether that be LogC, RedLog or Slog3, and this got very complicated down the pipeline for colour and VFX artists,” says Soriano. THE TECHIE PART So, let’s talk about what ACES actually is. It is a colour system that’s designed to standardise how colour is managed from all kinds of input sources (film, CG, etc), providing a future-proof space for artists to work in at every stage of the production pipeline. “This makes it more democratic, because if there’s colour standardisation and a common language across the workflow, there’s no need for the smaller studios to invest in expensive colour scientists,” says Soriano. “And it’s actually for this reason that studios like Netflix have championed the vast usage of ACES. Netflix is producing thousands upon thousands of shows per year and relies heavily on the worldwide collaboration of artists to help maintain this surge in the number of productions.” But how does it actually function? In simple terms, ACES works in a linear, scene referred way; maintaining the colour and light of the image as close to how it physically appears on the set or at the location. Its intention is to remove the monopoly manufacturers had over the look of images by separating the look of the camera from what the sensor is capturing. “This helps tremendously in camera testing because – and I’m being quite pedantic here – texture has been released. With a uniform, non-look dependent colour management system, you can be more
objective: is this sensor doing what I need it to do be doing; and is the flare or resolution of the lens actually how I need it to be?” Once these technical decisions have been made, you can move on to determining the look of the image. Of course, some Before ACES, there was no standardised format for archiving digital images. Archiving was previously done by the top studios
MARCH 202 1 | DEF I N I T ION 21
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