Here is some long-awaited piece of news from WETALand. They finally acquired a film scanner ( a device that is used to scan filmed plates into a computer for further manipulation).

Imagica Corp. ( http://www.imagica.com/ ) (Tokyo, Japan) announced the sale of its Imager XE digital film scanner to Weta Ltd. (Wellington, New Zealand) to assist in the production of director Peter Jackson’s film adaptation of “The Lord of The Rings.” Jon Labrie, chief technical officer at Weta, reviewed the performance of the XE, praising its speed, image steadiness and digital output quality necessary for production of an estimated 2 million frames of “Rings” VFX imagery. The XE is capable of handling up to 2,000 foot film rolls, with a proprietary film gate transport allowing 16mm, 35mm 4-perf and 8-perf (VistaVision) formats. VistaVision scans are possible up to 4096 x 6144 pixels, with 35mm scans available at 2K, 3K and 4K resolution.


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For more on this and other computer jiggery pokery, check out our SFX section! [More]