SYSTEMS

Discreet, a division of Autodesk, Inc. today announced that New Zealand-based Weta Digital Ltd. has purchased two Discreet lustre digital grading and colour correction systems as part of a strategic collaboration between Discreet and Weta Digital that spans multiple products. Weta Digital is a visual effects facility, best known for its Academy Award-winning visual effects work on New Line Cinema's The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Joe Letteri, visual effects supervisor at Weta Digital, said, "Discreet's lustre system gives us great creative freedom to explore different ideas for the look of a scene. The lustre system brings an advanced level of collaboration to the director, director of photography and colourist in designing a mood or a look, speeding up both pre-production and the post-production process. lustre is now an essential part of our production pipeline and creative process." Weta Digital is currently working on pre-production on Universal Pictures' epic remake of the Hollywood classic King Kong, as well as a Calvin Klein ad for cinematic release. "Weta Digital is a champion in creating extraordinary fantasy worlds that are believable. They are experts at both defining and defying reality," said Martin Vann, vice president of sales and marketing at Discreet. "Discreet's lustre, flame® and inferno® systems are now part of Weta Digital's DI pipeline, demonstrating that our solutions are tools of choice for the most talented and demanding digital content creation leaders." flame and inferno are Discreet's flagship visual effects systems. Discreet's lustre is the world's leading high-end colour grading system in the rapidly growing Digital Intermediate (DI) marketplace. Its precursor, created by the Budapest-based software development company Colorfront, was key in developing the look for the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. DI, the latest revolution in film technology, is a process that converts film to high-resolution digital files and then back to film, thereby providing greater control over colour manipulation and visual effects.