Delivering 8K VFX Shots For the Dark Knight

agent4256 writes "Barbara Robertson over at Studio Daily put forth this article featuring the technical background for the production of The Dark Knight. With most of the film shot with IMAX cameras (producing a theoretical resolution of 18k), the studios could not handle the size. Instead, they cut the resolution by more than half, down to 8K, the maximum resolution for scanned film. 'A single 8K frame requires 200 MB of data,' Franklin says. 'So we had to upgrade our whole infrastructure. We needed faster network speeds to move data around, massively beefed up servers, and — the most important thing — a new compositing solution.' To give you an idea of how far technology has taken us: 'In 1999, when we worked on Pitch Black [released in 2000], we needed to access 2 TB of data,' Franklin says. 'This show used over 100 TB of data.'"

Comments

8K? 18K?

[niceone]

What does K mean here?

Selective input control?

[plasmacutter]

I've heard of selective output control "downrezing" HD for users, but apparently the MPAA doesn't trust its own member organizations, and is exercising selective input control as well?

Re:A right-wing movie

[Jesus_666]

Except Batman doesn't inexplicably throw thousands of Robins at Catwoman after the Joker does something bad, while he sits back doing nothing

That would be pretty entertaining, though.

Joker: "Batman is rich and smart. You aren't. Why do you think YOU can stop me, Robin?"
Army of Robins: "Zerg rush! KEKEKEKEKEKEKEKEKEKEKE!"
Catwoman: "AIEEEEE!"
Joker: "...That would be pretty scary if he was actually rushing the right person."