FACILITIES POOL RESOURCES FOR ROBBIE FILM

A GROUP of Soho facilities have pooled their digital film expertise for the forthcoming Robbie Williams fly-on-the-wall feature film, 'Nobody Someday'.
The Century Films production follows the entertainer and his band on their February 2001 European tour – the first since Robbie's much-publicised vow to beat his drugs and alcohol addiction. The film - distributed by UIP and believed to be the first UK film produced solely at 2k – was released in selected cinemas in the UK and Ireland on January 4, 2002. The film will also be aired on Channel 4 in April.
Director Brian Hill was allowed unlimited access to Robbie Williams over the seven-month period of filming and produced some 55,000ft of film. Steve Boag, Executive Director of Cineimage, was approached by Century Films to supervise and supply a super 16 to 35mm internegative of the entire 99-minute feature. He said: "As this project required both a television and film finish, plus the variable mixture of source material – colour, black/white and DV footage – I decided it would be more cost effective to supply an E-Lab digital finish at Red rather than following the traditional optical film/lab route."
The original negative was conformed at Cineimage using the Excalibur database system for both the film and television versions. Red were supplied with an over-length neg assembly from London's Soho Images, which was graded at 2k resolution by the facility's Head of Telecine, Gary Szabo, using Red's Spirit DataCine with MegaDef 2k colour corrector. The rushes were then scanned and later conformed at 2k in fire by Red's Dave Kiddie, before finally being shot back out to intermediate film via a Celco film recorder at Capital FX. The fire at Red was also used to add subtle effects to the film. (GB)