Asked to look into their own tool box and the one emerging at the upcoming National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) convention, editorial and post house artisans as well as execs were surveyed by SHOOT on two prime fronts. The queries were:
1. What, if any, new tool or technologies are you utilizing this year to bring creative solutions to client’s projects. What, if any, new tool or technologies are your clients asking about?
2. If you are planning to attend NAB in April, please discuss what tool or technology you anticipate and look forward to seeing on the exhibit floor and why?
Here’s a sampling of the feedback we received:
Stephen Buchsbaum, CEO, The Post Start 2 Finish Family of Companies (Hollywood): Runway, The Post Group, Novastar, Lightning Media and iO Film
1.) Our clients increasingly ask about tapeless work flows. We’ve answered that demand by utilizing Facilis’ Terrablock storage solution. It allows us to share content from Clipster, on line SD and HD media from FCP and Avid, as well as color corrected and dust busted material. While we’re conforming the offline material, we can continue color correction and DRS on another machine while that same media can also be used on yet another machine to cut a trailer from. It’s proven to be an efficient time saver for our clients.
2.) Since we’re looking more towards facilitating the increased interest in tapeless work flows, we’ll be looking at storage platforms. We’ll also be looking at software and hardware for digital intermediates.
Jon Hopp, editor/owner,
Jigsaw Editorial, Los Angeles
1.) The main new client request is to offline in HD. Oddly enough it’s not the commercial folks asking. We (Jigsaw) re-tooled our entire facility this past summer so that we can easily edit, monitor and output at 1:1 HD resolutions in both Final Cut and Avid. Offlining in HD seems to be a creative solution for the lower budget projects right now, short films and videos, where they want to output directly from the Avid or Final Cut systems in HD with little or no online. We are not seeing much demand for this in the commercial arena yet. Commercials are continuing to shoot film and finishing HD. Unfortunately for commercials, most networks are requesting that non-HD content be delivered as a center cut extract from the HD master itself, effectively making the area outside the 4×3 format “filler” space. I look forward to the end of 4×3 programming so that we can better utilize and frame properly in the 16×9 aspect ratio.
2.) I am not really planning to attend [NAB] this year but I anticipate the biggest excitement will be about open architecture media and improvements in shared storage. Final Cut really started this trend, it seems logical and practical for others to adapt to this thinking. Eventually media will and should be easily accessible for all types of software from a single storage unit.
Robert Keske, CTO,
Nice Shoes, New York
1.) Our clients have been asking us to simplify and expedite deliverables, Podcasts and Flash versions allowing mobile interaction during the production process. This has been a hot topic given that we have been concentrating on image, and sequence formatting tools and technologies enabling simultaneous compressed and non-compressed deliverables. We are continuing our evaluation of the current technologies.
Remote creative suites–having the ability to work with our artists remotely–is also of interest. Customers want solutions that allow them access to all of our creative suites and tools both in interactive and non-interactive ways.
Other areas we’re concentrating on are content virtualization techniques that can create and distribute deliverables either as foreground or background process. It’s really about time, a better back office management system, and the faster project turnaround with the highest quality deliverables(s).
Also of importance is continued integration of our tools into www.nicespots.com that extends clients’ abilities regardless of where they are.
2.) Solutions that include High Dynamic Range (HDR), removal storage technologies, which allow our finished product deliverables to connect directly into their production environments versus that of traditional data or video transfer means; encoding solutions, and GPU-based or integrated solutions.
Gong Myung Lee, CG supervisor, Charlex, New York
1.) Our modeling process has been enhanced with the addition of Pixologic Zbrush and Autodesk MudBox. Not only is Zbrush a great tool for creating textures, but also for creating normal maps which enables us to add detail into our models without adding extra geometry. Roadkill, a free plug-in for Maya, has been a life saver for our intricate UV mapping, polygon texturing process. PFTrack by The Pixel Farm has been a nice addition to our animation workflow which increasingly deals with geometry tracking and 3D integration onto live footage. We have also greatly improved the integration of Next Limit’s Realflow into our pipeline with customized scripts and collaborative R&D efforts with Fusion CI Studios, allowing us to produce complex fluid simulations and rigid body dynamics.
Michael Raimondi, president/executive producer, Union Editorial, Los Angeles
1.) For us this year the HD boom has finally arrived. Being a finishing house as well as an editorial company creates unique challenges. Like all “new” technology, the road to full HD compliance is not cheap. We started by renting the HD equipment we needed all the while waiting for the D5/HD Cam wars to sort themselves out before purchasing. We quickly realized that the conflict was not coming to a swift conclusion and we purchased a D5 deck along with monitors and scopes. This solved the majority of our finishing needs but the editorial side had its own challenges.
Now that there are multiple cameras and formats, we are consistently being drawn into the production process as a technology consultant helping the production company and agency find the best and most cost efficient pathway to finished product. We are predominantly an Avid shop but we have also purchased some final cut HD systems to deal with cameras that lend themselves to final cut digitizing. The formats and camera specs are dizzying and it has required our producers to learn a whole new set of protocols. The days of blindly sending out — specs are long past. A post facility must be nimble enough to perceive the subtle differences between formats or risk getting media that at worst is unusable and at best expensive to convert.
2.) The purchase we will be adding this year from NAB is, no surprise, an HDSR deck. The demands of clients needing masters on time and with the correct specs makes renting such a critical piece of the puzzle too dangerous. We are also getting more and more HD dailies on HDSR tape. Renting decks to load dailies or down converting has become prohibitively costly and inconvenient.
Ethel Rubinstein, president/COO
Bluerock, New York
1.) Technology is continuing to converge in intriguing ways. This year our editors are applying groundbreaking uses of 3D and 5.1 surround sound technologies to our client projects. For example, in conjunction with our sister company Spontaneous, Olivier Wicki at Bluerock recently completed U23D–the first ever 3D concert film. To create the 3D look, we used advanced technology developed by 3ality Digital and brought to bear an artistic agility to the project.
2.) I’m planning to attend NAB and at the show we will be scouting for the most advanced HD monitors available today. While we use state of the art monitors, and our editors and artists are skilled in leveraging HD technologies, we are looking for HD monitors that more accurately reproduce the image our clients see at their film transfer, and minimize the issues of banding, black level and viewing angle.
Ultimately for the HD creative process to work properly, we need our clients to view the work on monitors that accurately convey the clarity and definition of HD. In particular, we need a replacement for the present LCD technology: SED (Surface Conduction Electron Admitter) displays may be the answer.
Dean Winkler, executive producer/CTO,
Crossroads Television/89 Editorial, New York
1.) While not bleeding edge new, the marriage of film and video has become more filled with love. Specifically, it’s become unthinkable to finish a film, even a low budget independent feature, without going through a digital intermediate. Electronic image acquisition though not the same as film, has made tremendous strides. Client interest in the film vs. digital topic has so strong that we shot a 35mm vs. digital test on one of our sets as an ongoing educational tool. Finally, the 24 fps post production workflow has gone from being exotic to mainstream.
2.) I’ll be looking to see how much blank space there will be on the exhibit floor. (Remember when Ampex had the biggest both at NAB?) That, and to see if anyone else is planning to have a big party on February 17, 2009, to watch NTSC television broadcasting shut down forever.
