Goodbye Dalsa?

Last week DALSA Corporation announced that following the closure of DALSA's Woodland Hills, CA, cinema equipment rental facility and the termination or redeployment of the Digital Cinema division staff, the Company has wound down its Digital Cinema operations.

There was a letter of intent between Dalsa and Arri for Arri to license the Dalsa technoloogy but Dalsa has commented : "Following extensive negotiations with Arnold & Richter Cine Technik GmbH ("ARRI") for the past several months, the Company has failed to reach agreement with ARRI as to acceptable terms on a definitive agreement. As a result, the Company set aside discussions with ARRI and the Company is currently pursuing other alternatives to maximize value of its Digital Cinema operations. There can be no guarantee that any of these alternatives will ultimately lead to a successful transaction."

So another digital cinematography pretender hits the skids but this one will upset people as the technology was very promising and even made it to a Bond movie in The Quantum of Solace. Dalsa was also very popular with the VFX world because of the 'clean as a whistle' footage in true 4K.

Digital Does Well at Oscar Time

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, 100% shot on the Thomson Viper, and Slumdog Millionaire, 65% shot on the SI 2K camera, are both in the running for Best Picture at the Oscars after the nominations were announced today.

Both the film's DPs were also nominated. Anthony Dod Mantle for Slumdog Millionaire and Claudio Miranda for Benjamin Button.
Anthony was only going to use the SI 2k camera for around 35% of the movie, ostensibly the slums shots where he had rigged the camera to use it on the move but enjoyed the quality so much he ended up using more. The remainder of the film was Super 35mm.

Claudio Miranda used the two Vipers in filmstream mode mainly because of the huge number of VFX that were needed for the movie - the result as many agree is a stunning one.

Congratulations to both films and DPs.