NEC Display Solutions Client Installation Colour and Media
PRECISE COLOUR MANAGEMENT WITHOUT COMPROMISE
THE ANIMATED FILM DÄWIT IS BROUGHT TO LIFE ON REFERENCE MONITORS FROM THE SPECTRAVIEW® SERIES BY NEC DISPLAY SOLUTIONS
Artistic and culturally demanding films are the speciality of production company Fabian&Fred whose projects are regularly screened at international festivals. With their animated film Däwit, Fabian Driehorst and Frédéric Schuld continue to build on the success of the company they founded in 2011.
In order to implement this technically demanding project, which has the support of the Film- und Medienstiftung NRW [The Film and Media Foundation of North Rhine Westphalia], the production team was on the lookout for a display solution of the highest possible quality. To guarantee that the animations had optimum colour fidelity, they decided on reference monitors from world market leader NEC Display Solutions.
The Challenge
DIGITAL TOOLS USED TO ECHO ANALOGUE DRAWING TECHNIQUES
The film has a running time of around 15 minutes and tells the story of Däwit, who experiences violence in his family as a child, is abandoned and is raised by wolves far away from his family. “Despite being digitally implemented, Däwit is based on traditional animation techniques and is displayed at 12.5 frames per second.
The film consists of approximately 11,000 individual frames, all of which we have drawn by hand,” says David Jansen, screenwriter and director of Däwit. Inspiration for the style of the animations, which have been kept in black and white, was taken from woodcuts.
This is how the team behind Däwit have replicated analogue drawing techniques using digital tools. The innovative concept of the film entails quite a lot of time investment. Two animators needed around ten months just to create the individual frames. A further month was built into the schedule for final editing and sound design.
The NEC Solution
OPTIMAL COLOUR MANAGEMENT WITH THE NEC SPECTRAVIEW® REFERENCE 241
In film production, having the correct display is crucial for ensuring an effective colour management process. It is only possible to guarantee that the colours have the exact shades intended with the use of a specially selected monitor. The Däwit production team also needed powerful monitors for the animation, compositing and above all for matching the black and grey values. During their search for a suitable solution, the animators soon became aware of the NEC SpectraView® Reference 241. The monitors in the SpectraView® range are powerful LCD screens of extremely high-quality, which are designed for colour-critical applications.
This equipment, which can be calibrated to different hardware, was designed for users for whom colour fidelity is of the utmost importance, such as professional designers or photographers. The display has a number of functions such as a 14-bit LUT (look-up table) for outstanding colour control and a 3D LUT that enables the display to be optimised by precise colour space reproduction. Features, such as the Backlight Ageing Correction, also provide consistent image quality. Furthermore, the picturein-picture function can be used to open two images from different data sources at the same time. “Images are always displayed vividly, even when you zoom in very closely. The resolution is also very high, which enables us to achieve good distribution across desktops” says Jansen.
The NEC SpectraView® Reference 241 has many connection options (two DVI-D inputs, a DisplayPort, and a D-sub VGA input), which allow it to connect the drawing pads on which the drawings are prepared directly to the screens. Even the ergonomics of the SpectraView® Reference 241 are impressive: “I get the impression that the displays are easy on my eyes. My preference is to set them to the highest level and then tilt them slightly. They are really nice to work with,” explains Jansen.
The Result
Däwit was completed in spring 2014 and is scheduled to be screened at national and international festivals. A follow-up television marketing campaign is in the pipeline. Plus, the film has been nominated for the German Short Film Award [Deutscher Kurzfilmpreis]. Thanks to the NEC Display Solutions screens, the film producers are well equipped for future projects, too.