LaserPacific's DI team works on Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel

Produced and distributed by Fox and set for a Christmas release on December 23rd 2009, Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel tells the story of the chipmunks return to school. After feeling like fish out of water because they are surrounded by human students, the chipmunks find themselves having to save the school's music program by entering a Battle of the Bands competition to win the $25,000 prize. At the same time, they encounter a rival band of female singing chipmunks - the Chipettes - voiced by Amy Poehler, Christina Applegate and Anna Faris.

Director Betty Thomas chose to work again with cinematographer Anthony Richmond (they had recently collaborated on John Tucker Must Die). According to Dave, "Both were very involved in the final grading - Tony Richmond was here for virtually the entire time and Betty Thomas came in for two to three hours every day." Just like the first movie, the combination of live action and animated chipmunks in the Squeakquel would fully utilize the capabilities of Autodesk's Lustre™ grading system. The character animation was again handled by Rhythm & Hues. The collaboration between the two companies was taken to a new level on this project, beginning almost a year ago when the facilities were color calibrated to match so that all elements would look the same in both places. LaserPacific then made sure that the viewing environment at the studio, Fox, was calibrated to match so that anyone looking at elements at the studio would also be seeing the correct color.

Dave McKimmie elaborates, "Dave Cole worked closely with my producing team of Ryan Helsley and Sadie Johnson to make sure that all viewing environments were correctly calibrated, including the set and the studio, that scans between facilities were uniform, and that the color management was seamless between vendors. Together we put together a somewhat novel workflow whereby we took the shots that had been scanned at Rhythm & Hues after each VFX turnover, did a neutral color grading pass at LaserPacific under the direction of both the first and second unit DP and then those color values were applied to the scans. A round of tests was done to ensure that the values were correctly applied at Rhythm and Hues, and to ensure that the shots were set up so as to allow the smooth delivery of mattes for every single VFX shot with minimum additional work by the VFX vendor and the conform editor. In this way, final tweaks to color of individual chipmunks in the same frame were fast and efficient even in the case of late arriving VFX with no need for time consuming rotoscoping."

This workflow made life easier for everyone involved. According to in-house producer, Ryan Helsley, "All of this was to prevent the 11th hour panic of a vfx-heavy show that would be looking to final as late as possible." Dave McKimmie agrees, "Our director and DP walked away feeling very happy with the finished product and I can honestly say that I have never had such a smoothly run DI. Everyone at LaserPacific made me feel like my movie was their priority and did whatever it took to get my dailies, previews, laybacks, stock footage, vfx, titles, DI and digital cinema masters in and out on time, and looking better than I thought possible. LaserPacific is a full service house with great firepower and talent at their disposal, but with the customer service and attention to detail that I'd expect from a boutique operation."