The Hollywood Post Alliance® has announced recipients of the organization’s Engineering Excellence Award, the honor showcasing inventors, manufacturers, vendors and/or peer postproduction companies for outstanding product or technology application offerings. The Engineering Excellence Award is an integral part of the HPA Awards, which recognize creative and technical excellence in the art, science and craft of postproduction.
The winners of the 2010 HPA Award for Engineering Excellence are:
o Arnold + Richter Cine Technik (ARRI) for ALEXA
The ALEXA digital camera redefines motion picture capture with ultra-fast workflows, unrivaled image quality and sensitivity. ALEXA is the first camera to support the recording of Apple ProRes 4444, 422 (HQ), LT or PROXY encoded images onto on-board SxS memory cards for direct editorial delivery. Productions recorded in uncompressed HD or ARRIRAW for an off-line/on-line workflow gain another benefit: the QuickTime/ProRes off-line editing proxy is created directly in camera, carrying the exact images, audio, timecode and metadata as on-line HD or ARRIRAW material.
o Cine-tal for the Davio Processor
The Davio Signal Processor is a flexible architecture loaded through a library of software packages creating solutions for an exceptionally wide range of tasks. Current software packages include processing for color management, display calibration and 3D Stereo workflows.
o Digital Vision for Open EXR workflow
Historically, production relied on a 10 bit film centric pipeline, but today’s deliverables must be unsurpassed in precision and quality. In response, Digital Vision has pioneered a color workflow with true HDR support using 16 bit “Half Float” OpenEXRs. High dynamic range content can be graded in “Half Float” native format in real-time without any pre-conversions, loss of dynamic range or precision, allowing rendering and previewing at the intended delivery format, whether for Digital Cinema, Film output or Blu-ray, without premature loss of quality during the color Mastering process.
o Furthermore, judges for the Engineering Awards also recognized Texas Instruments with a Special Mention for DLP Cinema Technology.
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Glenn Kennel, president of ARRI Inc., commented on the company’s win for ALEXA, “We are pleased to hear that the HPA has recognized ALEXA’s innovative Direct to Edit (DTE) capability. We see Direct to Edit, allowing users to go directly from shooting to editing, as an important step for the industry.”
Rob Carroll of Cine-tal Systems, Inc. noted, “To win this award among such a prestigious list of nominees is a real honor for the team at Cine-tal.”
Bruno Munger, senior product manager for Digital Vision, commented on the company’s second win, “All of us at Digital Vision are honored to have Open EXR recognized by the HPA; it is extremely meaningful to us. Ultimately, it is our customers who continue to raise the bar of creative excellence, and they help us push the boundaries in non-linear grading both in terms of creation and technology. Thank you to the HPA and its members, our peers in the U.S. postproduction community.”
Past winners of the Engineering Excellence Award include; Quantel (2007 and 2008), DVS, FastSoft, Panasonic, Signiant, MTI Film, Sony, S.Two Corporation and Digital Vision, which makes this their alluded to second win.
To enter the Engineering competition, companies must submit a written description as well as a presentation to an expert panel of judges. Interest in the Award continues to grow, and this year saw a record number of entrants in this category. The Engineering Award recipients were chosen following presentations and a blue-ribbon judging session earlier this month at LaserPacific’s Digital Theater in Hollywood, Calif. An entry had to represent a significant step forward for the postproduction industry, and could be from an individual, group or company.
Leon Silverman, president of the Hollywood Post Alliance, noted, “Increasingly tools and technology provide the palette that helps our industry express and demonstrate creativity. The Engineering Award is meant to cast a spotlight on those companies and individuals whose behind the scenes efforts make it possible for the rest of our industry to shine. While our HPA Awards certainly celebrate the artistic, the recipients of the HPA Engineering Award remind us of the art in the science. We are proud to celebrate their significant efforts and contributions to our industry.”
The HPA Awards will be held on the evening of November 11 at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles. The HPA Awards recognize the outstanding contributions of post production professionals working behind the scenes in a number of categories, including color grading/DI, sound, compositing and editorial for television, feature films, and commercials. In addition to the Engineering Excellence Award, two additional special awards will be given during the Awards ceremony – the Charles S. Swartz Award for Outstanding Contribution in the Field of PostProduction, and the HPA Lifetime Achievement Award, which will be given to Fox Post Production chief Ted Gagliano.
For more info and tiickets for the HPA Awards, check here beginning mid-September.
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