The Television Academy has announced the recipients of the 72nd Engineering Emmy® Awards honoring an individual, company or organization for developments in broadcast technology. Kirsten Vangsness, who most recently starred on the critically acclaimed CBS drama Criminal Minds, returns to host the awards for the fifth consecutive year. For the first time, the ceremony will stream live on Emmys.com on Thursday, Oct. 29, at 5 p.m. PDT.
Engineering Emmys are presented to an individual, company or organization for developments in engineering that are either so extensive an improvement on existing methods or so innovative in nature that they materially affect the production, recording, transmission or reception of television. This year the Academy is recognizing nine companies and five individuals with the prestigious award.
As the television industry has struggled to meet the challenges of a global pandemic, the Academy’s Engineering Emmy Awards Committee has selected four companies for recognition in addressing issues related to COVID-19. These organizations have developed and deployed engineering technology that has allowed remote production to continue during this unconventional year.
Recipients of this recognition are:
Evercast
Evercast is a real-time collaboration platform that combines video conferencing, HD livestreaming and full-spectrum audio in a single web-based platform. Requiring no file sharing and no specialized hardware, Evercast allows users to securely stream any creative workflow (live cameras on set, Avid, Premiere, Maya, Pro Tools, etc.) to anyone, no matter where they are located. With ultra-low latency and uncompromising quality, Evercast offers a digital experience that mirrors the ease and productivity of a team sitting shoulder to shoulder.
HP Inc.
Advancing the art of television during the global pandemic with access to high-performance computing from anywhere, ZCentral Remote Boost continues to accelerate remote creative processes for production teams around the world. Z by HP technology is powering remote work for editors, artists and other creative professionals with the capabilities required for collaboration, creativity and production. ZCentral Remote Boost provides users access to high-performance computing for a range of applications and use cases including VFX, simulation and 3D, providing flexibility for end users to create on almost any end-point device remotely.
Sohonet
ClearView Flex enables a user-friendly, real-time remote collaboration capability that creatives can initiate and manage for a wide range of uses in preproduction, production, VFX and postproduction. Of special value to those working from home, it can be deployed on any network and viewed with reliably consistent user success in a rock-solid, studio-approved secure ecosystem on the most popular consumer devices including AppleTV, iPads/iPhones, Android tablets/phones and Mac/PC.
Teradici
Teradici has specialized in providing remote access to workstations for over 15 years and has been widely recognized for delivering an uncompromising user experience for graphics-intensive workloads. Teradici Cloud Access Software enables artists and producers to work from home or anywhere they need to be by establishing a secure remote access connection to Windows or Linux desktops hosted in the studio, a private data center or a public cloud. Users can access their remote workstations through the Teradici PCoIP protocol from a wide choice of client devices and can use their display, keyboard, mouse and peripherals like Wacom devices as if they were on a local machine, with the resolution and color fidelity they need to maintain the highest-quality standards.
Another magnificent seven
Seven additional Engineering Emmy awards were given to the following recipients for exceptional engineering developments:
Apple Inc.
Introduced in 2007, Apple ProRes has become a ubiquitous video codec in the film and television industry. It offers excellent preservation of source video quality and, thanks to innovative algorithm design, fast encoding and ultra-fast decoding. These two properties—combined with Apple’s industry licensing and certification support—make ProRes among the most widely used codecs for end-to-end content-creation workflows: from high-quality acquisition to high-performance editing, color correction, broadcast ingest and playout, and FX creation to master content distribution and archiving.
CODEX
CODEX RAW Workflow provides the fastest high-speed data-migration process for RAW camera content available on the market. It provides a completely proven and deployed end-to-end secure-transport workflow from production to post, while reducing storage costs and saving time with high-density encoding.
Dan Dugan for Gain Sharing Automatic Microphone Mixing
Gain sharing is a unique audio process that helps an audio mixer mix multiple live talkers with ease. There are no upcuts, no missed words and no fluctuations of background noise. The technology allows mixers to easily manage multiple live mics without constantly riding individual input faders—ideal for unscripted events such as talk shows, game shows, news and sports panels, town hall meetings, and debates. Gain sharing automates the robotic part of mixing multiple live talkers, recognizing who’s talking and crossfading them faster than a human can react.
Epic Games
Unreal Engine is one of the most advanced real-time 3D engines that features photorealistic rendering, dynamic effects and multi-user capabilities. Broadcasters choose Unreal Engine to deliver cutting-edge content, virtual sets and AR-enriched programming with much higher fidelity than traditional broadcast graphics engines. Unreal Engine frees creativity and eliminates the overlapping hurdles of time, budget and bandwidth, giving television professionals the flexibility and efficiency to integrate high-end graphics, VFX, motion capture and CG animation into their visual storytelling.
RE:Vision Effects
RE:Vision Effects introduced the industry to optical flow-based postproduction video tools via the products Twixtor®, ReelSmart Motion Blur®, RE:Flex® and others. In addition, RE:Vision Effects supplies these technologies as plug-ins to a wide range of host applications and interfaces that are already familiar to the user.
Sound Radix
Sound Radix Auto-Align Post makes phase/time corrections of a moving multi-microphone recording. By dynamically correcting delay and phase between the boom and lavalier microphones as they move around the set, this tool automates what was previously a labor-intensive task for sound editors across the industry.
Bill Spitzak, Jonathan Egstad, Peter Crossley and Jerry Huxtable for Nuke®
Nuke® is an award-winning node-based compositing toolkit. A one-stop for VFX houses globally, Nuke’s toolset has been used on a wide range of television, feature films, video on demand and commercials to solve complex visualization challenges and turn incredible ideas into reality. Nuke’s flexible, efficient and feature-packed toolset delivers film-grade results fast to compositors, lighters and animators who require a robust, production-proven toolset for compositing, VFX editorial and review.
The 72nd Engineering Emmy Awards are overseen by chair John Leverence and committee members Wendy Aylsworth, Stuart Bass, Bob Bronow, Jeff Calderon, Tony Carey, Jim DeFilippis, Greg Gewickey, Frank Morrone, Jeffrey Riedmiller, Leon Silverman, Derek Spears, David Stump, Craig Weiss and Barry Zegel.
Rom-Com Mainstay Hugh Grant Shifts To The Dark Side and He’s Never Been Happier
After some difficulties connecting to a Zoom, Hugh Grant eventually opts to just phone instead.
"Sorry about that," he apologizes. "Tech hell." Grant is no lover of technology. Smart phones, for example, he calls the "devil's tinderbox."
"I think they're killing us. I hate them," he says. "I go on long holidays from them, three or four days at at time. Marvelous."
Hell, and our proximity to it, is a not unrelated topic to Grant's new film, "Heretic." In it, two young Mormon missionaries (Chloe East, Sophie Thatcher) come knocking on a door they'll soon regret visiting. They're welcomed in by Mr. Reed (Grant), an initially charming man who tests their faith in theological debate, and then, in much worse things.
After decades in romantic comedies, Grant has spent the last few years playing narcissists, weirdos and murders, often to the greatest acclaim of his career. But in "Heretic," a horror thriller from A24, Grant's turn to the dark side reaches a new extreme. The actor who once charmingly stammered in "Four Weddings and a Funeral" and who danced to the Pointer Sisters in "Love Actually" is now doing heinous things to young people in a basement.
"It was a challenge," Grant says. "I think human beings need challenges. It makes your beer taste better in the evening if you've climbed a mountain. He was just so wonderfully (expletive)-up."
"Heretic," which opens in theaters Friday, is directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, co-writers of "A Quiet Place." In Grant's hands, Mr. Reed is a divinely good baddie — a scholarly creep whose wry monologues pull from a wide range of references, including, fittingly, Radiohead's "Creep."
In an interview, Grant spoke about these and other facets of his character, his journey... Read More