Because the show’s main production company, Nu-Image, had its own supply of Arriflex cameras, Zsigmond shot with Arricam Studios and Lites and used Arri 435s for high-speed work.
He encouraged DePalma to shoot in 3-perf Super 35mm (2.35:1) for both practical and economic reasons, and used Kodak Vision2 500T 5218 as his sole film stock.
By opting for Super 35 over anamorphic, he could employ spherical lenses, which gave him a bigger stop for the film’s low-light situations. Zsigmond also knew 3-perf would save money in terms of film costs and developing, savings that could later be applied to the show’s 4K digital intermediate (DI) at LaserPacific. “I realize now that if we hadn’t done a DI, I could not have done as good a job with the period look,” says Zsigmond, who adds that The Black Dahlia was his first experience in a DI suite. “
With the DI, you don’t lose anything [in the final transfer] like you did when it was an optical step. Another advantage of the DI is that all of the dissolves, fade-ins, fade-outs and special effects can be incorporated when you’re actually doing the scanning, which means you’re not losing a generation when you go from regular footage into the opticals.
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The 4K scan was the selling point for me,” Zsigmond continues. “I told Brian that the only way I would do the movie in Super 35 was if we could go 4K; I didn’t think 2K would be good enough because Super 35 has a smaller negative size than anamorphic. Brian really loves the anamorphic format, so I had to convince him we wouldn’t lose much image quality by shooting in Super 35 with a 4K scan. That’s how we ended up at LaserPacific — they were willing to give us 4K at a good price. The DI was absolutely a budget consideration; I had to promise I wouldn’t get too fancy, and that I wouldn’t spend five or six weeks doing the work. I knew that if I lit the movie properly, I wouldn’t have to spend as much time on the DI. In the end, the grade took about 14 days.”