What impact have digital technologies have on Film4 in terms of productions and distribution?

Slumdog Millionaire:

The Workflow:

Camera: Arri 35mm and SI-2K MINI digital.

Offline: 3:1, 15:1, 11:1 (mixed).

Screening: Betacam direct from Avid.

Master: 35mm print.

A series of flashbacks illuminate the boy’s earliest years and the poverty that shaped him. Boyle wanted these sequences to have a certain unrefined energy and roughness that was distinct from the more contemporary sequences shot on 35mm, so he shot the earlier scenes using a custom SI-2K MINI digital camera. The compact cameras fit in a backpack and could easily capture the ambience and liveliness of Indian culture on the streets. Because the cameras were so easy and inexpensive to operate, up to five of them were used simultaneously on some sequences.

Dickens arrived in India two weeks before the shoot to test the editing workflow and ensure a smooth outcome. He and two assistants used two Media Composer software stations connected to an 8 TB Avid Unity setup, supplied by U.K.-based rental house Gearbox Sound and Vision.“We chose Avid [systems] for their familiarity and reliability,” says Dickens.

He was uncertain about the depth of HD support available in Mumbai, so he opted to edit in SD. The editing team eventually settled on a workflow that included the ingest of 35mm material from telecined DigiBeta tapes, while digital media was copied from the camera’s disk as Windows Media Files (WMFs), which were then brought into the Avid Media Composer system.