Digital Imaging Technician

What they do

The DIT sits at a cart with a calibrated monitor, a waveform, several drives and a card reader, and takes responsibility for two separate things: the image and the data. On the data side they offload every card with checksum verification in software such as Silverstack or ShotPut Pro, write at least two copies to separate media before anything is cleared for reuse, generate MHL reports, and produce dailies or proxies in the format the editorial team asked for. On the image side they load the show LUT, apply and record CDL adjustments shot by shot, watch exposure on a waveform and false colour, and tell the cinematographer when a highlight has actually clipped rather than merely looked bright. They check that the camera is recording to the delivery specification, which on a Netflix original means a minimum 3840-photosite capture width, 10-bit or greater, RAW or an intraframe 4:2:2 codec at a floor of 240 Mbps at 24 fps, in a scene-referred log encoding. They also carry the unglamorous jobs that keep the pipeline honest: black balancing bodies before principal photography, shooting framing charts through the post chain, and flagging clips that span multiple cards. In the United States this work sits with IATSE Local 695 alongside video engineering.

What they decide

The calls that belong to this role and no other.

• Offload procedure, verification method and when media may be cleared
• How many copies exist, on what media, and where they are before wrap
• Dailies and proxy format, naming and burn-ins, agreed with editorial
• How the show LUT and CDLs are applied and recorded on set
• Whether the camera is meeting the delivery specification, reported to the cinematographer

Principles of the craft

• Verified copies or no copies: an offload without checksum verification is a hope, and two copies on separate media before a card is wiped is the minimum a production can survive on.
• A LUT is a communication device, not a grade: it exists so the director and the cinematographer can judge intent on set, and every look decision made through it should stay reversible in the graded master.
• Protect the negative: on-set decisions live in metadata and CDLs, not in baked pixels, because the version you burn in is the version the colorist cannot undo.
• Watch the scope, not the monitor: monitors lie about contrast and viewing environment, and a waveform tells you whether the highlight came back or left.
• Test the whole chain before you need it: a framing chart and a grey card that travel from camera to final deliverable will expose a pipeline mismatch on a prep day rather than on a delivery day.

Common mistakes

• Treating a fast copy as a verified copy, then discovering a partial card at wrap
• Baking a look into dailies so heavily that notes are about the LUT rather than the scene
• Judging exposure on an uncalibrated monitor in a bright tent
• Letting naming conventions drift between cameras, days and units, which lands on the assistant editor
• Running the cart on production power without conditioning, so a genny surge takes the offload with it
• The competent version: a beautiful on-set look built on a colour pipeline that nobody in post agreed to

How to learn it

Exercises and routes in, not a reading list.

• Offload the same card twice, once with checksum verification and once with a plain file copy, then corrupt a byte in one file and see which method notices.
• Build a show LUT for a single scene, shoot it, then try to grade the log original to somewhere different. Note what the LUT made easy and what it made impossible.
• Shoot a grey card and a face at metered exposure, then two stops over, and compare what the waveform said with what the monitor showed you.
• Set up a naming convention for a two-camera, three-day shoot and hand the media to somebody else to assemble. Their complaints are the lesson.