Veteran commercial and feature cinematographer Curtis Clark, ASC, has unveiled Culver City-based NeTune Communications and the firm’s proprietary service, ShowRunner, a secure, broadband, fully meshed private satellite network. ShowRunner is touted as being able to deliver a range of communications services to the film production business.
NeTune has the backing of several key players. Hughes Electronics and Hughes DirecTV are providing equity financing along with advanced satellite, digital video, entertainment and communications networking expertise. The NeTune Communications Network Operating Center will be located at DirecTV’s broadcast center in Marina del Rey, Calif. Another equity investor in NeTune is Greenwich, Conn.-based PanAmSat, which is offering global satellite connectivity through its privately owned fleet of satellites. IBM, West Palm Beach, Fla., is providing advanced digital networking, server and storage technology, and security and systems integration services, as well as global systems operation and vendor financing. Lucent Technologies, Bridgewater, N.J., is offering high-resolution digital imaging, and fiber and wireless networking technologies. And The Creative Artists Agency, Beverly Hills, is a strategic partner with access to industry talent behind and in front of the camera.
ShowRunner is designed to deliver high-quality film dailies, graphics, CG images, voice and video conferencing and text data, such as scripts, call sheets, schedules and budgets, via satellite. Clark, who is president/CEO of NeTune, described ShowRunner’s security and encryption system as being "military-grade."
ShowRunner users communicate globally and access files via a private browser modeled after typical Web browsers. NeTune supplies all the necessary hardware, such as wireless laptops, personal digital assistants (like PalmPilot), video conferencing equipment and portable satellite linking devices, so users filming in distant locations around the world can communicate with executives at the studio, with the editor at the post house, or with visual effects artists at another facility. A NeTune representative accompanies the production on location to manage the equipment and linking devices.
Users log on with a password, which allows them access to files on a need-to-know
basis, meaning that a studio president would have access to his firm’s various productions, from budgets to edits, whereas a director would only have access to the particular production in which he or she is involved. The over-40 possible production functions integrated into ShowRunner include live casting sessions, remote wardrobe selection, digital nonlinear editing, visual effects compositing, and remote mixing. ShowRunner also incorporates Kodak PreView software, which enables cinematographers to preview "looks" using still digital images as a reference.
"Productions shooting in North America and at locations around the world will be able to transmit high-quality dailies and share key production data with studio executives and/or other collaborators in an ultra-secure and interactive environment," claimed Clark. "They will be able to teleconference and share any data, voice, image and text with no limits imposed by time or distance."
NeTune plans a full-systems beta test of ShowRunner on a 20th Century Fox film starting in October. Clark was not at liberty to say which film. He expects ShowRunner to be fully operational by the end of the year.
In addition to its longform applications, ShowRunner will eventually be adapted for the commercial production arena. NeTune will seek input from ad agencies and production houses about how to best tailor the service and make it both cost effective and useful for the spot production model. "We’re not doing commercial deployment today. But we have some ideas about how to do that," said Clark, who has shot some 250 ads. "Just as we’re doing with the Fox film, we’ll do a beta test with select agencies, and work through with them what modifications they need."
Clark declined to discuss specific costs, but said the ShowRunner tab would be "a drop in the bucket" for a large-scale feature film production. In terms of commercials, for which budgets are typically under $1 million, Clark said, "We’re very optimistic that there are ways to model it to accommodate the requirements of TV commercials that will be well within the realms of affordability. There are costs that will be directly eliminated [by incorporating ShowRunner], plus the value that we bring in terms of collapsing time and distance. You have more accurate information and so can make better decisions. It’s a myriad of workflow efficiencies that directly impact the cost of any given production."
NeTune offers demonstrations of the service by appointment. Some services will be available in the next few weeks, including real-time collaborative editing and the delivery of dailies from a telecine facility to one or more fixed destinations.
Clark developed the concept for NeTune in ’96 and was awarded a patent in ’99. He has lensed ads for Nike, Reebok and Infiniti. His feature credits include The Draughtman’s Contract, Dominick and Eugene and Extremities.
"The main motivation for me was the challenge to create a service where the technology addressed actual needs," stated Clark. "I basically designed it for my own use."
