There was a bit of deja vu connecting the Oscars and the Emmys to last week's 8th annual Hollywood Post Alliance (HPA) Awards. William Goldenberg, A.C.E., who earned the Best Editing Oscar earlier this year for Argo, saw his work on that Best Picture Academy Award winner again honored with an HPA Award for Outstanding Editing of a Feature Film.
This was one of two HPA Awards won by Argo, the other being Outstanding Sound-Feature Film for Erik Aadahl, Ethan Van der Ryn, John Reitz and Gregg Rudloff of Warner Bros. Sound.
As for the Emmy connection, the primetime Emmy winner for Best Visual Effects–the "Valar Dohaeris" episode of Game of Thrones–came up big again at the HPA Awards ceremony, topping the category Outstanding Visual Effects-Feature Film. The HPA-winning VFX artisans were Joe Bauer and Jabbar Raisani, Pixomondo's Jörn Grosshans and Sven Martin, and Spin VFX's Doug Campbell.
Game of Thrones also joined Argo as a two-time HPA Award winner this year. "The Climb" episode of Game of Thrones topped the Outstanding Sound-Television category, the honored artisans being Tim Kimmel, Paula Fairfield, Brad Katona, Jed Dodge, Onnalee Blank and Mathew Waters of Todd AO.
High five
While Company 3 scored a single win this year, it continued an impressive string of HPA honors. Colorist Tom Poole of Company 3 won for Outstanding Color Grading-Commercial on the strength of Under Armour's "Brought To You By Under Armour." This marked the fifth straight time that a colorist from Company 3 took the category honor.
Poole's Company 3 colleague Siggy Ferstl topped the spot colorist competition in 2012 (Chrysler's "Halftime in America:), 2011 (Nissan's "Zero"), and 2010 (AT&T's "Legends). In '09, colorist Stefan Sonnenfeld of Company 3 came up the winner (Pepsi's "Pass).
Joining Company 3's Poole in the 2013 HPA commercial category winners' circle during a gala awards ceremony the evening of Thursday, Nov. 7, at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles were: Doobie White of Therapy Studios who topped the Outstanding Editing-Comercial category for Nextel/Ferrari's "Combustion"; an ensemble of artists at Framestore who took the VFX-Commercial honor on the strength of Galaxy's "Chauffeur"; and Anthony Moore of Factory for Outstanding Sound-Commercial on the basis of Honda's "Hands."
Features
Besides Argo's pair of wins, the other HPA Award recipients in the feature categories were:
• Life of Pi, took the HPA Award for Outstanding Color Grading. Colorist was David Cole of Technicolor.
• And copping the HPA Award for Outstanding Visual Effects-Feature was Industrial Light & Magic for Pacific Rim. ILM's winning ensemble included Lindy DeQuattro, Eddie Pasquarello, Nigel Sumner, Derrick Carlin and Chris Lentz.
Television
In addition to the two HPA Awards bestowed upon Game of Thrones, the TV category winners were:
• Colorist Anthony Smith of Encore for the "Hunt" episode of Castle.
• And editor Skip Macdonald, A.C.E., for the "Dead Freight" episode of Breaking Bad
Special honors
The HPA Awards gala was also highlighted by several special honors, including the Charles S. Swartz Award for Outstanding Contribution in the Field of Post Production, which was presented to Avid. Leon Silverman, president of the Hollywood Post Alliance, commented, "From its founding days to the present, Avid has not only helped to lead our industry's transition to new, powerful digital creative tools, but has also expanded the creative image and sound postproduction palette in a way that has fundamentally enabled new creative abilities. Building on their strong heritage of innovation, it is exciting to see Avid's ongoing dedication to our community."
The award was named in honor of the late Charles S. Swartz, who led the Entertainment Technology Center at the University of Southern California from 2002 until 2006, helping to build it into the industry's premier test bed for new digital cinema technologies. Swartz was a member of the Hollywood Post Alliance Board of Directors until his passing in 2007. The Charles S. Swartz Award is not bestowed every year, but rather only as worthy recipients are identified. Silverman concluded, "The mission of the Charles S. Swartz Award is to recognize those efforts that have had profound and global impact on postproduction. Avid, throughout its 25-plus year history, has impacted our post production community so significantly that they indeed exemplify the meaning of this Award and so honor the memory of our friend and colleague Charles Swartz."
The HPA also honored the winners of the Engineering Excellence Award as well as the HPA Judges Award for Creativity and Innovation in Post Production. The winners of the HPA Engineering Excellence Award were: DTS, Inc., for MDA, an open object-based audio specification currently being proposed to international standardization committee as an alternative to today's closed proprietary systems; NVIDIA for NVIDIA GRID Visual Computering Appliance, which enables users to remotely run digital content creation applications on any Windows, Linux or Mac PC with high-performance NVIDIA GPU acceleration even if their computer does not natively have that capability; Sony Pictures Imageworks and The Foundry's FLIX, a web-based visual story development tool that enables director, editors, cinematographers, 2D and 3D story artists to work together in one easy-to-use app; and Telestream's 16 bit 4:4:4:4 Transcoding Technology.
The winner of the HPA Judges Award for Creativity and Innovation in Post Production was Park Road Post Production on the strength of its Next Generation Feature Film Workflow. Park Road developed the world's first end-to-end High Frame Rate Stereoscopic 3D workflow in support of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Partnering with some of the industry's finest technology companies, Park Road delivered digital dailies, traditional and 48fps offline/online support, real-time collaborative finishing and complex final deliverables.
