Digital Sputnik, the company responsible for a paradigm shift in lighting solutions for motion pictures and television, is announcing the closure of $540k financing round supported by Jaan Tallinn, Skype founding engineer; Sten Tamkivi, ex-CEO of Skype Technologies, founder of Teleport; and Rain Rannu & Veljo Otsason founders of Fortumo, a leading mobile payments provider. Other investors are Saue 3K Capital, Per Frasmer and Eric Bohman.
Backed by new funding from acclaimed tech investors, Digital Sputnik is taking a technology-company approach to movie and TV lighting. “We see that a fundamental shift in motion picture industry to LED technology. However, most LEDs are still from the pre-digital cinema era. We’ve re-imagined the lightning system from the grounds up, designed for the digital era,” said Kaur Kallas, co-founder and CEO of Digital Sputnik.
Unlike most conventional LEDs, using current control in conjunction with multi-dimensional look up tables (LUTs) allows Digital Sputnik to achieve very high color precision and color shift free dimming while keeping the lights flicker free at any frame rate.
Digital Sputnik’s system is also unique in its ability to control lights over iPad app to adjust colour temp, intensity and tint of the fixtures.
Earlier this year, Digital Sputnik unveiled the world’s first motion-picture quality lighting system mounted on an aerial drone, enabling Hollywood professionals to fly a high-input light source over their movie or TV set in ways never before possible.
Digital Sputnik’s LED lights have already been adopted for motion picture, television and documentary uses by Cinelease, Viasat, Red Digital Cinema, Grass Valley, Brain Farm Cinema, as well as in the latest movie by acclaimed director Werner Herzog.
According to Ty Evans at Brain Farm Cinema, the DS LED system has been instrumental in accelerating the company’s workflow. “The DS LED system is fast, efficient and easy to setup,” said Evans. “And because it’s only 400 watts, we’re able to run on small generators. The DS LED System allows us to be a run-and-gun crew with the quality of a professional G & E crew.”
Digital Spuntik’s LED lights, available on its webstore at digitalsputnik.com, are primarily geared at professionals, ranging from major Hollywood productions to single-man documentary film-makers. However, according to Kallas, the goal is to next move to prosumer level, in a similar way professional digital movie cameras have recently become affordable for prosumers. More affordable, single-light LED kits are expected to become available later this year.
Additionally, Digital Sputnik is exploring additional outlets where its tech can be used, ranging from stage productions to ski-resort lightning and indoor farming.