Pat Miller, Senior Mastering Colorist
by Jim Bowers
The name “Pat Miller” may not be a household name among Superman and movie fans, but it should be. He’s one of the senior mastering colorists at Warner Bros. Motion Picture Imaging (MPI) in Burbank, CA, and is responsible for mastering so many movies and television shows that we know and love, from Superman-The Movie to Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King, 2001: A Space Odyssey to Clockwork Orange, Phantom of the Opera to Harry Potter and The Prisoner Of Azkaban, Outland to Driving Miss Daisy, and Magnum P.I. to Macgyver, just to name a few. His experience, knowledge and resume are truly impressive and are likely unmatched by nearly anyone else in his profession (check out his resume at the bottom of this page).
Last summer, after enjoying and analyzing the excellent Superman The Motion Picture Anthology Blu-ray box set (see the Anthology page here), I decided to contact Warner Bros. Motion Picture Imaging with the hopes of being able to talk with their resident experts about the Anthology. Fortunately, James Quinn and Evans Butterworth, Director of Sales, secured me an exclusive interview with Pat Miller. I was thrilled! Pat and I spoke on the phone for the first time for nearly an hour on July 27, 2011, and we corresponded off and on by e-mail afterwards over a seven-month period. Towards the end of 2011, I contacted Pat about possibly meeting at their facility on the Warner Bros. lot, and, again, they were all to happy to accommodate me.
So on January 13, 2012, I met Pat, Evans Butterworth and James Quinn at their amazing facility and was treated like a king. Evans first took me on a tour of the Warner Bros. lot, Clint Eastwood’s sound stage, the Warner Bros. Museum, their store and various other shooting locations. Seeing screen-worn costumes up close from movies like Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, Harry Potter, The Matrix, Where The Wild Things Are, various John Wayne features, and TV shows like Big Bang Theory was a real treat! From there, we ventured over to my most anticipated place that I doubt many fans have ever visited and where security was quite tight – the massive cold vaults where so many original camera negatives, interpositives, and many other cans of film are stored and protected. It was wall-to-wall, ceiling-to-ceiling cans, and absolutely pristine in there! I looked for the Superman cans, but couldn’t spot them (maybe next time). There was even a special yellow nitrate storage box for silent movies. Evans also walked me through more secured doors to tour their server rooms (with petabytes of storage), colorist suites (I watched one colorist mastering a cut scene from Little Shop of Horrors – beautiful image!), and the large “clean” room where IPs, digital intermediates (DIs), and new film negatives are created. I about dropped my teeth looking around at all of the awesome equipment setups! Thanks for the great tour Evans!
After the tour, it was time to sit down with Pat in his dark suite full of “toys” and watch him do what he does best – make great movies look really great! I watched him master and record a pan and scan version of Dangerous Liaisons as we talked for nearly four hours about the industry, his history at Warner Bros., the Baselight machine (“Photoshop on steroids”, as he calls it), his typical workflow, monitors, the Superman movies, Christopher Reeve, (interesting and crazy) experiences with directors and directors of photography, and much more. He is truly a virtual external hard drive of knowledge about film restoration. Pat also showed me scenes from his recently mastered Outland (the 1981 movie starring Sean Connery), and demonstrated how he enhanced/transformed a brand-new, razor sharp, high-definition digital interpositive with low contrast into a perfectly balanced, colorful, natural-looking file ready for rendering to Blu-ray (more on this topic in the interview below). Being a Photoshop user (professional since 2003) for so many years, I was totally captivated by the capabilities of Pat’s Baselight computer and how adept he was at making it “sing”. Without a doubt, I have a much greater appreciation for what Pat and his fellow artists do everyday to create the very best high-def product possible for many generations of movie-goers to enjoy.
Recently, on February 7, 2012, Pat and I decided that it would be a good idea to do another phone interview in order to answer more of my questions (there were many), provide some additional clarification on specific topics, and wrap things up in general. It was more time well spent.
Pat – you’re a swell guy with so much enthusiasm and passion for your craft. I sincerely appreciate how friendly, humble, and down-to-earth you were during my visit (and every time we’ve chatted). Many thanks for taking so much time out of your busy schedule to share a lot of fascinating information with me; it’s been quite an education, and I hope I can learn more from you in the future. I feel as though I’ve made a new friend in Hollywood. All of the fans here at CapedWonder™.com thank you and Superman thanks you! (Thanks, too, for autographing my Superman and LOTR box sets! Glad that you and your wife are enjoying the CapedWonder™ coffee mug and t-shirt!)
Exclusive Interview with Pat Miller
The following interview was created from two telephone interview transcripts, conversations during my Warner Bros. visit, and e-mail correspondence with Pat Miller, Senior Mastering Colorist at Warner Bros. Motion Picture Imaging (MPI), which transpired between July 2011 and February 2012.
Every attempt has been made to retain a conversational quality, and provide clarity and accuracy in the information. I hope you enjoy reading it (and learning something new about the movie business) as much as I enjoyed putting it together for you!
Be sure to click on the various links scattered throughout the interview to lesser-known industry brand names, terminology and jargon.
Pat mastered these five movies in the Superman The Motion Picture Anthology Blu-ray box set in the following order, each of which took many weeks to complete:
Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut – completed in 2006 (no additional work was done to the 2006 master for the Anthology)
Superman-The Movie theatrical – completed September 2010
Superman II theatrical – completed October 2010
Superman III – completed November 2010
Superman IV – completed January 2011
Special thanks to Production Services at MPI for officially approving this interview on March 5, 2012 for release on the World Wide Web. You can read some interesting articles about MPI’s work here, here, here and here.
Click here to visit the Anthology page where I share my observations and screenshots, and official Warner Home Video specifications, imagery and a trailer.
This interview is © Copyright 2012 by Jim Bowers and is not to be reproduced or excerpted without written permission.
Jim Bowers: Hi Pat, are you there?
Pat Miller: I am here.
Jim Bowers: Here we are, Pat, and we’re finally able to enjoy all of the Superman movies on Blu-ray, thanks to you. I imagine that must have been a fun project for you. I think you said that you’ve been at Warner Bros. Motion Picture Imaging there a long time and that you actually worked…
Pat Miller: I’ve been here for 17 years, and I was the first operator that Warner Bros. hired, and I was the first one to work here and start off things back in 1994. And before that I’d been at several different companies and actually started doing transfers, film-to-video transfers, the same year that Superman-The Movie came out, 1978.
Jim Bowers: Wow.
Pat Miller: So I’ve been doing it a long time.
Jim Bowers: A lot has changed, obviously.
Pat Miller: Yes. The equipment is night and day difference, and the original equipment I used to work on, very skittish, hard to make the pictures stable and good. No computers at all. Computers didn’t come along for another six or eight months, and it was literally a hand-built computer by one of the engineers at the place I worked at made out of a Radio Shack TRS-80. And it only did cuts, it couldn’t do dissolves, and obviously the computers we have nowadays have all the capabilities of fades and dissolves and windowing and noise reduction and all the stuff I ended up using on all four Superman movies when I remastered them.
Jim Bowers: Right. So for the Blu-ray you basically had to start from scratch, which is what you did. You pulled the film elements out…
Pat Miller: Right. The home video people didn’t use the original negatives, but over the years had protection interpositives {IPs} made, so we used interpositives for all four movies. They were scanned on the Spirit DataCine, the 4K machines, but were actually scanned to 2K.
Jim Bowers: Superman Returns was mastered by someone else.
Pat Miller: That’s correct. I didn’t work on that one at all. {Pat later revealed that Superman Returns was mastered by Stephen Nakamura of Company 3, formerly with Technicolor. There was no additional work done to the 2006 master for the Anthology.}
Jim Bowers: Right. So our focus is on the four Superman movies. The home video people scanned them on the Spirit in 2K.
Pat Miller: That’s correct. At the facility here I don’t actually do the scanning anymore. I used to run the film in the old days, up until about eight years ago I ran right off the Ranks {refers to the Rank Cintel, an earlier high-end “telecine”}, or the predecessors to the Spirit’s transfers. And then we ran off the Spirit DataCines directly so we would run the film interpositive {IP}, color correct to that, and then play it back using the film all the time. Now it’s scanned on the Spirit DataCine. We have a whole department downstairs here, and that’s all they do. They set up, and they’re great about it. They really are meticulous. They spend their time scanning, stopping, resetting shots, trying to give me the best level and contrast balance possible so that I have all the range I need to be able to get the blacks to be correct, retain detail in the mid-tones, and get the brightness to be correct. So starting off with a really good scan is a major thing, so that’s something we do here really well.
Jim Bowers: The decision to scan a movie 4K or 2K…how’s that done?
Pat Miller: Right now they’re definitely scanning older titles, as in Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz, in 4K and color-corrected and down-res’d to 2K, because they’re taking them back to film. The device that creates the new film negatives is called the ARRILASER. These negatives are actually stored next door in the building you toured here. The new IPs and film negatives, and the original camera negatives {OCNs}, are all back in the cold vaults here. They expect, of course, that these new negatives made with the film stocks of today will last way over 100 years now. Obviously, that’s important. The home video people want to scan the most popular classic titles in 4K for preservation. There is talk of scanning in 8K for even higher resolution to record back to film. I’m sure that will happen for the most popular classic titles.
Jim Bowers: What is sent to the salt mines in Kansas?
Pat Miller: They send out the prints and lots of the videotape, the older masters, short ends, optical blue screen shots, and other stuff, out to the salt mines.
Jim Bowers: Getting back to scanning…what you’re saying is that an older title typically gets a 4K scan and then a new film negative is struck…?
Pat Miller: Correct.
Jim Bowers: …whereas a “newer” movie like Superman-The Movie, or ones in the 80s or 70s…
Pat Miller: …right, the negative is still in good shape and the interpositives they created are in good shape. Those are scanned to 2K and then, of course, you’re seeing them in high-definition resolution.
Jim Bowers: In other words, there’s no new film negatives for the four Superman movies?
Pat Miller: That is correct. They did not create new negatives for those because those original camera negatives are still in good condition. I’m sure at some point, someday, when it gets up to whatever resolution they decide that they can live with, and maybe keep it some other way besides film, I’m sure that they’ll do both. They’ll probably make new negatives and store them in some kind of data format that isn’t destructible, that isn’t going to fall apart. When that happens, I don’t know. I don’t think I’ll see it while I’m still working, but hopefully I’ll see it in my lifetime.
Jim Bowers: I hope so.
Pat Miller: Even if it takes them 30 or 40 years.
Jim Bowers: Who mastered the 2001 Superman-The Movie expanded version with Michael Thau?
Pat Miller: The colorist is a man by the name of David Ludwig.
Jim Bowers: Ludwig, as in the composer?
Pat Miller: The composer, yes, David Ludwig. I was in the middle of doing 2001: A Space Odyssey (laughter) at the time. I don’t remember who mastered the other ones {three Superman movies} back in that time period. I know I worked on several of them WAY back when for VHS.
Jim Bowers: I remember you saying you did the VHS releases starting about ’94.
Pat Miller: Correct. It may have been before that because I’ve been doing Warner Bros. mastering, pretty much since 1982, ’81, on and off. I did a lot of work for different studios because at the post production houses I worked at serviced many of them. I know I did them over the course of many years, and from about 1988, ’89, I started doing more and more Warner Bros. [movies] until I went to work for them full time, when they started what they called “Video Operations” at the time in ’94.
Jim Bowers: 1994…seems like an eternity ago.
Pat Miller: (laughter). It does, but I gotta tell you, it just flies by.
Jim Bowers: Talk to me about your monitors. You’re no longer using CRTs.
Pat Miller: Right. Now we’re using plasma monitors, Panasonic plasmas which give me a huge picture. In the early days, we used a 19-inch monitor, usually a CRT (cathode ray tube). In the early 2000s, with the advent of HD, we started using Sony 32 inch CRT monitors. CRTs usually had nice blacks, but you never saw into the blacks as well as you can with the plasmas. Also, the CRTs being SMPTE {Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers} – standard color, the phosphors used in SMPTE were “C” phosphors. “C” is a tolerance standard of the rare earth phosphors used in the U.S. professional monitors of the time. These phosphors that coated the CRT tube face did not produce a pure red. It was always a little orange. Cyan was also a problem. It was always much more blue than green. Blacks were darker, which the current flat screens are lacking. A few years ago I went to CES and saw the new OLED monitors and was very impressed. They were only 19 inches, but had wonderful blacks and saturated color. Friends that went to CES last week saw the LG 55 inch OLED and said it looked great. This could be the technology in our future here.
So now with using Panasonic plasmas, we can do set-ups the same way we used to do on the CRTs – the ability to set low light colors and brightness so that they’re neutral – always set it up in low light, mid-range and highlights with a certain amount of brightness, and the grays are neutral without color contamination. So now we’ve got a big picture, and things really pop out at you, you see imperfections more, you see the grain a lot more because it’s a bigger picture, but you also see a truer color, in my opinion. You get real reds. If you get a cherry red something in the picture, it really is cherry red, it’s not a little orange. And the cyans come out, so you’re looking at stuff in the skies, or with Superman’s uniform, in the blues now it’s a truer look of blue, and I know you questioned how we got the color on that. I actually based my color on Superman’s uniform on the extended version that Michael Thau did.
Jim Bowers: Right.
Pat Miller: Michael did the extended version here. He and I worked later on the Donner Cut of Superman II, so I referenced with him his transfer of the extended version of the first movie, and then I used that as my reference base on all four of these movies. Typically, in general, I like to give the picture a bolder look in the blacks which does bring out the color. I don’t like to “crush” the blacks as is the trend in newer features. So I tried to keep it as constant as possible with the uniform looking the same, and the cape, trying to make it look the same, all based on what Michael had done, and I know he worked with [Richard] Donner on several things, so I think that’s the closest that Donner could get to what he originally had.
{Pat added later – To save time and money in 2006, the Donner Cut film reels were scanned to Sony HDCam video tape. They were then edited on an Avid DS system. I was given the edited tapes to color correct on the POGLE made by a British company called Pandora, and then I did the final assembly.}
Jim Bowers: The blue quality of the costume material, which is a bridal-age spandex, is kind of a steely blue, as opposed to how it ends up appearing in the movies, so in person the blue is much different. And the color temperature, the natural lighting that was used, the blue would be all over the place, and obviously you know from…
Pat Miller: …and it was.
Jim Bowers: …working on optical work with bluescreen versus front projection/ZOPTIC work, the blues vary even more. So you had a real challenge on your hands.
Pat Miller: Well, yes, certainly the outdoor material to the indoor material, to the lighting and the opticals, and you saw in the original movie, especially in the theater and for so many years, there were so many opticals, like when he was flying up the canyon to go to Hoover Dam there, that his uniform was green. So Michael Thau went and re-did lots of those opticals for the extended version {likely through rotoscoping, although Michael Thau could not be contacted for confirmation}.
Jim Bowers: Right. I remember that, and the majority of the fans were thrilled.
Pat Miller: Right. So what I did on this movie, when I did the theatrical version, the IP that I had still had the opticals that were green and still had opticals at the beginning that had really horrible processing when they first go to Krypton, when they go in to get rid of General Zod and his people. So what I did was I went back and had our home video people get me the interpositive that they used for the extended version transfer in 2001, and then I went through and took a group of the scenes from that element and inserted them, as long as they were the same shots and the same length, the processing was so much better, so I went through after I finished color-correcting the film and brought those new shots and put them on my Baselight system. I then color corrected them and then edited them in to make it look a lot better. And our client here, the video mastering people, were very happy with that. So they came over, “Oh, wow, yeah, that’s good. The processing’s better.” Ten years ago they took out so much of the terrible flicker and the heavy grain structure, along with fixing shots of him where his uniform is green. They did such a nice job on that ten years ago. So that made a huge difference to be able to use these scenes for the Blu-ray.
Jim Bowers: That’s beautiful. I really enjoyed your theatrical Blu-ray with the original sound mix because nobody had really seen what they’d remembered seeing in the theaters for so long until this one came out, but some of the detail in it, particularly I think I had mentioned to you, or I had mentioned it on my website, was the long shot of Superman sending the rocket up into space.
Pat Miller: Oh, yes.
Jim Bowers: I could actually see Superman in the rocket exhaust.
Pat Miller: I’m not sure why. I saw him in the theater that way, and one or two of the other times I transferred it back in the VHS days, he was there. Now I’m not sure why they washed him out in the rocket blast in that extended version. I don’t know. I dialed it down to make it work and that’s like you’ve got to see him pushing the rocket up. It doesn’t make sense otherwise. And also now I have a little more control over the white levels than they did back then, so I was able to keep the brightness up around the rocket yet dial him in to where you could see him in the cape, and I left it just a hair washed out because that’s how it would be. You could imagine him being in the exhaust of the rocket, but you have to see him there doing that, or else it just blows the whole shot.
Jim Bowers: I think so, too, and I clearly remember back in ‘78 what a great job Derek Meddings did with that miniature.
Pat Miller: Mmm-hmmm, exactly.
Jim Bowers: And then not seeing it in the extended. Knowing the movie as well as I do, those are some of the little touches that I missed until I saw your theatrical, and I had no idea. I’m sitting here enjoying it and, all of a sudden, there he was, and I said, “Well, look at that!”
Pat Miller: Right.
Jim Bowers: That was an awesome extra touch on your part.
Pat Miller: Right. Plus, there’s some other areas in there where they were watching the television projectors that they had at the time. There was some film weave and some other things that we were able to eliminate and make that area so much smoother and better. It just worked out great. I really, really enjoyed that part of the movie. And not seeing him in the rocket blast, it’s like, “No, no, it’s got to be there.” That’s the whole point of the shot.
Jim Bowers: Absolutely, and Meddings could have not bothered to put Superman in the blast to start with and just kind of cut corners, but all of these extra touches that Donner and his crew put into the first movie in particular, they just really make the movie that much better. It really holds up well overall so many years later.
Pat Miller: Oh, absolutely.
Jim Bowers: Were there any other scenes that you found that were pretty challenging in that theatrical transfer? Things that stand out that you’re really proud of?
Pat Miller: There’s a lot of things that I did that…it’s kind of like hiding things in the backgrounds or doing windows to cover certain things you could see in some of the moon shots in the second movie. In the fourth movie I ended up putting in windows and softening the windows and taking out production things in the blacks, the curtains, things like that. In the first movie, other than the rocket and him in the exhaust, I don’t remember anything particular other than I really worked hard at trying to get the uniform right…it always drove me nuts. I wanted it to match as close as possible all the time. And doing a lot of things with the uniform, selecting it into the Baselight computers that we use {made by a British company called Filmlight}. They’re good at selecting specific colors, but this depends on the amount of saturation in the picture, so that you can isolate them and play with them only in a key, so I did a lot of that in the uniform with the reds and with the yellows when it had them. I know that there are several shots that because of the original optical process didn’t have it, the belt wasn’t yellow, and the shield wasn’t yellow, and I don’t know why it got sucked out in those keys back then. You’ll see most of the shots that still have some green in them had lower saturation in his uniform. Also the graininess of the opticals because of the multiple layers to get the effects hampers the process.
Jim Bowers: I understand. What is the purpose of MTI?
Pat Miller: Right. MTI processing, MTI stands for “Mathematical Technologies, Inc.“, so it’s just kind of what we coined here for the company that makes the boxes that actually does the DRS {digital restoration services}, which is dirt and scratch removal. That was what that all means. Everybody just started calling it MTI. So those are some amazing boxes, and the processing that they do, the ability to take the scratches out, I know you noticed a lot of the scratches were gone. There were actual camera scratches or magazine scratches in the film that after all these years they got rid of, which is great. We got rid of so many of the wires. Then the companies that we had do the processing in India sent it back. Then the home video people that I deal with came over and we watched it. We discussed about removing more of the wires, and they said, “Let’s spend the money to get rid of them,” so we worked on it as long as we could until it was time to deliver, basically.
Jim Bowers: The wire removal.
Pat Miller: Wire removal, right. So we did a lot of extra hours, we have our own little MTI group here, we have six people that stay here in the building who are working constantly on various shows that we’re working on now. And they do extra clean-up when we get stuff back and say, “Oh, there’s something we missed,” or like we did the extra wire removal, which turned out great. It’s so nice to see them disappear.
Jim Bowers: Can you tell me more about the MTI box and the people who operate them?
Pat Miller: Okay, a box being like a black box. It’s a computer, and it does these specific things. These guys sit at a console that has a keyboard that’s running the data back and forth, and it also goes back and records the masters, the video masters, which if you saw a newer 1080 cleaned version, which I think they did on the 2001 expanded transfer, that’s what they would do. They would record in from the videotape and record back to the videotape, so they would take in and create files, and then break up the movie to different people, you’ll have six people and everybody will do one reel. They give them X amount of hours to go through and find everything you can, and they’re also working on – I’ve got a 55-inch plasma monitor here and they’re using the same thing, and they crank up the monitors out of contrast spec so they can see every little thing. And the computers can do X amount themselves, they’ll run through and do a little dirt scan, and they’ll find 50 or 60 percent, and then everybody will go and do their thing, and they literally will have forty, fifty thousand pieces of dirt on every reel, a 20-minute reel, and get rid of it, so they really work on it hard to clean and catch every little speck of dirt or nick on film, or any type of damage they can fix, damage on the film. There’s a couple of tears and rips in the original movies, on the original negative. So they’ll go back and steal from around where the tear is, from other frames, and patch all that together. It’s amazing. It’s like intense Photoshop.
Jim Bowers: You mentioned earlier about using windows to block out things like the curtains on the moon in Superman IV, for instance. So it’s essentially almost like doing a garbage matte digitally?
Pat Miller: Correct. So I can draw that in myself. You can either do a garbage matte and polish it up where it works good enough where you can’t see it, or I can hand-draw around things and make the window track, so that if somebody’s head moves or whatever, my matte will travel with that movement. So that gets used a lot now in the newer digital intermediate processes, because everything’s going digital intermediate, they’re doing less and less film cutting. So we’re able to track things, and that way the matte stays close to them and things like that disappear.
Jim Bowers: Same way with the wire removal, then. You’re basically doing a garbage matte. It’s like, for instance, if he’s running through a scene and lifting off, that matte’s going to follow the wires.
Pat Miller: That’s correct, but they actually draw a fine matte around it. I haven’t done the process. I’ve seen them do it, but I’ve never done it. They’ll draw, and what it does is, the computer’s comparing different sizes. It works really well with a scratch or the wires. Let’s say the wires, when he’s flying and the wires are moving along, it can easily steal from the frame before and the frame after to cover that up. It’s much harder to have scratches that are like magazine scratches that run completely through at one specific spot and don’t move. That requires them to physically going in and fill that in by stealing from the material next to it, and then, of course, there’s multiple different ways of blending it so that if it runs through the guy’s face or whatever, so that they can get rid of it without making any kind of distortions. So, yes, that’s a real hands-on process. The shots where the wires are traveling actually, it still takes a long time, but it’s easier to steal from the frame before and the frame after to cover things.
Jim Bowers: They did a fantastic job on that, too, and I know that’s something that fans were really waiting for and hoped would happen because in the ‘01 and ‘06 DVDs, the wires are glaringly obvious, particularly in Superman III and Superman IV.
Pat Miller: Yeah, unfortunately, the better the resolution, the bigger the wires.
Jim Bowers: Oh, yes. I don’t think people realize they were rather thick wires to support the weight of the actor.
Pat Miller: Oh, absolutely, but you know the resolution of the prints back then, I mean, you saw them and you didn’t see them. It was really believable, but now, boy, it’s like they jump out at you just because it’s so sharp, and now, of course, you’re looking at everything a little bit more critically – makeup, hair, costuming. “Oh, I see there were threads on everything.” So the whole HD process and high resolution processes that are going on now are changing everything.
Jim Bowers: Oh, absolutely. That’s good and bad, I guess, for the actors who are very particular about how they look in the movie, now that they can see everything more clearly.
Pat Miller: Right. Exactly. I was just going to say that, especially the makeup nowadays. It’s such a big deal because it can look so fake that they really have to change their practices.
Jim Bowers: That’s true. Many well-known directors really like to shoot tight on their actors’ faces.
Pat Miller: Right.
Jim Bowers: And so I’m sure that’s completely impacted the makeup department on how they have to apply it, how they have to light them, and everything else because they know it’s going to go to Blu-ray.
Pat Miller: Mmm-hmmm. Yep.
Jim Bowers: You mentioned splicing issues at one time…
Pat Miller: Since all four of the Superman movies were shot in Cinemascope, I noticed there were bumps at certain splices. Cinemascope splicers have very fine cutting blades. But a lot of times what happens is that when the editors got into a big rush as they were trying to finish, sometimes they would accidentally, or maybe on purpose because they didn’t have a Cinemascope splicer, take and use a normal splicer, which made bigger cuts on the film. So what would happen is as they glued it together, the glue and the splice move up into the picture a little bit more. Also that would sometimes cause these bumps to actually move the picture as it went by the cut, either on the projector, or later on on our scanners, the film would actually bounce maybe five pixels and settle after that, so maybe the first three actual frames of the cut would move up and then back down and then get level. We went through in our processes of doing not only the dirt and scratch removal, but also going through and re-framing the picture so that those bounces disappeared.
Jim Bowers: Did you crop in a little bit then?
Pat Miller: It doesn’t require too much of a movement in. We’d have to move the picture in, zoom it just a bit, to cover these larger splices when they happened, otherwise you’re seeing the entire frame. If you come to a point where you get a bigger splice, you have to zoom in on the picture just slightly. That’s usually the best, easiest way to take care of these bouncing frames, much more disturbing than if you left them in there, obviously, and tried to keep it the exact size all the time.
Jim Bowers: You’re doing this in the Baselight?
Pat Miller: I used to do it all in the Baselight, because you can do frame-by-frame processing, but now the people that we use to do this dirt and scratch removal process, the MTI processing, they can actually do all of that while they’re looking for dirt and scratches to remove, they can reposition the picture and cover up splices and glue that may show at the cut.
Jim Bowers: Oh, good, that’s just another thing that they do then?
Pat Miller: Right. It’s just another thing that they do, and they do a really good job of it, even things like in the second movie. I’m trying to remember, I was just looking at my notes last night…remember in the small town with the Army, there are three wide shots, you can see the reporter, Zod, Ursa and the news van on the right side? This enormous gate hair, I call it the world’s largest gate hair, went through the news van and up into their fake satellite dish, and it just flickered like crazy, kind of bounced back and forth, and it protruded way into the picture. It extended into the Cinemascope frame probably a quarter of the way in. Our MTI group was able to remove that, taking bits and pieces from the rest of the frames and covering that up. I don’t think that ever got removed before. It really improved that picture. We were able to keep that entire frame (without having to zoom in) and make that gate hair go away. I think there are about four cuts that had that gate hair, the biggest gate hair I think I’d ever seen in any movie.
Jim Bowers: Fantastic. I’ll look at that scene again Pat.
Pat Miller: Overall, the fourth movie had the most extensive clean up of all four movies. The opticals were compromised due to the big budget cut to the production at that time.
Jim Bowers: Yes, the bluescreen optical work looks flat. And not only does the costume often look green, and the yellows in the shield and the belt are faded or gone, but the contrast is rather low even in his hair and his face, and you can especially see it when he’s flying out in space towards you, which they re-used so many times.
Pat Miller: Correct.
Jim Bowers: But your work on Superman IV is such a huge improvement, even on some of the grain structure, for instance, the beginning of the movie when the cosmonaut is singing…
Pat Miller: …right, I actually did the grain reduction in those areas…
Jim Bowers: Yeah, that’s great, I always noticed that the amount of grain was high. And when Superman stops the spaceship from rotating, and there’s a closeup of him turning and looking at the cosmonaut who has gone out into space…a lot of grain and stuff in there too. So that was a big improvement.
Pat Miller: Yeah, they did a lot work on that. I was really, really pleased when I got that back. That made the whole movie for me!
Jim Bowers: Oh, I’ll bet it did…
Pat Miller: Yes, it was really, really nice. (laughter) And I hope the fans like it. The massive improvement of how the rest of the opticals look, and taking out the flicker and the grain, and all the other stuff, especially where they used the optical of Superman and Nuclear Man flying, chasing each other back and forth. Production kept using the same shot, and I remember the director said that was due to the budgetary concerns.
Jim Bowers: That’s right. There’s been this on-going questioning I’ve been getting from fans about, “If you can isolate color, why are some of the costume scenes still green?” Can we discuss the scenes of Superman with the Statue of Liberty in Superman IV as an example?
Pat Miller: Right. The unfortunate thing is, with the way those opticals went, {see this screenshot of Superman carrying the Statue of Liberty} that the color, the patina on the Statue of Liberty, how they painted it, and his uniform were really, really close color-wise. In messing with one, I messed the other one up worse. The patina on the statue in all of the other shots was right on correct in that cyany-greenish kind of look. And the closeup shots of Superman carrying the statue, to play with the [color of the uniform] a lot, it kind of changed a lot…the fleshtones looked pretty good in those [close-ups], and to change his uniform a little bit more towards what it looked like in the other shots that weren’t optical, changed the statue to be really blue. So that becomes a problem. Unfortunately, you get into those compromise positions. There might have been some way, if we’d had more time, that we could have taken and drawn around or done the rotoscoping they possibly did where they turned his uniform blue in the Hoover dam scene that used to be green and things like coloring his “white” belt. But I think the studio, they spent the amount of money they could to clean up everything else. So luckily, there’s only a couple of shots that do that.
Jim Bowers: Right.
Pat Miller {Pat later added this information in an e-mail about optical color loss}: I talked with a friend who worked at Technicolor for eight years, 2002 to 2010. He was saying that most of the guys around at the time the four movies were made are pretty much all gone. He did say that the original optical printers back then would have created the opticals using neg stock called CRI {color reversal internegative}. So this process allowed negative-to-negative creation without any intermediate printing steps. Problems occur with different types of stock in how they react to the layers of color correction and optical effects put in front of them. The more compositing of an image the more layers in between and the more color gels. All this can twist the color around to where some colors could be very different or lost. Add to that a deadline and you get no yellow in your “S” or your belt.
Jim Bowers: I’ve always thought Superman IV was lit more like a TV movie than a theatrical release.
Pat Miller: Right. Superman IV is very flat. It was lit harsh almost as, almost like a comedy, which I know it wasn’t, but, it has some of the funnier elements in it, but yes, the lighting definitely was totally different. But I think we discussed the fact that they had a $30 million budget that got cut to $17 million, so they went with it, what could they do? (laughter)
Jim Bowers: Cannon decided to give some of that money to Masters of the Universe.
Pat Miller: Oh, okay. Is that where it went?
Jim Bowers: With Dolph Lundgren. And Chris was in the middle of filming, and they decided to do this, and he said, “I can’t walk away from this project and put all these people out of work.” So he went through with it, and when I talked with him in ‘94, he told me he never saw the movie.
Pat Miller: Oh, wow.
Jim Bowers: I offered to give him a VHS copy, and he said, “No, that’s okay, thanks.” (laughter) He said that he had no idea it had been chopped down to 89 minutes from the original 134-minute cut.
Pat Miller: Right. And I think I mentioned to you the time that when I first saw it in the theater, I thought the projectionist left the fifth reel out.
Jim Bowers: Yes, so did I.
Pat Miller: Such a drastic cut, I couldn’t figure out what was going on.
Jim Bowers: I noticed that your theatrical cut of Superman-The Movie is a bit warmer picture most of the time than in the expanded version, which I actually found to be very nice.
Pat Miller: And it could be because the monitors now, because of the ability of them to put out really good color, because I referenced quite a bit the older movies and paid a lot of attention. Michael [Thau] paid a lot of attention to especially the interior shots, the Daily Planet stuff, the walls to be a certain color, and even though it was different sets, I tried to carry that all through the movies to try to give them some semblance of balance of reality that they were always in the same place, even though they weren’t.
Jim Bowers: Sure.
Pat Miller: And the monitors now, in being able to reproduce the colors so much better, I think it brings out a lot of the picture’s own natural warmth. I do try to color a sequence based on the place or situation the characters are in. If Superman and Lois are in the Fortress of Solitude, it’s cold there and Lois shouldn’t be too rosie. But we tend to, as colorists, all of us here in America, and all the guys I know in all the years, we tend to make people a lot warmer in our movies than they do in other countries. And I hear that all the time. I worked on all the Lord of the Rings films.
Jim Bowers: Oh, you did?
Pat Miller: Yeah, I did all three of them, and I did the recent ones, the extended versions. I re-color corrected and remastered all of those that just came out on Blu-ray.
Jim Bowers: I had no idea, Pat. Those are absolutely stunning.
Pat Miller: Wow. Thank you.
Jim Bowers: I read that many people were concerned that the greenish tint seen in the theatrical cut of Fellowship of the Ring might carry over to the extended version, but apparently you corrected that and Peter [Jackson] was very happy.
Pat Miller: I never talked with Peter Jackson, but I had a lot of conversations with Andrew Lesnie, who’s his DP {Director of Photography}, and Andrew and I coordinated on that stuff, as well as their supervising digital colorist Peter Doyle. And I also worked on all the Harry Potter movies except for the first two and the last one. So I was able to learn a little bit more. Peter Doyle always likes to keep everybody a little bit cooler, but that’s how the British and Europeans do it. And he always asked me, “Why do you make people warm here?” And I said, “Because we live in southern California, it’s hot”. (laughter) I try to keep that in my mind, conscious about what the situation is, where are the actors, and where’s that light coming from that’s lighting them, so that they’re not all looking suntanned and glorious and wonderful, because that’s just not life.
Jim Bowers: No.
Pat Miller: But it definitely might be a little warmer, and a lot of that I said comes from my monitoring and how it used to look on the CRTs. When I got to transfer the third Harry Potter movie {Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban}, I got to go to England and work over there, and the PAL monitors over there, with the PAL phosphors that they use, actually could reproduce reds better and did a real good job reproducing the cyan colors.
Jim Bowers: Right.
Pat Miller: So I went over there and saw that and went, “Wow! This is amazing, because we can’t see this at home.” I’m glad we can now. I’m glad that the newer monitors are able to reproduce that.
Jim Bowers: When did you switch over to plasma, because I know that over at Universal my friend said that he’s been using CRTs, so you haven’t had the plasmas too long.
Pat Miller: We’ve had the plasmas for about – let me think here – three years?
Jim Bowers: Okay.
Pat Miller: Yeah.
Jim Bowers: I thought it was pretty recent.
Pat Miller: Yes, well, CRTs, they stopped supporting them. Sony was the last gasp of the CRTs, and we used to use the 32-inch Sony CRT HD monitors.
Jim Bowers: Right.
Pat Miller: And you just can’t get tubes for them anymore, and if you needed to replace a tube for those things it was $10,000.00.
Jim Bowers: Oh, boy.
Pat Miller: And those monitors new cost $35,000.00. And the plasmas we’re using, which are still professional set-up monitors, are around $5000.00.
Jim Bowers: Wow.
Pat Miller: So it’s amazing the difference in technology, and yet the look is just definitely superior and it gives me better color now. The next improvement will be deeper blacks. I look forward to that.
Jim Bowers: I’ve not ever owned a plasma. I did own CRTs for a long time. Currently, I’m using LCDs for my own photography, and, of course, what we view upstairs [in our home theater] is a DLP projecting onto a Stewart screen.
Pat Miller: Right.
Jim Bowers: And I’m really picky on my contrast and color balance, but I do have a tendency to lean on the warm side both in photography and just in the way I like a lot of my movies to look. I guess the main area that looked warmer to me in Superman-The Movie was Smallville, which I found to be totally appropriate.
Pat Miller: Right. It’s that 1950’s rich, the color, the Woody convertible the kids are driving, the wood came out, it always looked to me to be an odd yellow in the prints I saw. So I warmed all that up. I phase-shifted the color yellow around and locked into that and gave it a more realistic wood look to me. It just never reproduced well on film, I don’t think, in that particular color sequence, so I think it looks a little bit better now.
Jim Bowers: I think it does, too. All of new Superman Blu-rays look great. What seems to be a big deal for the fans is that the movies are obviously much cleaner, and from what I have heard, the fans are rather surprised as to how great the sequels look, and obviously the wire removal. The responses have been very positive overall, and I wanted to share that with you.
Pat Miller: Good. I appreciate that. I enjoyed doing the movies, and like I said, making them flow, that’s the biggest challenge for a colorist, and I’ve been doing it for a lot of years, like I said, thirty-three years now. Thirty-three years next month I started doing it. {Now almost 34 years.}
Jim Bowers: Wow. Congratulations!
Pat Miller: Thank you. So the object of making a film, unless it’s something totally specific, “I want it to look this way” kind of thing, you don’t want a Rembrandt from every shot. You want the shots to flow, you want to be able to follow the lighting, and you don’t want anything to jump out at you. So if it’s timed specifically well, and the picture flows and nothing’s surprising you, even though the challenges you run into where they’re filming all day long. I did many television shows back in the 80s and early 90s, I worked on the first four years of MacGyver, and I did all different kinds of television. Television can be a challenge due to short shooting schedules. Feature films can have more time to get the perfect shot. “Okay, I want to shoot between 3:00 in the afternoon and 5:00 in the afternoon,” and if it takes us five days to do that, we do it. So they’re trying to keep that light balance. Sometimes it’s really simple, and some days if they’re behind, they’re going to shoot into the night, they’re going to add lights, and you’re getting stuff that are for cutbacks that are, “Okay, this is so much darker and so much warmer because the lights are warmer,” and they need to cut back and forth between shots that were photographed earlier with natural light. This requires a lot of work to balance the two so they look as if they were shot at the same time. There wasn’t a lot of those on any of the Superman movies, but there were a few. The stuff in the desert, all the collapsing dam with Jimmy Olsen was a nightmare, and I think…
Jim Bowers: What made that difficult?
Pat Miller: There were the opticals, the models, the light changes on the models when they crack and break. The stuff where they tried to put in the shots filmed on a stage where Jimmy Olsen’s standing there, and it cracks, he falls and is holding on. They were sped up, a lot of them, so when you change the speed, of course, it changes the amount of light you need to put on it. Otherwise, it gets too dark. So the lighting in those changed quite a bit. The processing of those opticals for speeding it up put weird shading errors on them, so I ended up noise reducing several of those, just using a light amount to take out some of the processing and the grain structure because of the speed. And a lot of the shots, just the close-ups of water breaking through the dam surface, they changed the speed on that and the lighting on that. One shot would come up normal speed and color, later they would use the same shot and change the speed, and it came up grossly yellow.
Jim Bowers: Oh, wow.
Pat Miller: So going back and trying to get all those to match, and luckily, as the film color equipment here, the Baselights especially, they’ve got their own built-in still store for being able to jump back and look at each frame. So you don’t have to have a separate storage device to go back and do match cuts. You can run through, go back and forth, and back and forth, and then you can match it as close as possible so that the color blends in, and you don’t have a shot that jumps out or is like a “Oh, gee, now that shot’s a little bit darker” kind of thing. You really need to get it very close.
Jim Bowers: Right. The color temperature of the Hoover Dam concrete must have shifted on you.
Pat Miller: Oh, yes, it was all over the place. So many different times of day, and indoors, outdoors, and the models of the dam, when the water’s running down and they’ve got the little towns, and the bridges wash out…
Jim Bowers: Right.
Pat Miller: They had that shot at different times of day. So I tried to get those to blend in and darken certain areas of it. They did some film reversal where they’re moving or zooming where the rocks are rolling down the hills and crashing up against the sides of the building, or the sides of the mountain, so those had a lot of contrast and color differences.
Jim Bowers: There were two different teams working on that, too. The miniature of the town, and where you see the water rushing up and finally stopping right before the town because of the rocks that Superman pushes down on each side of the hill – that was a separate team from Derek Meddings’ work on the miniature of the Hoover Dam. He had to actually leave the production, and another team came in that was a little bit less experienced, and they also shot on a smaller scale. Derek Meddings shot it pretty big scale, as he typically does, especially when shooting with water.
Pat Miller: And it looks it.
Jim Bowers: And Derek’s high-speed photography slowed down the water, which he did all the time, because he dealt with water a lot. But that whole Hoover Dam miniature was shot outside on the back lot at Pinewood in very cold weather. I’ve got behind-the-scenes pictures of everybody standing around and watching Derek and his team film it, and they’re freezing to death, and it’s mostly overcast skies.
Pat Miller: Oh, okay. That would definitely tell you a lot about lighting, because it’s always dark there.
Jim Bowers: You didn’t really use a whole lot of DNR (digital noise reduction) on these movies, then.
Pat Miller: No, no. Grain is a part of film. Certain parts, certain things that are sped up, slowed down, or pushed because they weren’t exposed right, I’ll go in and try to cut down on that to let it blend in a little bit. Otherwise I think grain belongs there.
Jim Bowers: It absolutely does, and I just wanted to say I appreciate the fact that you didn’t use a lot of DNR, because, unfortunately, some of the most popular titles out there have had too much.
Pat Miller: Oh, yes, they get very plastic, and I don’t like plastic, so it’s useful when you get something that really, really needs it. Or if the processing is bad, the noise reduction will actually smooth out some of the unevenness of the processing. It can help a lot, so in those areas I’ll use it.
Jim Bowers: A fan asked, “Why do both versions of Superman-The Movie have the old WB logo but Superman II, Superman III and Superman IV has the new logo?”
Pat Miller: Warner logos that are not integrated into the main titles {Saul Bass’s logo for Superman-The Movie was} are now being replaced with the current animated logo that says, “A Time Warner Company”. Orders from above. This is for all features we are remastering.
Jim Bowers: You recently worked on Dangerous Liaisons. {The Blu-ray was released on February 7, 2012.}
Pat Miller: Correct.
Jim Bowers: You were doing 1.78 pan and scan and 1.37 pillar box pan and scan while I was visiting with you in your suite in January. Please tell me again why you’re creating those pan and scans.
Pat Miller: Well, if the original film is 2.40 [aspect ratio], it comes out in letterbox, and now, obviously, on 16:9 monitors the letterboxed picture is a big picture, which is a wonderful thing. If a film was shot in 1.85, which has been around since the ‘50s, it can be blown up to 1.78 and fits almost exactly on a 16:9 monitor. But, in this case, the 2.40 masters are blown up for 1.78 and, you’ll see those on broadcast stations, especially HBO. HBO likes to show full-frame because people say, “Wait a minute. Why am I still seeing these big mattes when I’ve got a great, big TV?” That’s the whole idea of being able to create 1.78 masters that have to be pan and scanned just a little. It’s more of a pan, there’s no scan. You don’t really do any jump cutting in 1.78. The 1.37s with pillar box are created to fit the older TVs for stations and networks that are still broadcasting that format. Those we still do pan and scan to position the picture to follow the action in the frame.
Jim Bowers: Are you doing that on most titles now?
Pat Miller: Doing it on all titles originally shot in Cinemascope or 1.85.
Jim Bowers: Very good.
Pat Miller: I know that’s a format many broadcasters and studios would like to drop. I love doing pan and scan because it was always a challenge on how to frame the picture, get the action in, get the people talking, especially if they’re talking on both sides of the frame, and that was a lot of fun. Over the years, I’ve met so many different directors of photography who hated it (laughter), and they had to sit in and make the decisions, and after awhile, starting in the ‘90s, I had several big-name DPs who said, “Ok, you just do this on your own, you know what you’re doing.” They wanted nothing to do with it. They got to that point where, “This is the picture that I shot. We can now display it with mattes top and bottom.” In the ’50s and ’60s, especially when they started showing Cinemascope movies on TV, and it was always a pan and scan situation, the television stations themselves didn’t want to put mattes in the picture because people, especially in the ’60s, would call them up and say, “What’s wrong with my television? I’ve got these big, black lines.” That’s why they created the pan and scan and not doing any of the matting. But as time went on, mattes were used more and more, especially in the ’80s with the music videos. Music videos did a lot of mattes and people got used to seeing that and then television stations dropped that requirement.
Jim Bowers: I would think the biggest pan and scan nightmare would be any Sergio Leone movie.
Pat Miller: (laughter) Certainly, or back in the original Cinemascope days, I did The Robe, which was the first Cinemascope movie, back when I did Fox work, and this was back in the 1980s. They shot it like, “Oh, wow. We’ve got all this picture area, so let’s put people on the hard edges with lines, talking.” But even in the actual Cinemascope part of the picture that should be showing, these people were cut in half with dialogue lines. So making pan and scan, and making it work…it just looked like a mistake. (laughter) It was just interesting to look at, but I always enjoyed the challenge. At the time, the person who was head of video mastering at Fox would come in and watch it, and we’d discuss it, and we’d have to make that decision, “Well, that’s the best we can do.” It’s too bad, but that’s how it is. I’m sure they have long time since remastered The Robe…I’ve not looked, ever. Now that they can leave it in letterbox, you probably still see those people falling off the ends of the screen. (laughter)
Jim Bowers: Do you ever listen to your movies while you’re mastering them?
Pat Miller: I wish I could. What happens is the film is scanned for us, and in the past, maybe ten years ago, when we actually ran the film in sync with the sound while we were recording, or while we were making decisions about pan and scan. Now, with it all being file-based, and the film scanned for me, I don’t have the luxury of having the audio. In making decisions for pan and scan, so I know when to cut when people talk, we’ll bring up one of the old masters and I’ll run the tape in sync with the picture so I’ll know when to make the pans and cuts. My Sirius radio gets a lot of use so I have some background noise! (laughter)
Jim Bowers: I’m looking forward to watching the newest Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings Blu-rays with the family.
Pat Miller: All right, great. I really enjoy the older films, so I was really lucky to be able to do all of the Superman movies.
Jim Bowers: We appreciate all of your hard work.
Pat Miller: I really appreciated your coming up [to Los Angeles] and visiting.
Jim Bowers: That was a great experience. Thanks very much. I’d never done anything like that before. I’d been there before, but not in your buildings, and certainly had never gotten to see what goes on behind-the-scenes like that, so…
Pat Miller: I look forward to seeing it {the interview} and I’ll send it to all my friends. (laughter)
Pat Miller’s Movie and Television Résumé
Warner Bros. Motion Picture Imaging:
Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010) – Approved By Di Supervisor Peter Doyle
Jonah Hex (2010) – Approved By Director Jimmy Hayward
Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince (2009) – Approved By Di Supervisor Peter Doyle
The Hangover (2009) – Approved By Director Todd Phillips
Observe And Report (2009) – Approved By Director Jody Hill
Four Christmases (2008) – Approved By Director Of Photography Jeffrey L. Kimball
Sisterhood Of The Traveling Pants 2 (2008) – Supervised By Director Sanaa Hamri
10,000 B.C. (2008) – Approved By Director Of Photography Ueli Steiger
Fool’s Gold (2008) – Approved By Post-Supervisor Carol Dantuono
I Am Legend (2007) – Approved By Director Francis Lawrence
The Golden Compass (2007) – Approved By Jeff Halsey (New Line Cinema)
Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix (2007) – Supervised By Editor Mark Day
Nancy Drew (2007) – Supervised By Director Andrew Fleming
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2007) – Supervised By Director Kevin Munroe And Post Production Supervisor Brad Arensman
Lucky You (2007) – Supervised By Director Curtis Hanson And Director Of Photography Peter Deming
The Painted Veil (2006) – Supervised By Post Production Supervisor Chris Miller
Happy Feet (2006) – Supervised By Executive Producer Ed Jones
Beerfest (2006) – Supervised By Director Jay Chandrasekhar
Barnyard (2006) – Supervised By Director Steve Oedekerk
Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut (2006) – Supervised By Editor Michael Thau
V For Vendetta (2006) – Supervised By Director James Mcteigue
Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire (2005) – Supervised By Director Of Photography Roger Pratt
Charlie And The Chocolate Factory (2005) – Supervised By Editor Chris Lebenzon, And Approved By Director Tim Burton
Dukes Of Hazzard (2005) (Original & Unrated) – Supervised By Director Jay Chandrasekhar
North Country (2005) – Supervised By Director Niki Caro
Constantine (2005) – Supervised By Director Francis Lawrence
Alexander (2005) (Theatrical And Director’s Cut) – Supervised By Director Oliver Stone And Director Of Photography Rodrigo Prieto
Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban (2004) – Supervised By Director Of Photography Michael Seresin, And Approved By Director Alfonso Cuaron
Polar Express (2004) – Supervised By Producer Steve Boyd, And Approved By Director Robert Zemeckis
Phantom Of The Opera (2004) – Supervised By Director Of Photography John Mathieson
Patrick C.Miller Colorist Select Titles Page 2
Home At The End Of The World (2004) – Supervised By The Director Of Photography Enrique Chediak
Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King (2003) (Original And Extended) – Approved By Director Peter Jackson
Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers (2002) (Original And Extended) – Approved By Director Peter Jackson
Collateral Damage (2002) – Supervised By Director Andrew Davis
Gods & Generals (2002) – Supervised By Editor Corky Ehlers
Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring (2001) – Approved By Director Peter Jackson
13 Ghosts (2001) – Supervised By Director Of Photography Gale Tattersale
3000 Miles To Graceland (2001)
The Dish (2001)
Natural Born Killers (2000) – Supervised By Director Oliver Stone
The Matrix (1999) – Supervised By Director Of Photography Bill Pope, And Approved By Directors Andy And Larry Wachowski
Any Given Sunday (1999) – Supervised By Director Oliver Stone
South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut (1999) – Supervised By Directors Trey Parker And Matt Stone
Deep Blue Sea (1999) – Approved By Director Renny Harlin
Without Limits (1998) – Supervised By Director Of Photography Conrad Hall
U.S.Marshals (1998) – Supervised By Director Stuart Baird
Soldier (1998) – Supervised By Director Paul Anderson
Batman & Robin (1997) – Supervised By Director Of Photography Stephen Goldblatt
Selena (1997) – Supervised By Director Gregory Nava
Heat (1996) – Supervised By Director Michael Mann
Space Jam (1996) – Supervised By Director Of Photography Michael Chapman
Batman Forever (1995) – Supervised By Director Of Photography Stephen Goldblatt
Heaven And Earth (1994) – Supervised By Director Oliver Stone
War Of The Buttons (1994)
The Fugitive (1993) – Supervised By Co-Producer Peter Macgregor-Scott
Batman Returns (1992) – Approved By Director Tim Burton
Under Siege (1992) – Supervised By Producer Peter Macgregor-Scott
Batman (1989) – Supervised By Director Of Photography Roger Pratt
Full Metal Jacket (1987) – Supervised By Leon Vitali
The Shining (1980) – Supervised By Leon Vitali
Blazing Saddles (1974)
Clockwork Orange (1971) – Supervised By Leon Vitali
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) – Supervised By Leon Vitali
And Many Others Over 30-Year Career As A Colorist
First-Run Television:
“Anything But Love” (1989-91), 20th Century Fox Television
“Magnum, P.I.” (1987-88), Universal Tv
“Miami Vice” (1987-88), Universal Tv
“Murder, She Wrote” (1987-88), Universal Tv
“Simon & Simon” (1987-88), Universal Tv
“The Fall Guy” (1986), 20th Century Fox Television
“Still The Beaver” (1985-87), Universal Tv
“Macgyver” (1984-87), Paramount Television
Along With Other Specials And Movies Of The Week
