However, at the last moment it was decided to generate a simultaneous D-Cinema master for digital release at selected theatres throughout Italy.

This was performed at Cinecittà Digital, in Rome, by Light Illusion's Steve Shaw, driving an iQ with Qcolour.

As this was a last minute decision time scales became very truncated and the decision was taken to perform the DI work at the D-Cinema projector's native resolution of 1280x1024. This dramatically reduced the amount of data that had to be handled, speeding up the DI process.

This was necessary as the final edited reels were not available for scanning until three day's before the launch screening, and so the total DI process had to be squeezed into the available time. Not a lot of sleep!

Scanning was performed on a Spirit DataCine, at the specified resolution, with the data being immediately transferred to iQ for grading via a Barco D-Cinema projector (the same one that was to be used for the main screening in Rome).

Grading was performed with the assistance of Technicolor's chief grader, who was also responsible for the chemical release print grade, greatly assisting in speeding up the DI grading process.

Additionally, there were occasions where the benefits offered by DI grading were used to better the results obtained via the chemical approach, such as limiting clipping on scenes where sunlight was reflecting off the sea, by non-linear adjustment of the scene contrast ratio.

One of the worries voiced by traditionalists was the choice of resolution for the DI work. It was assumed that the D-Cinema final would look soft in comparison to the film master.

However, the director & main actor, Roberto Benigni, was surprised to find his 'frown lines' visible in the digital projected final when they were not in the film print. As a result we had to 'soften' the focus [blur it!] on the digital final [and I wont tell you how we did this but is wasn't via digital technology!].