Broadcast Shows Hot on the Heals of Summer Tent Poles

So, what cinematic feasts will we be gorgeing on for Orange Wednesdays this summer? Having read much of the hype, the only real thing that had me excited about this summer's movie season was Transformers', until I read the reviews.
Nerve delicately phrased:

About forty of its 145 minutes contain both robots and explosions, and those forty minutes comprise some of the most impressive special effects that have ever graced a screen. The Transformers really do look like tangible objects, and they're exciting to watch. But the other hundred-plus minutes aren't really about anything at all.

Even so, poor reviews that describe fluff, effects and no story, may not be enough to keep me away. Most time yes, but for some reason I am intrigued by Transformers. Maybe its nostalgia. I was never into comics as a kid, but cartoons like G.I. Joe and Thundercats and Transformers had me engrossed.

Combined with the praise for the visual effects work might get my £8 from my pocket and into the box office.


I didn't see Spidy 3 and to be honest, am not won over by the current onslaught of franchises (Pirates, Die Hard, Rocky). I image some are credible, but the ideas aren't new. I wont feel like i am discovering something. I will feel like the companies that own the studios are wringing out all the cash they can from a single concept. Maybe that's cynical

Spidy had similar hype to Transformers as to the originality of the effects work, but why combine this with a tired story. This story from a few months ago on Wired, praised the work done to develop the character of the Sandman.

Perhaps directors are getting too consumed with the effects over the story.

But making the villain wasn't easy (nor was it cheap). It all started with director Sam Raimi peering through a microscope to study the molecular structure of sand, and led to two-and-a-half years of visual-effects R&D and a crew of 30 special-effects technicians.

"I had people bring in 12 different kinds of sand -- this is where people think the movie industry is insane -- so I could look at it," says Raimi. "I saw California beach sand, Mojave desert sand. We ended up picking Arizona sand because it looks exactly like ground corncobs. The reason that's important is that when you bury people alive in hundreds and hundreds of pounds of sand, they'll be squished. You need something lightweight like corncobs, so air can get through and the actors and stuntmen won't be crushed."

Raimi conducted "screen tests" on a Culver City soundstage to observe the sands' "behavior." Visual-effects supervisor Scott Stokdyk elaborated: "We shot footage of sand every way we would need it -- thrown up, thrown against blue screen, over black screen. John Frazier, the special-effects supervisor, shot it out of an aero can at a stuntman. Anything we could imagine sand doing in the film, we shot."

Same on Transformers: (viaPopular Mechanics)

Michael Bay's $150 million adaptation of the legendary 1980s cartoon and toy series will include nearly 50 so-called transformations. Hand-rendered metallic uncorkings of real-life cars, trucks and helicopters represented uncharted territory for the gooey-alien experts at ILM, each transformation taking six months to imagine and each re-engineering the way digital Hollywood does computer graphics imagery (CGI).

Perhaps that is whats important for films now. Studio's only need the trailer to be good, the effects to seem unmissable on the big screen to get the cash. The same can't be said for Television which has seen a rise in high production value programming which uses quality visual effects until now exclusive to the big screen. Yet given the necessity for series to establish a following that continues throughout and sustain interesst week in week out which I think supports the fact that high budget TV shows like Lost and 24 have stronger character development and story lines than the majority of the tent pole films produced since the turn of the century. The most clear example of this is Heroes. One of the few breakout shows of last year. The soon to air on BBC2 show is brilliant. Top effects and good solid story telling. Perhaps a recent Wired article about show creator Tim Kring can shed some light on the winning formula. It starts...

Tim Kring doesn't know Magneto from Wolverine. You'd never know it from watching Heroes, his hit show about everyday people with extraordinary powers.

Kring creates balance in the show as the top tier in Production he fulfills the need to bring the supernatural back down to earth.

Kring's approach was counterintuitive to someone from a comics background, says Greg Beeman, another Smallville vet who came to Heroes as an executive producer. "I'd think, 'We need an ice guy! We need a fire guy! We need a guy who shoots rays out of his eyes!'" Beeman says. "Tim thought in terms of distinct characters." He started with a character's personal struggles and predicaments and assigned special abilities to suit. A harried single mom gets superstrength. A clock-watching Dilbert type learns to control time. A prison escapee is suddenly able to walk through walls. And when Kring's protagonists develop their powers, they don't strap on spandex and capes - they grapple with these strange developments like believable human beings.

I had thought a good exclusion to this argument of TV taking over film in terms of quality, might be Harry Potter, but as Heroes likens to cinema in quality and effects, Harry Potter has 7 features to ensure they get bums on seats for. 14 hours of "programming" of which the studio needs to inspire people to pay for. This must be inspiring Universal to look after story quality and character development. Anne Thompson's new Blog has an early review of the latest installment and concurs.

I suspect that this Harry Potter installment may experience a slight boxoffice dip. But the one I'd be worried about, if I were Warners, is the next one. Yates will be back; he did just fine with Order of the Phoenix. I have no problem with the darker, scarier Potter. That's where it has to go. But in movie terms, it does feel like we're stretching this out over a very long haul.

Finally, I have been meaning to mention a Past Deadine article from back in Feburary titled; Television -- Better Than the Movies? Deal With It? In it, Ray Richmond cites a Newsweek article tracking the evolution of TV, the HBO effect and growth in film stars eager to get seen on the small screen, an action which used to signify the steep slope of a career in decline.

Short summary; I am more excited about season premiers than summer films and I think that trend is not likely to change. What keeps me going to the cinema are the gems that TV has yet to produce, for me, the most recent example was Volver as close to a perfect film as I have every seen.

Diesel Do Hologram Cat Walk

I found this lovely tidbit on the Creative Review Blog. This is pushing the envelop of how video can interact with live action events. The designers have created 3D cgi elements that were projected in HD from the ceiling onto "plastic foils placed at 45 degree angles so that the projected light from the ceiling goes onto a foil, is reflected on to another and then into the air".

This created dramatic effect.



Props to Danish video design agency Visoo who used their patented Free Format technology.

"As a medium, Free Format™ has been created to astound and astonish and make things happen right in front of people. A free-floating hologram which looks absolutely true to life - reminding many people of the Star Wars series. Created by projecting a specially produced film onto a see-through screen, the results are incredibly realistic, despite being an illusion. The film merges with the foreground and background to create an illusion in a real-life setting."

The most prominent example of this kind of thing is the Gorillaz Concerts, seen here with with Madonna:



There has been a lot of this going on. It was two years ago that I briefly worked on some tests for Motorola where they wanted to have triggered shop windows that had holograms walk up to passers by and introduce products. I remember the crowds outside a Nike store on Broadway in NYC where 3D holograms of product floated in the window.

I wonder why hologram is so intriguing for people. Perhaps it is more down to Star Wars than we may give credit. Is it that we feel it is the Future coming ever closer to our grasp. Regardless of our nostalgia for this image of the future, the truth is that technology and creativity are paving the way for some amazing visual productions.

Where i've been

Again, it has been ages. so I don't expect too many people to be picking this up. Firstly, I have been changing jobs, left the BBC and now back in Soho. Doing more agency stuff. The new facility uses Smokes, Flames, DS and 3D (Maya). Fun toys to be honest. In the machine room, we've got an SR deck and StreamZ Digital Rapids encoder as well as FCP, which is a bit under-utilized for my liking, but when you have a Flame in the next room, you probably aren't going to push the FCP too hard.

So, new home and perhaps a new twist on these ramblings. Will try to keep this Blog going as i find it rather therapeutic and keeps me abreast of the things I find interesting.

Here we go again.

Apple Makes Moves Under Pressure from Greenpeace

In an announcement last week, Apple came clean about their green policies and addressed concerns of Greenpeace lobbying as follows:

Apple completely eliminated the use of CRTs in mid-2006.

Apple products met both the spirit and letter of the RoHS restrictions on cadmium, hexavalent chromium and brominated flame retardants years before RoHS went into effect.

Apple plans to completely eliminate the use of arsenic in all of its displays by the end of 2008.

Apple plans to reduce and eventually eliminate the use of mercury by transitioning to LED backlighting for all displays when technically and economically feasible.

Apple plans to completely eliminate the use of PVC and BFRs in its products by the end of 2008.

By 2010, Apple may be recycling significantly more than either Dell or HP as a percentage of past sales weight.

All the e-waste we collect in North America is processed in the U.S., and nothing is shipped overseas for disposal.

Apple products are designed using high quality materials that are in high demand from recyclers.

Steve concluded with the following statement:

Today is the first time we have openly discussed our plans to become a greener Apple. It will not be the last. We will be providing updates of our efforts and accomplishments at least annually, most likely around this time of the year. And we plan to bring other environmental issues to the table as well, such as the energy efficiency of the products in our industry. We are also beginning to explore the overall carbon “footprint” of our products, and may have some interesting data and issues to share later this year.

I hope you are as delighted as I was when I first learned how far along Apple actually is in removing toxic chemicals from its products and recycling its older products. We apologize for leaving you in the dark for this long. Apple is already a leader in innovation and engineering, and we are applying these same talents to become an environmental leader. Based on our tangible actions and results over time, hopefully our customers, employees, shareholders and professional colleagues will all feel proud of our ongoing efforts to become a greener Apple.

Greepeace were quick to respond with plaudits, but tempered them with a call to further action in respect to their US focused recycling programme.

Those of us working with Apple products for some time will know that it usually takes them a while to think beyond the Cupertino shores. PAL anyone?

High Definition Magazine Revamps Site With Lots of Goodies

High Definition Magazine has had a web-makeover.

You may remember me mentioning their blog with is a pretty good resource of the haps in the HD world: http://www.definitionmagazine.com/blogger.html.

Now, on their main site, they have added video content with Veoh www.veoh.com/channels/hdtv.

The video content should support the articles from the mag and case studies.

Final cut Studio 2 Date for Your Calendar

No, I am not going to cover old ground. Lots of good new toys from Apple have been fully talked about and it will be fun to see how they all work. If you didn't get out to NAB in Vegas and are in London you can register for a free demo day on the 22nd of May at the Riverbank Park Plaza.

Register Here!

Final Cut Pro 6 in Depth. See the power of the open format timeline and the new ProRes 422 format.

Motion 3 in Depth. Discover how to quickly add depth and realism to your motion graphics for video and film. Watch us build a broadcast promo piece from scratch — all in 3D, all in real time.

Soundtrack Pro in Depth. Experience Soundtrack Pro 2 as we move through audio post-production, sound design and surround mixing.

Introducing Color. Learn how colour, like sound and music, is a critical “character” in your video productions. See how the all-new Color application can be used to dramatically improve the quality of your footage — from DV to 2K.

Compressor 3 in Depth. Find out how to deliver your content in the multitude of formats available today.

Distribution in the UK

In reading recent interviews with David Lynch in the run-up to the UK release of his latest film Inland Empire, a lot has been made of the difficulty Lynch faces getting distribution deals. I hope this really means he struggles to get wide release and lucrative deals, because if the director of such great works as Twin Peaks, Dune, Blue Velvet and Eraserhead struggles, than we have no hope.

If you need a bit of insight into how things work, Launching films has this 20 page introduction to how distribution works in the UK.

Highlights include this summary of the distribution cycle:

Connecting every film with its audience immerses distributors in a great deal of activity before and during a cinema release. For any given title, some of the phases listed below may overlap or be combined.

• Producer/studio acquires rights to film a story or treatment
• Screenplay is developed
• Production finance and cast and crew are confirmed
• Principal photography takes place, in studios and/or on agreed locations,followed by some months of post-production, editing and scoring
  
• Master print of finished film is delivered to local distributor
• Distributor determines release strategy and release date
• Distributor presents the film to exhibitors and negotiates bilateral agreements to have the film shown in cinemas
  
• Distributor’s marketing campaign creates a ‘want to see’ buzz among the target audience and launches the film
  
• Prints are delivered to cinemas a few days before opening
• Film’s run extends any number of weeks subject to demand, which may be augmented by additional marketing activity
  

After its final playdate, the film print is returned or transported securely to another cinema. Ultimately, most prints are destroyed under supervised conditions, with a small number retained in archives, and the distributor’s rights in respect of the theatrical release expire.

Run-up To NAB

Here we go again. It's nearing March and with it comes all the speculation about April. Here are a couple of the key rumors and announcements circulating.

Final Cut Pro 6 - Think Secret leading the charge with claims of a "real time video editing engine". Does this mean mixed resolution timelines without rendering? Or stacking HD and effects with real time playback. Or will we finally be able to edit HDV? C'mon, you all know HDV is shit to edit with.
Along with this rumor comes the hope of a beast of an app in Final Cut Extreme. This is a rehash from last year, but my assumption would be that FCP 6 could be powerful enough to muster the industry's praise.

Brightcove - Added features allows users to create their own channels hosted by Brightcove comprised of free/submitted content. Kind of like a favorites list that they can then promote to other users.

Sony - has lots of product announcements for NAB, including HD Studio Cameras and HD Xchange

Colonel Blimp Gives Props To New Lily Allen Video

She may not have won a Brit. But she has a fun new video. Colonel Blip gives us a nice little sneak preview of her new video featuring a very rude little muppet.

Have a look at the video HERE.

Scratch - A Robust DI Solution On An Indie Budget

Last night I went to the very swanky Groucho Club in Soho. I would normally not be cool enough to get in, but last night I had an invitation. After clearing the barricades at reception, I sauntered past the smattering of celebs and headed upstairs to the Mary Lou Room.

I had been very invited to checkout Assismilate's DI conform and grading solution, Scratch. I had heard a fair bit about Scratch on various sites including HDforIndies and there is a good case study at Studio Daly as well. But I had yet to see it for myself in action.

Like many, I have been more and more involved with FCP as an NLE over the past few years, so I naturally focused my attention on what looked to be the wholly grail of affordable DI and NLG (non-linear grading) solutions. Running on a mac, Final Touch, provided a XML based, tapeless workflow with a UI that wowed many experienced colourists. Having assumed the price you pay for Final Touch is a direct reflection of an intention to work with a company as they develop a product that has tremendous potential, I have regarded the acquisition of Silicon Color (the product's manufacturer) by Apple with trepidation. Will there be further development of the product that many companies have invested time and money in, or will Apple use the R&D to further their product line to match their wider pro-sumer strategy? Ultimately, if no further development is done on Final Touch, the customer's who purchased the product will have been royally shafted. The product has great features, but lets the user down greatly in the workflow it promised.

It is from this skeptic place, that I ventured out to look at a similar offering in Scratch. What I learnt though, pleasantly surprised me. Assimilate have not tried to promise more than what is feasible and realistic. Scratch is a cost effective, data centric, grading solution much like Final Touch, however, the product is focused and asks the user to work its way to achieve the best results. It also goes beyond grading and offers a balanced solution to meet the needs of Data Conforming for film based productions.

Scratch really is a film tool. It works predominantly with DPX files and has been optimized to use them well. It now offers Quicktime support. Here, Mike at HDforIndies breaks that down, along with issues involved like the need for comprehensive file support and workarounds for unsupported codecs. During my demo, there was a QT rendered out from the offline with BITC that was used to frame match the conform. The system seemed quite happy with both the QT and the DPX.

Scratch as a product is modular and sold as a multi tiered license. The facets include:
1) Project
Data management
2) Process
Image processing and rendering including plugins
3) Edit
Conform and simple editing tools
4)Extensions
Additional Tools
5) Media Layer
Quicktime export etc.
6) Color
Grading
7) Scaffolds
Secondaries

For me, seven modules is overkill for this product, but I am sure there is reasoning behind it. One nice thing is that because it is modular you buy separate licenses and do conforms in a back room, while saving your plush client suite for grades.

Scratch is file based, optimized for DPX (handles 2k DPX in real time) and resolution independent (HD, 2k, 4K).
Includes a DPX player as a stand alone app which lets you preview scans.

Project
With DPX files, scans are individual frames or images, like a tiff sequence. In Scratch, groups of frames are called 'shots'. Demo loaded a good size group of shots into project from directory very fast and allowed navigation, playback and work on shots seemlessly as you would expect from an NLE. But these are 2K. As Scratch can handle various sources, to avoid processing issues you can, for example, 'soft load' jpegs and converts it to DPX. The way is manages the robustness of power needed is by offloading much of the processing work onto the graphics card. I think a lot of products are doing more and more of this because the power is there to be taken advantage of. As a result, a better gfx card equals better performance.

I believe scans are done in a way resulting in metadata associating takes of shots, which are grouped by staking them in the project viewer.

In order to conform, the op would create a "Construct" and an "EDL Load". There is some XML functionality in the product, but my demo didn't cover this at all. I think customers are building there own XML based workflows by writing their own code, much like with Shake. The workflow utilises the tried and tested route of applying EDLs to the shots and woop, your done! 55 shots were conformed in less than one second. You can then import your BITC (burnt in time code) quicktime and frame match the newly conformed 2k material to your offline quicktime. These two nicely stack in the timeline and we can generate timecode and clip details on screen against our conform sequence as well. We can also view in split screen and slip shots as needed to fix discrepancies in the EDL. The media is loaded rather than imported which apparently makes a difference in how fast it runs, but to me this seems like semantics and just take it as read that it works fast. And finally, there is sound!!! unlike Final Touch, Scratch supports sound sync. Not as you might hope however, they're working on it. At the moment you can render out an AIFF or WAV and slip it into position on the timeline. Soon to come, BWAV with metadata and quicktime Audio Support. In my demo, the sound didn't actually work, but I will take their word for it.

Grading
Within the primary grading room there is a side bar for stackable versions. For example, there could be multiple versions of the grade, multiple takes from the the shot that need to be looked at, the rendered QT, or variations of VFX. This is very handy.
Along the bottom of the grading screen lives a tray for the shots which quickly allows you to apply grades across a selection or indeed all of the shots.
There are lots of other groovy features, but I think they are pretty much in line with the rest of the markets' offerings.


Scaffolds
Secondaries can be stacked so they apply on top of other vignettes or can be set to cut through other grades to the source image. This seemed like a sort of compositing feature in the grading. Tracking is similar to Final Touch, but the track button was missing from the demo system. Key point: know what you want to do and buy a license that allows you to do it.
As for performance we had 3 secondaries and a primary on 2k and had real time playback. What Scratch does cleverly is use the GPU to process on the fly as grades are applied, they are in effect rendered. When finished all that needs to happen is write the final files as the processing has been done. Simple test I saw laid a single primary across 2268 frames and was processed in under a min. 2268 frames = 1.5 min. So, basic processing will happen faster than real time. This is impressive, but I wouldn't be sold until I saw a real life project put the system through its paces.


Extensions
Can use full range of Foundry plug-ins, Ultimatte, etc. I didn't see this in action, but I gather most of this stuff is better left to other applications like Shake or similar.

Hardware
Hardware wasn’t really covered in the session, so I have copied this from the Assimilate site.

The performance requirements listed below are based on a file-size of approximately 12MB per frame, which equals a 10bit log DPX file at 2048x1556 pixels resolution (referred to from now on in as 2k):

a) For 25fps playback of 2k 10bit DPX files the technical minimums are:

25 guaranteed I/O transactions per second for a total request size of 12MB per transaction

Minimum latency per I/O better than 40ms

Sustained read bandwidth across array, minimum of 301MB/s

This is the absolute minimum that MUST BE sustained at all times.

b) For dual stream 24fps playback of 2k 10bit DPX files:

48 guaranteed I/O transactions per second for a total request size of 8.4 to 12MB per transaction

Minimum latency per I/O better than 20ms

Sustained bandwidth across array for dual stream operation at 24fps per stream, minimum of 577MB/s

The performance of suitable direct-attached arrays for SCRATCH will usually lie somewhere in between these two boundaries [of a) and b)], whereas SANs may often exceed this performance envelope. The smaller request size of 8.4MB is roughly the size of a Super2k DPX frame (2048x1080 at 10 bit log). While Super2k will be easier on the bandwidth requirements; it will still require full I/O transaction performance. Sustaining these I/O transactions tends to be more of a problem for SATA arrays at this point.

Tower recommended specs:
BOXX 8212 H I/O station (dual Xeon)
BOXX 8312 RTX I/O station (dual-dual core Xeon)
BOXX 7512 RTX I/O station (dual-dual core Opteron)
BOXX 7412 I/O 3D station (Dual Core/Dual Opteron)
BOXX APEXX HS I/O station (quad-dual core Opteron) (Coming soon)

Globalstor ExtemeStor DI Station

HP xw8200 Workstation* (dual Xeon)
HP xw9300 Workstation* (dual Opteron)

IBM IntelliStation A Pro* (dual Opteron)

* Requires external storage

Color Management
Assimilate Scratch currently supports 3D look up tables (3D LUTS) for a range of color management solutions, ensuring a calibrated and truthful color manipulation throughout the DI chain.

Arri CMS Color Management System
Imagica GALETTE Color Management System
Kodak Display Manager System
Pandora Pogle Color Correction Systems (Supported LUT formats a3d, m3d)
Rising Sun Research cineSpace Colour Management

Bottom Line
Software packages run from £10 - £20 K. I should have more details emailed through to me and will update soon.

They have 5 systems working in London and 'loads' in the States.

Final Thoughts
Good stuff in all. I really liked the interface, it straight away reminded me of a Discreet product (Flame or Smoke). Really slick, but usable. I felt that with a bit of poking around, I could get to grips with the functionality of it. This is important as it would need to be used by Technical Assistants in order to conform, but also needs to meet the demands of highly skilled Colorists. Most functions ran smoothly on the demo system and in all I could see it fitting nicely in a number of setups.

The proof is in the pudding. Mike Curtis recently said about new tech solutions "the sales pitch sounds the same whether it works great or is a clusterf*cked, non-functional cripple of an app." I think there are those of us who are a bit more skeptical having suffered with technology that hasn't met expectation. Final Touch was/is a great app, I work with Pogle Colorists who are really eager to jump on the Final Touch. But it's detractions were not apparent at any demo I attended. The problems are all in the workflow.

I get the feeling those who have moved from Final Touch to Scratch have been happy with the decision. I also think Scratch is not built on a promise. It does what several other products do (Nucoda, Baselight, Final Touch, Lustre) . Like those other products, Scratch has it's strengths and weaknesses. I was told Baselight is a better grading tool, not surprising when you look at the Blackboard it comes with. Scratch has tried to be more evenhanded devoting much effort to the strength of its conforming tools similar to the way the Nucoda system does.

Baselight Blackboard

Ultimately, this is a film product. The broadcast market and HD markets are getting largely ignored by products at the moment. Perhaps it is down to confusion about the fact that in video work there is no need for a digital intermediate. There is no intermediate stage in video post. There is however a real desire for the types of tools and potential workflows that non-linear grading can offer. Scratch I don't think is really answering this call. They are staying true to form, rather than repackaging to meet extended market share. So, if you are shooting a good bit on film, or mixing film and video, then this could really be a useful addition. If you are a facility looking to develop the DI side of things this may be a cost effective solution. But traditional HD conforms are probably better done in a FCP, Smoke or Avid. That still leaves the colour side of the system, within which there are really strong tools that most Colorists would be happy to work with. The system is fast and robust and with further video file integration it could be a strong offering for video post houses as well as those moving into film /DI post.

Finally, thanks to everyone at Assimilate for taking the time to show me the product.