Jake Bickerton's Blog RSS Feed - Televisual http://www.televisual.com/blogs/27/Jake-Bickerton.html en-uk © 2010 Televisual. All rights reserved. Thu, 09 Feb 2012 18:07:15 88 Televisual http://www.televisual.com http://www.televisual.com/images/logo.jpg 408 70 Predictions for post production in 2012 2011 was a reasonable year for the UK’s post industry. Only one big player fell by the wayside – Pepper – and the Ascent brand was lost after its takeover by Deluxe, but on the whole it was business as usual. A lot of the focus has been on ensuring post houses can handle and offer expert support for new file-based workflows for the cameras that have taken over production over the last year.

However, with the economy on the verge of another collapse, production budgets continuing to recede and significant ongoing investment still required to keep facilities up to date and able to cope with the ever increasing image sizes being pumped out by the next generation of cameras, will things remain relatively rosy this year?

“2012 will be a year of consolidation for post houses – the rapid transition to tapeless workflows has begun to settle down and though these new formats have changed the dynamics of client and supplier relationships, they have ultimately led to creative benefits for both parties,” believes Rowan Bray, md, Prime Focus.

“Post houses have had to respond by quickly upskilling their teams, changing infrastructure, and developing new workflows to allow for increasingly complex acquisition choices,” she adds. “In 2012, the ongoing need for highly skilled workflow managers will be just as prevalent. By rights, budgets need to reflect all the changes that have occurred but it will continue to be a challenge to receive budgets that match the requirements of most programmes.”

Bray sees the ongoing investment necessitated by file-based workflows as not an entirely negative thing: “Facilities will continually be required to update their storage infrastructure and technical training to meet client needs. But this has, perhaps for the first time, created a new differentiator between the established post houses and the one-man bands.”

Meanwhile, Envy’s md Dave Cadle remains optimistic about the immediate future: “The post landscape is very different to two to three years ago, which is exciting for all of us. We are going to be looking for more space as the demand for more facilities is very high.”
Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Predictions-for-post-production-in-2012_bid-321.htmlTue, 10 Jan 2012 11:57:57Entry-level mo cap system used for online machinima hit A marker-less desktop motion capture system was used by UK-based filmmaker/animator Ian Chisholm to create his machinima (a film made using the graphics engines from video games) epic Clear Skies III.

Chisholm, who works in IT and describes himself as “just some ordinary Joe without any background or training in film” learnt the skills required to make his films as he went along.

He used iPi Soft’s entry-level mo cap system to create character animations, which he then applied to the graphics engines of some well-known computer games. 

iPi Soft's system accurately captures human motion data using inexpensive, off-the-shelf cameras and doesn’t require sensor suits or green screen stages.

''I started the Clear Skies series about six years ago,'' says Chisholm. ''I'd just started doing some basic video work when I discovered I could use blue screening to composite video footage together.”

“I'd always wanted to tell a full story, and by using the Eve Online graphics engine for exterior space and ship shots, and the Half Life 2 engine for interior sets and characters, I managed to achieve that.”

It took Chisholm over two years to make the first instalment of Clear Skies: “I learnt everything in the Half Life 2 development kit, wrote my first script, build the sets, shot and created the film itself,” he says.

''I continually challenge myself technically and creatively, and Clear Skies III is the culmination of what I learned producing the previous two films,” he adds.

“Practically every line of dialogue and every movement was motion captured using iPi Soft. Not only was this fun, but it also raised the bar on the performances I could deliver using the Half Life 2 characters – I could add more personality and dimension to the characters, rather than be limited to the built-in gestures that come with the game.”

The mo cap system also made it possible for Chisholm to capture whole body motion and walk around in a small area and interact with items. He created "action sequences and dramatic moments – gunfights, fistfights, character interaction – that wouldn't have been remotely possible without it,'' believes Chisholm.



Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Entry-level-mo-cap-system-used-for-online-machinima-hit_bid-305.htmlWed, 12 Oct 2011 12:15:0748 GoPros capture The Matrix 'bullet style' surf shot Surf brand Rip Curl used a handheld underwater camera array of 48 GoPros to capture The Matrix ‘bullet time’ style footage of surfer Mick Fanning riding a huge wave in the South Pacific.

It’s the first time the portable camera array of miniature GoPro cameras has been used on a production, with the eye-catching footage being used as part of Rip Curl’s marketing campaign for its Mirage Boardshort surfboard.

“The pioneers of camera array photography” Tim and Callum Macmillan of Time Slice Films created the 48 GoPro array. An expansion kit for the GoPro, which enables two of the 1080p HD cameras to be synced together with a synch cable, is at the heart of the camera array, which extends the capabilities so make it possible for an unlimited number of GoPros can be synched together.

“We are always looking to lead the way when it comes to camera array effects and identifying new ways to push the limits for creativity and to acquire unique shots,” says Tim Macmillan. 

Additional videos are planned for Rip Curl, using the GoPro array, to film surfers Owen Wright, Matt Wilkinson, Dillon Perillo and Dean Brady.

Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/48-GoPros-capture-The-Matrix-bullet-style-surf-shot_bid-304.htmlWed, 12 Oct 2011 10:56:50Independent shines a light on the LED bulb To mark the banning of the production of old-style clear tungsten bulbs today, here’s a well-produced new spot from Independent, directed by Philippe André for Philips LED Lighting.

The ad begins with a row of Philips LED lamps turning on one after the next in a domino effect, cutting across gardens, along the surface of a swimming pool and continuing along a road, a car park and a highway, and finally lighting up a cityscape.
 
“It was funny to block the traffic on an eight lane street in Buenos Aires to set up hundreds of lamps and make them light up, on one after the other, live,” says André.



















Click here to view the spot.
 
Title: Philips What can light do?
Production Company: Independent Films  
Director: Philippe André  
Producer: Ohna Falby
Agency: DDB Amsterdam 
Agency Producer: Marco van Prooijen  
Creative Director: Chris Baylis  
Creatives: Geert Jan Bijlstra & Sharon Cleary 

Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Independent-shines-a-light-on-the-LED-bulb_bid-294.htmlThu, 01 Sep 2011 11:15:40Sign and store production docs on location using the iPhone A recently launched iPhone and iPad app enables you to legally sign production documents while on the move. Details below...

What is Softsign? It’s an iPhone and iPad app (Android is coming soon) from a UK-based company that enables you to ‘sign’ .pdf and .jpg documents with your finger. Production companies and filmmakers can use it to sign legally binding (in the UK at least) release forms, health and safety forms, expenses, timesheets and any other essential production documents on the move.

How does it work? When a document needs signing, open it in Softsign and input the names and details of those who need to sign it. They can then do so with their finger or a stylus. You can email the signed contracts to interested parties directly from the app and copy in the production team (or anyone else) if necessary. Documents signed using the app don’t need to be printed to be legally binding.

How much is it? The app is currently free, but a paid-for 'premium version' is in development.





Are Softsign-ed docs legally binding outside the UK? According to the maker of the app, electronic signatures on commercial transactions should have the same legal status as a written signature in the USA, but some States may have their own laws regarding e-signatures so you need to check to be certain. The company advises users to “ascertain whether electronic signatures are valid under the laws and jurisdiction applicable to your contract.”

Who is using it? It has received 35,000 downloads so far – users of Softsign in the film/TV industries include Agile Films and United Agents.

Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Sign-and-store-production-docs-on-location-using-the-iPhone_bid-292.htmlTue, 23 Aug 2011 16:59:44A beautiful splash of colour for 3d stereo art film Dutch-Italian freelance director and motion designer Giovanni Bucci, based in both Los Angeles and London, has just completed an vibrant, striking animation for artist Antonio Meneghetti.

The film, to be shown at art galleries and exhibitions, deconstructs one of Meneghetti’s paintings and immerses the viewer into the creative process of making the artwork.

The painting was provided to Bucci as a flat image, with a completely free brief to do as he like with it. Bucci has made both 2d and 3d stereoscopic versions of the film. You’ll need a pair of the old fashioned red and blue anaglyphic glasses to view the 3d version.

Title: OntoArte
Production: Stranirumori
Direction, Design, Animaton: Giovanni Bucci
Sound Design: Hoxton Lab (Marco Morano)



OntoArte (2D version) from GiovanniBucci.com on Vimeo.


 

OntoArte - 3D stereoscopic from GiovanniBucci.com on Vimeo.

Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/A-beautiful-splash-of-colour-for-3d-stereo-art-film_bid-288.htmlTue, 26 Jul 2011 10:47:22Making 3d accessible for the visually impaired and hard of hearing ITFC's Stuart Campbell on the challenges of subtitling and audio description for 3d content. As published in the July 2011 issue of Televisual magazine.

Subtitling, audio description and signing will be one of the next big challenges for 3d content. That’s because the positioning of subtitles on screen in terms of the depth of field (the z-axis) will affect the viewing experience with a risk of eye strain.

Should subtitles be placed in the foreground or in the background? Should they be locked in one place or follow the focus of the action?

The process of subtitling for 3d is similar to 2d up to the point of positioning, so a logical step would be for subtitlers to use 3d monitors while preparing the subtitles. No doubt we’ll work with our R&D specialists to develop the best solutions.

Producing media access services for 3d, a field which includes audio description and signing, will bring a new dimension to our well-established workflows, but once the hurdles are overcome, it will be like the move to HD and regulations will adapt.

We’re all looking at ways to make 3d accessible, but there’s still a way to go before we see satisfactory working solutions.
Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Making-3d-accessible-for-the-visually-impaired-and-hard-of-hearing_bid-287.htmlWed, 13 Jul 2011 11:13:56Why vfx education is failing Vfx education in the UK is having to shape up following the publication of the Next-Gen report, but some colleges and universities have much further to go than others. There are already some standout examples of good practice, including the University of Hertfordshire, which created its vfx degree course after extensive liaison with a number of leading UK vfx companies.

Mark Wallman, visual effects BA course leader at the University of Hertfordshire explains why he believes vfx education in the UK is in the state it’s in. A shorter version of this interview appears on page 23 of the June 2011 issue of Televisual.



Are universities/colleges out of date when it comes to the vfx software they use?
Yes. Having worked for 10 years plus in Soho, in companies such as Double Negative, The Mill, Framestore and Cinesite on many different feature films, you begin to see a pattern in the software being used. Although it’s my first year as a full time lecturer I had previously lectured at other universities. Those universities had a big disconnect between what they were teaching and the skills the students needed to get jobs. We are lucky in our university to have Maya, Nuke and now Mari as the main vfx teaching tools.

Do you believe the standard of vfx education in the UK falls behind the US and elsewhere, as claimed in the ‘Next Gen’ report?
Currently, yes. I believe you cannot teach vfx or games art or 3D with a commercial focus without having yourself worked in the industry. I’ve noticed many lectures in higher education in universities throughout England have never worked in the field they are teaching in. They also have a rather institutionalised view of the world. Teaching something creative should not be something you do just pay your bills. You need to have a driven passion for it.

What is the University of Hertfordshire doing to ensure students receive high quality vfx training?
I only took the job at the University of Hertfordshire because everyone who teaches there has come from the industry. I feel this is really important. And the university approached Soho Companies such as Double Negative and Framestore when first setting up the course to ask what skills the students needed to learn to gain the correct skills. So the whole course is based on industry advice.

We also have all the top companies frequently coming in to give presentations and tutorials to the students. We recently had an animator from Double Negative coming in to do a lunchtime talk, which ended up going on much longer than planned. The students were passionate and he was passionate – it was a great atmosphere. Furthermore, we get cg artists from around the world to help design and input into the courses we run.

Our vfx students work on the roto, matchmoving, compositing and 3D on live projects – pop videos, TV commercials, idents on the BBC, etc – and next year hopefully this will also include professional film work. All our vfx students gain a thorough knowledge of the vfx process and from my time at The Mill, I can show them the full process/pipeline. Now The Foundry are pushing Nuke in education, it’s a real help as budgets are tight.

Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Why-vfx-education-is-failing_bid-279.htmlTue, 14 Jun 2011 17:29:23Vfx guidebook released Skillset has released a guidebook for vfx training called The Core Skills of vfx. It describes the book, which has been written with the assistance of vfx supervisors and artists, as “a comprehensive, modular guide to best practice in vfx education and training”.

The Core Skills of vfx is being given away for free to all universities and colleges across the UK, to provide tutors with guidance on the skills the next generation of vfx talent will need to bolster the talent base within the UK’s vfx community.

Elements of the book can be embedded into courses, or the book could be used in its entirety as the building block for newly developed industry-focused degree courses, believes Skillset.

It includes a section entitled 'The vfx Core Skills Student Primer', which addresses the core skills the UK’s vfx industry currently requires – from technical elements to broader skills such as teamwork and the ability to fulfil creative briefs.

Alex Hope, md of Double Negative and co-author of the Next-Gen report, which was highly critical of the standard of vfx education in the UK, says: “This handbook introduces a new way for us all to work together – it’s an important development that will mean many new and productive relationships between universities and our industry.”

Skillset already has an accreditation programme for vfx courses in the UK and, on top of this, is planning to “signpost the courses that provide the most up-to-date, industry-facing education and training.” The Core Skills of vfx guidebook is part of a drive to improve vfx training across the board following the publication of the Next-Gen report.

Total Comments: 1 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Vfx-guidebook-released_bid-276.htmlThu, 02 Jun 2011 11:56:383d: basic shooting tips In response to Televisual's recent feature showcasing good examples of stereoscopic 3d – which included Phillips The Foundling spot (pictured) – Markus Naegele, IT integration product manager at Panasonic Broadcast Europe emailed over his thoughts on what you need to consider when shooting in 3d…

“It has never been easier to hit the record button to begin shooting in 3d, but this increased accessibility to 3d equipment doesn’t necessarily mean the results will always be good quality. In fact, the opposite is true and there are several important considerations to take into account before, during and after any content is captured in 3d. The decisions made in each of these stages will have a direct impact on the quality of the outcome.

All the usual rules for good 2d filming apply while it is also necessary to think more about the end output, paying special attention to the screen size the content will be viewed on, the type of screen (plasma, projector etc), as well as specifics such as the angles involved in filming. Parallax, for example, is key to achieving the right 3d effect and an incorrect setting here will mean the background will show through twice in the final content.

The position of the convergence point will determine whether subjects come to the front or sink back into the screen. Some will know instinctively from looking through the viewfinder if the end result will be good enough, while others may need to view the content afterwards to understand how the settings used affect the capture.
 
What can be done at the post production stage in the production process is limited. In the interests of producing the best possible 3d, it's preferable not to edit or make corrections at this stage. In the same way that prevention is better than the cure, those that are highly disciplined in the set-up and content capture phases of filming will benefit from the time they invest when it comes to the end result.

In summary, good 3d content is not a given. The ability to produce effective 3d depends on multiple factors such as the quality of the equipment used, ease of operation and the flexibility to amend key settings. Above all, it depends on a heightened awareness of filming in the third dimension and on the consequent need to take a holistic approach to the many variables that impact the final result.”

Total Comments: 1 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/3d-basic-shooting-tips_bid-275.htmlThu, 02 Jun 2011 11:16:03Marked for Life London vfx house Finish composited an assortment of tattoos onto children for this hard hitting Marked For Life spot for Sire (the Dutch Foundation for Idealism in Advertising), directed by Partizan’s Ariel Kleiman for 180 Amsterdam.

The campaign, which attempts to raise awareness about the long-term impact on children of comments made during divorcing parents’ heated arguments, focuses on a series of young children marked by tattoos of words overheard during their parents' conflicts.

Finish composited and layered all the tattoos onto the skin, tracking them as the children moved around. “I had to make sure the tattoos looked tough and permanent to convey the depth of the idea,” says Finish’s lead Flame artist Paul Wilmot. “In one scene, where the new tattoo is being drawn on, I needed this to look visually different from the others – newly inked and so much more raw and painful.”

MPC colourist Paul Harrison did the grade on the spot.


Sire 'Marked For Life' from Finish on Vimeo.

Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Marked-for-Life_bid-268.htmlWed, 11 May 2011 10:43:49Lease purchase, buy or rent? Buying something outright with cash you already have at hand may seem more sensible than leasing it and paying extra or simply renting it when needed. Jake Bickerton talks to media finance specialists about when it's best to lease, buy or rent

If your company is in the rarefied position of having a reasonably healthy bank balance and you need to purchase something for your business, you should just go ahead and buy it. Right?

Well, not really. Leasing - either lease purchase or lease rental (more on this later) - is likely to be a more beneficial route despite costing you more. And even though, in the case of lease rental, you don’t even own the item at the end of the lease period, it could still be a better option than buying it using available cash.

The choice to lease rather than buy upfront may at first appear illogical - why should you opt to spend more when you've cash in the bank, or, worse still, opt out of owning the product altogether? - however it's an eminently sensible move from the point of view of cash flow and tax benefits. In short, spending your cash now could take your company into very choppy waters further down the line.

To buy or not to buy
"85% of all FTSE top 100 companies lease their vehicles and PC infrastructure even though they can well afford to buy it all outright for cash out of their back pocket," explains Medialease md Paul Robson. "This is because it's always better to have assets that are employed in revenue generation for the company being financed, with the asset paying for itself directly in income verses the cost of investment." Fellow media finance company md, Azule's Peter Savage, adds: "If you're opening a post house or expanding with new equipment, the advice we try to get over if you've £100-200k in the bank and are thinking about paying cash for something when credit is tight, is what happens when you need to get hold of more money?" he says. "A typical scenario is you aim to open your post house in July, but this slips to August, then you get a reasonable amount of work from September to November but after this it starts drying up and by January and February things are going awfully. Your cash flow is up and down all the time and you could find yourself in real trouble if you're not careful." Steve Bolton, director at Barclays Corporate agrees: "A hire purchase scheme spreads the cash flow burden of the purchase and conserves working capital - this is particularly valuable to businesses, like many in the media sector, that are affected by seasonal peaks and troughs in trading activity."

Soho Media Finance md John Edwards is another to recommend a leasing option rather than buying equipment upfront: "If you can pay for something upfront, it doesn't mean you should - you have to be sure you won't have better uses for your finance. It depends on the individual and if they want to sail close to the wind. You pay a bit more on interest with leasing but you may feel more comfortable working that way. It's a safe feeling knowing you have money in the bank. You pay staff monthly so why not do the same with your kit?" Gareth Wilding, sales and marketing director at Fineline, sums up by saying: "If you’ve got the cash to buy then use it as it's always cheaper to do this. But only use it if you have sufficient cash reserves; never use working capital."

Leasing options
If you decide to go down the leasing route, there are multiple options available from finance companies, depending on your circumstances. The first option is to lease purchase, which is paying for equipment in instalments over an agreed term after which the item is yours, following the payment of a nominal fee.
The next option is lease rental, which is likely to be more cost effective than daily hire charges from a hire company. After paying rentals over an agreed term, you have the option to either return the equipment, continue renting it at a further reduced cost or selling the equipment on behalf of the financier whereby you retain a pre-agreed percentage of the sale proceeds.

There are a number of additional leasing options too, including an operating lease, for which the finance company underwrites a future value in the equipment, so the rental cost is calculated on a reduced amount - you lease the equipment for as long as you need it then the ownership returns to the leasing company.
Furthermore, there's a contract lease option, which is similar to the operating lease but also includes maintenance cover for the product too.

Which of these options you choose depends on whether you want to own the product at the end of the lease agreement. It isn't always desirable to own the 'asset' from a tax and accounting point of view, particularly if the value of the equipment at the end of the lease period is relatively small. "Typically production companies and post houses will opt to fund a new piece of equipment using a hire purchase scheme. This gives complete flexibility at the end of any financing term and is particularly relevant as generally the life expectancy of media equipment will be longer than the financing period," explains Barclays Corporate's Bolton. "Having said that, there are a number of production companies who prefer to structure the financial product around the specific lifecycle requirements of each asset. Commonly referred to as operating leases, this funding arrangement is particularly valuable for production and post production houses whose assets are refreshed and disposed of more regularly."

Azule's Savage believes "it's economically sensible to lease purchase as you own the asset at the end of the three years. If the product lasts more than three years, everything after the three years is free." However, he adds, "It depends how often you need to change kit - creative people often want frequent technology changes whereas the technical guys like to keep the kit for longevity - if you lease hire you can change equipment whenever required."br />
Meanwhile, Clockwork Capital's director Geraldine Scher points to the tax benefits of lease rentals: "It's a tax efficient way to get hold of equipment. If you buy something outright it has to be capitalised and depreciated within the accounts system. Rental is an operating cost therefore it’s a profit and loss item not a balance sheet item and a simpler accounting process."

Does renting make sense?
One alternative to buying or leasing is renting the equipment from a hire company. This makes sense in some scenarios, as Wilding explains: "A post house will mostly be renting high-end decks as they can be difficult to justify buying. An SRW-5500 machine costs £65-80k, while the rental costs are £300-350 a day. So even after 100 days of rental use you're not even close to the purchase cost." But, adds Azule's Savage, "The lease purchase rate of the SRW-5500 is around £1,990/month over three years, so if you're going to use it for more than six days a month and can expect to be doing so for the foreseeable future, you'll be spending £2-3k a month on rentals and be better off leasing it."

A more problematic decision has to be made when it comes to whether to purchase or rent cameras. "Cameras are slightly more difficult thanks to all the formats now. Unless you have contracted work on a single format it might still be best to hire different formats to suit the production, and not buy a single format and have to force it onto a production," says Savage. Wilding adds that, "If you have a good idea of your future bookings, you can do a simple equation working out how much you would pay on hire charges per month versus the lease purchase charge per month, but future demand is not always clear." Similarly, Clockwork Capital's Scher says: "If you're a production company with a nine month production schedule, rentals can be high. If you think there's a chance the series could be re-commissioned or if there are other series the camera could be used on, it's worth investing. It's up to individual companies whether they feel they want to reduce operational costs by bringing the equipment inhouse."

Where to go for money
Historically, banks have been the first port of call for companies seeking finance, but a combination of limited availability of credit from banks and the often non-mainstream leasing requirements of media companies mean a media specialist financier is likely to be a better first port of call for production companies and post houses. "You should start by going to a specialist media finance business that will understand your needs," says Clockwork Capital's Scher. "They understand why a production company, post house or freelancer needs equipment, and understand the kit and residual market and are better at thinking outside the box, whereas banks focus on the very tangible assets of bricks, mortar and so on. Banks are less imaginative in the way they approach what they do."

On top of this, Scher adds that "businesses shouldn't have all their eggs in one basket – separating out asset finance from banking is a good idea as it provides businesses with far more flexibility.” Medialease's Robson echoes these points: "A customer's bank will generally not understand the equipment we are funding - Medialease, like others such as Azule and Fineline, truly understand the market, the equipment and the future values of the equipment. Production companies or post houses need to come to a specialist outfit like us to get funding as currently banks are struggling to lend to the SME market unless the company is really strong in balance sheet terms and highly profitable." Azule's Savage adds: "You can be cold called by leasing companies left, right and centre, but they don't necessarily understand the industry. There are a number of well-known, long-established people who can give you the right advice," he says. "Also, using a third party outside your bank is very useful. Banks will cross capitalise their debt, so if you've bought your building through a loan, have a bit of an overdraft and are also leasing equipment through your bank, they are providing you with everything. If your bank increases the rates or decides to stop lending, you're in trouble. If you've a different lender and a third party source of funding you've a far better mix of debt."

Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Lease-purchase-buy-or-rent_bid-266.htmlFri, 06 May 2011 11:04:28Royal Wedding camera spree Pro Motion Hire has spent £400k on new kit, including Sony PDW-F800 and PDW-700 cameras, to gear up for international demand for cameras and equipment for reporting on the Royal Wedding.

Azule Finance provided the funding for Pro Motion Hire’s investment, which comes on the back of a 50% surge in camera hires leading up to the Royal Wedding. Amongst its new international customers, the hire company is supplying news teams from Network 10 in Australia with Sony PDW-F800s.

“In the days running up to the Royal Wedding, our entire stock of cameras and decks will be out in action across the capital,” says Pro Motion Hire md Duncan Martin. “Over the last six months we’ve been working closely with Azule Finance to expand and balance our kit portfolio. We needed to capitalise on this huge broadcast opportunity without over-extending our catalogue for what is essentially a week-long surge in activity.”

Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Royal-Wedding-camera-spree_bid-262.htmlTue, 26 Apr 2011 11:11:40Beautifully animated short Animation director Matthias Hoegg's short film Thursday “revolves around an everyday love story set in the not so distant future and sees blackbirds battling with technology, malfunctioning palm readers and power cuts” and was made while Hoegg was at the Royal College of Art in June 2010.

Thursday was nominated for a BAFTA in the short animation category and has been shown at various film and animation festivals including Onedotzero and the Stuttgart Animation Festival.

For the last few months Thursday has only been available as a trailer online but as of yesterday the full 7m14s animation is now online (watch it in full below). It’s a visually striking, beautifully paced, remarkable piece of work.



As a footnote, Hoegg lost out on the BAFTA, which was picked up by a former Royal College of Art colleague of his, Michael Please for his greyscale animation The Eagleman Stag, which is also well worth checking out.

Credits for Thursday

Directed and animated by Matthias Hoegg
Sound Design and Music by Marian Mentrup
Thursday’s Space Waltz written and performed by Marian Mentrup
Published by Kobrow Musikverlag
Additional Animation by Aaron Lampert
Additional Modeling by Mattias Bjurström
Foley Artist Günther Röhn
Mixed at Talking Animals Studio Berlin



Thursday from Matthias Hoegg on Vimeo.

Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Beautifully-animated-short_bid-253.htmlThu, 31 Mar 2011 11:22:20White walls graffiti project Newcastle’s art space Unit 44, based at Hoults Yard, has been running a ‘white walls’ project over the last 12 months, inviting graffiti artists to create a piece of artwork on different spaces in Hoults Yard, which is surrounded by industrial warehouses and units.

Musician and graffiti artist Kid Acne kicked off the white walls series in June last year, with this massive ‘Dust In the Giant’s Eye’ mural.



“Serial doodler” Jon Burgerman was next up, painting a series of giant colourful characters back in December.



The first white wall project of 2011 was an impressive effort by Belgian street artist ROA, who created a detailed illustration called Three Horses.



The latest instalment in the series is by London graffer SheOne, who has created a striking image called Black Lightning on a gable end property. It took two days for him to complete, with production company J6 Films (also based at Hoults Yard) on hand to capture the process. It set up a time-lapse camera and filmed the artist at work.

Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/White-walls-graffiti-project_bid-252.htmlWed, 30 Mar 2011 15:22:41Tapeless system like Facebook One of the unavoidable truths is everything is going file-based. This is accepted as a reasonably good thing by many who’ve given file-based production a try, though, whatever the production, there are still plenty of niggles to sort out each time.

An often cited and potentially catastrophic issue when going file-based is ensuring rushes are kept safe and aren’t accidentally erased or put onto a single hard drive that gets corrupted resulting in the loss of irreplaceable footage.

There are a number of ways to create a safe environment for file-based rushes, principally based around the role of the DIT who, on location, takes care of offloading file-based rushes from memory cards to hard drives, backing up the information and preparing the cards for reuse.

The management of these rushes after the shoot can often be a bit messy though, with rushes sometimes being badly labelled up and no one quite sure who should take responsibility of the drives.

A newly launched “online video production” tool called Aframe, aims to make the transition from tape-based to file-based production much more straightforward by creating a Facebook-style environment providing a safe, instantly accessible online home for your rushes.

The way it works is that, on location, rushes are uploaded onto your Aframe space where anyone in the production team can access the production pages to review the content, leave comments and so on. The rushes are automatically logged in real-time by a team based in Sunderland to make all the content searchable.

When it comes to post production, you then drag and drop the rushes from your Aframe account into the editor, and transfer the edit back again after each session. Once cutting is finished, Aframe replaces the lower res proxy images of the offline edit with the full res originals.

The full res cut is then available via Aframe to those working on the vfx, grading, audio and all other finishing stages.

Once a production is finished, the rushes remain on your Aframe account and proxy versions are instantly accessible whenever required. Aframe also has a system to monetise clips from your archive by selling appropriate material as stock footage to other Aframe users.

Aframe was co-created by ex-Unit md David Peto. The company behind Aframe raised £2m for its launch, and already has customers including Middlechild Productions, RDA TV, Ten Alps, Press Association, Red Earth Studios, Zig Zag Productions, Carbon Media and The Crewing Company.

“Aframe replaces hard drives, bikes and FTP with instant, agile filmmaking,” says Peto. “There are loads of people archiving irreplaceable data onto £100 external hard drives. This isn’t surprisingly – why should a creative company be an IT company? We make the process affordable and easy to do, meaning they can focus on making programmes.”

“Aframe is a web-based tool that takes you through the process from the front-end. You can plan the entire production within the system, upload proxy files from the shoot, share them, etc. All of it has metadata attached and is searchable. We bring down five hours worth of editable quality clips in 30 minutes. You do the edit, then press a button and it grabs the high-res versions.”

The system is subscription-based so if you stop using it you have to take your content back again. And while it appears to offer a convenient one-stop shop for rushes management on file-based productions, it’s doing very little that you couldn’t already do before, albeit with separate packages.

“You could do all the bits of Aframe before,” admits Peto, “But they were all separate and you didn’t have the chance to integrate each of the parts, so it was all quite difficult to use. We’ve taken all the bits and built Aframe from the ground up, and built it so it’s very easy to use. It’s as easy to use as Facebook.”

The cost for an individual user of Aframe starts from £14.99 a month, while £399 a month buys you a plan for five projects and 10 users, 2.5TB of storage and access to the whole system. It’s pay as you go and you can ramp up and increase storage when required and then drop it back down to the original plan.

“We keep the finished programme and an archive of all the rushes. All proxy copies of long-term archive storage are kept online and are still usable,” adds Peto. “We also organise clip sales of redundant clips, with the buyers being other Aframe users.”

Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Tapeless-system-like-Facebook_bid-248.htmlTue, 22 Mar 2011 11:30:05The rise of Belfast's indies As recently as 18 months ago you could have counted the number of network commissions coming out of Northern Ireland on one hand and still had a few fingers left over. Now it’s an entirely different landscape, with the majority of indies looking outside the local market and landing network shows, primarily for the BBC but also increasingly commissions for the US, and the occasional C4 project too.

The BBC’s push in Northern Ireland
This sea change in outlook for Northern Ireland’s indies is largely down to the BBC making a concerted effort to engage with the sector. It is steadily building up network spend in Belfast as it comes good on its commitment to boost levels of network commissions in Northern Ireland to 3% by 2016. Current estimates are it’s already at around 2%, which is a significant increase on the figure of less than 1% only three years ago.

The latest BBC network show from Northern Ireland is Wild Rover’s prime-time National Lottery game show Secret Fortune, which has also been picked up for the US market, with the US version being co-produced by American Idol producer Nigel Lythgoe.

Other examples of BBC network commissions from Belfast over the last year or so include Green Inc’s BBC1 series Ask Rhod Gilbert and its BBC2 series The Many Faces Of…, an assortment of one-off BBC4 docs by Double Band including Britain Goes Camping and High Flyers: How Britain Took To The Air, The Beauty Of… BBC4 docs made by Tern TV’s Belfast office and animation series by Sixteen South and Waddell Media-owned Flickerpix for CBeebies and CBBC.

“The 3% aim for network commissions is a 71% increase on what we had and a very welcome stretch,” says BBC Northern Ireland’s head of programmes Ailsa Orr. “We had further to climb than others but it’s probably around 2% now. The strategy was lots of different targets in lots of different genre to see where success would come and we’ve seen great successes with factual and entertainment.”

The strategy for BBC Northern Ireland is to closely align local commissions with network ambitions, and it has recently appointed Susan Lovell to look after local commissions and work alongside Ailsa Orr to put this joined-up strategy into practice. “We work over both local and network, and don’t think we can distinguish between the two, they have to be aligned,” says Orr. “We work very strategically with key indie suppliers so our local commissions support the network.”

As an example of this, Orr says: “We’re very strategic about getting comedy on the map, with [local commission] Sketchy, by Green Inc, and finding new comedy stand up talent. We also raise the profile of people locally, including mind-mapper David Meade [with Wild Rover’s local commission, The David Meade Project], who we’re raising up for the network.”

Alan Tyler’s role
Another major step forward for Northern Ireland’s indies came when Alan Tyler started as executive editor, entertainment commissioning at the BBC in the middle of 2009. He’s responsible for entertainment programming from outside of London across all BBC channels, with his remit including all lottery output as well as a selection of primetime shows.

“Alan Tyler has started a huge sea change in entertainment, he’s a real advocate for the indies here and I’ve lots of plaudits for Alan,” says Wild Rover’s md Phil Morrow. “Everyone was sceptical as to whether regional commissioners would work as a strategy, but it does because he’s not successful if we’re not.”

“Secret Fortune is our first one off the block with Alan and has huge international potential. It’s been optioned all over Europe and is a massive game changer for us. We’re now getting pretty good shots at major spaces in the broadcasting landscape.”
Similarly, Green Inc’s md Stephen Stewart says: “Alan Tyler’s entertainment department has been great for getting BBC network stuff. We’ve done Ask Rhod Gilbert for BBC1 and The Many Faces of… series for BBC2 and we’re hoping to do more of these very soon. We also did a BBC4 one-off called Men About the House."

Channel 4’s efforts
C4 is now also showing signs of wanting to do more with Belfast’s indies, through its Creative Diversity department, headed up by Stuart Cosgrove, which is making a concerted effort to reach out to the Northern Ireland production community.
Long-standing indie Waddell Media now makes C4’s well-respected 4thought.tv strand that follows the C4 news every weeknight, and many of Belfast’s production outfits are broadly optimistic about their chances of soon also securing C4 commissions.

“Landing a network commission for C4 has been our main focus and we’re getting very close,” says Brendan Hughes, who heads up Tern TV’s Belfast office. “I’ve been surprised by how C4 engages with Belfast and think they are doing a terrific job. They are beginning to put a lot of effort in but none of us deserve to get a commission, you need a very good idea.”

“C4 is just a little bit behind the wave, compared to the BBC,” believes Richard Williams, CEO, Northern Ireland Screen. “Stuart Cosgrove’s department can get a fair distance with energy and commitment, and I know Waddells is optimistic for more from C4.”

Double Band’s md Dermot Lavery is also cautiously optimistic about something happening with C4 soon: “Eight years ago, we would have been successful at securing C4 work, but that changed. Now C4 is going through another change and there’s a sense of another push there, with Stuart Cosgrove’s diversity department. I get the sense it’s fighting fit again and I’m hoping there will more business for companies here.”

Waddell Media’s creative director Janine Waddell says its success with 4thought.tv came about after a concentrated effort by the indie to secure a commission: “It took a lot of effort and was about employing the right execs – it was a high risk but it paid off. We’re now developing more things including a potential series for C4.”

Green Inc is another Northern Ireland indie actively engaged in conversations with C4. “I’ve had chats with Stuart Cosgrove and it seems to be gearing up well, though they clearly have some way to go as yet,” says md Stephen Stewart.

With his focus very much on the BBC over recent years, Wild Rover’s Morrow hasn’t been pursuing potential opportunities with C4. “We’ve not had much from them but we’ve also not done much pitching. Our development effort has gone into the BBC. With C4 it would be a cold pitch, which is always tougher and your chances of success are lower.”

The burgeoning US market
The other big market for Belfast’s indies is America, with Waddell Media leading the way with series for Discovery and other key broadcasters, and the likes of Wild Rover and Below The Radar amongst the other production outfits finding success in the States.

“We met the Oscar-winning director Alex Gibney [who directed Taxi To the Dark Side and Enron: the Smartest Guys in the Room] in Galway and set up a partnership programme with him,” says Below The Radar md Trevor Birney. “Gibney makes four or five docs a year and it’s a huge learning process for us to discover how he funds them. We’re launching an online news and current affairs platform called The Detail and are discussing doing a documentary about Northern Ireland with Gibney as exec producer. The doc would talk about Northern Ireland here and now, in a similar way to how Gibney approached his doc about Enron.”

The Belfast trailblazers in the US, Waddell Media, set up a New York office three years ago, headed up by Jon-Barrie Waddell. “We’ve really expanded into the US market and have now completed productions for Nat Geo, Discovery, A&E, The History Channel and G4,” he explains. “It’s a good market and around 40% of our work is now for the US.”

Waddell’s success is being mirrored by Wild Rover, which is making major inroads with its recently developed LE game show formats. Both Secret Fortune and another Wild Rover show, Take The Money and Run, are being remade for the US market, the latter having been picked up by ABC with Jerry Bruckheimer exec producing. “We’ve very, very big international ambitions for doing very big primetime projects,” says Morrow.

Local broadcasters
The newly buoyant Belfast scene isn’t entirely obsessed with network and international shows – the bread and butter work for local broadcasters that kept the indie scene vibrant through darker times is still an important market. Local commissions for BBC Northern Ireland and RTE are in relatively plentiful supply, while Irish language broadcaster TG4 and, to a lesser extent UTV, also provide work for Belfast’s indies.

“Northern Ireland is better placed than some – we compete for Nations quotas, can get work from the Republic of Ireland, have a BBC local broadcaster and are now targeting the US market,” summarises Double Band’s Laverty. Green Inc’s Stewart says: “30% of our work is now for the network, and the rest is local commissions. We’ve two big RTE shows – The Daily Show and Four Live – which are a substantial part of our business. For BBC Northern Ireland we’ve a cookery format called Stuffed and a comedy sketch show called Sketchy, and we’ve a gardening series called Glorious Gardens for UTV.”

The Game of Thrones effect
The other big talking point in Northern Ireland is HBO’s Game of Thrones, which recently completed shooting and posting there. Northern Ireland Screen was heavily involved in bringing the production to Belfast, and part funded the production, which is apparently the largest TV production to shoot in the UK.

“Sector wide, Game of Thrones has been a huge deal – it brought in a lot of money and puts to rest any issues as to whether Northern Ireland can deliver big drama,” says Wild Rover’s Morrow.

“It’s a most amazing thing Richard Williams has done, and has proven to London there’s no reason Northern Ireland can’t do a big production,” agrees Below The Radar’s Birney. But, he adds, “It’s all about what footprint will be left in Northern Ireland – where’s the legacy? Are the writing team, DoP and directorial skills dripping into the DNA of the production sector?”

The series was edited at Belfast’s Yellow Moon, which spent £200k gearing up for it. “We supplied the cutting rooms and did the dailies and offline,” says md Greg Darby. “If it comes back for another five years, which is possible, we can hire sound people and colourists and really bolster up our facilities.”

The indie sector in Belfast
Belfast’s independent production companies aren’t particularly clustered in any single location and are instead scattered around the city centre. This is a pretty compact area so it’s easy enough to get from one indie to another quickly enough.

There is also an established and growing production community on the outskirts of Belfast city centre, in the suburb of Holywood, which is home to Waddell Media, Green Inc, animation company Flickerpix and post house Yellow Moon. Most indies say there’s a community feel about the sector in Belfast, with a number of those running the key indies getting together informally now and again for a “coffee and a moan”. The regularly updated Northern Ireland Screen website (www.northernirelandscreen.co.uk) is most people’s first port of call for news and information about the local production community.

Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/The-rise-of-Belfasts-indies_bid-246.htmlMon, 21 Mar 2011 11:33:3033 free vfx plug-ins Australian vfx plug-in maker CoreMelt – apparently the designers of “filthy fast effects for editors with better things to do” – is giving away 33 of its vfx plug-ins in a newly-launched package called CoreMeltFREE.

The 33 free vfx plug-ins are lifted from its full package of more than 200 GPU-accelerated plug-ins, CoreMelt Complete V2 and includes soft organic glows and blurs, advanced colour correction tools, instant photo montages and audio reactive animations.

The free plug-ins are designed for motion graphics artists and editors working in FCP, Final Cup Express, Motion and After Effects, and are completely unrestricted.

Those downloading CoreMeltFREE before the end of this month also receive a 30% discount off the cost of CoreMelt Complete V2, which is usually £263 plus VAT.

“We’ve cherry picked some of the most useful plug-ins from the V2 product line so that prospective and current customers can freely explore the depth and breadth of our product offerings, and experience the creative latitude, intuitive control and reliability editing professionals around the world have come to rely on," says Roger Bolton, CoreMelt founder and director.

Click here to view tutorial videos for CoreMeltFREE

Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/33-free-vfx-plug-ins_bid-244.htmlFri, 18 Mar 2011 10:44:43Fly-through The Sharp Project Manchester-based visual effects and animation company Mi has just created this action-packed, fast moving fly-through film of The Sharp Project building in North Manchester.

The film follows a previously homeless driod called ADH168 as he shoots around the cavernous office and studio complex he now calls home.


Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Fly-through-The-Sharp-Project_bid-243.htmlWed, 16 Mar 2011 13:12:19Cinesite's battle ready vfx Sony/Columbia’s new Jonathan Liebesman directed disaster movie Battle: Los Angeles centres on a series of striking visual effects from Cinesite. The vfx giant created many of the film’s intricately detailed battle sequences as well as the Commander Alien character.

Liebesman chose Cinesite after seeing its work on HBO’s Generation Kill and being impressed by the military hardware, helicopters, armoured vehicles and elaborate explosions in the production.

To create the effects in Battle: Los Angeles, Cinesite took physical elements shot on location and composited them onto digital matte paintings, adding layers of cg smoke, dust, haze, fire and water explosions. Cinesite used Maya Fluids and its own proprietary software cSmoke to create many of the effects.

For a sequence involving an invasion of Santa Monica airport, a plate was shot with three helicopters, which Cinesite multiplied to 12 helicopters using cg models. It also populated the airfield with tanks, armoured vehicles and distant smoke rings.

Ben Shepherd headed up Cinesite’s vfx team and worked on the movie for 10 months, including six weeks on set in Louisiana.

Here are some 'before' and 'after' shots of Cinesite's impressive visual effects work on the film...



































All images Copyright Sony/Columbia

Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Cinesites-battle-ready-vfx_bid-241.htmlMon, 14 Mar 2011 14:19:13UK's top 15 colourists Televisual has revealed its exclusive list of the top 15 colourists in the UK, based on the opinions of fellow colourists, grading system makers and the various awards that honour colourists (the UK Music Video Awards, the British Arrows Craft Awards and the RTS Craft Awards).

Topping the list for the second year running is MPC's Jean-Clement Soret, who is widely admired for his outstanding work on high-profile features and beautiful looking commercials.

Next up is 'rising star' Aubrey Woodiwiss from The Mill, who co-graded one of 2010's best spot, Nike Write The Future.

Another The Mill colourist, Adam Scott, takes third place, while the top 10 also includes Rushes' Simone Grattarola, The Farm Group's Aiden Farrell, Narduzzo Too's Vince Narduzzo and Molinare's Gareth Spensley.

For the full run-down of the UK's top colourists, including profiles of each of the grading artists featured in the top 15, go here.
Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/UKs-top-15-colourists_bid-239.htmlWed, 09 Mar 2011 15:21:31Post roles blurring The blurring of job roles within post and vfx (with colourists doing bits of vfx, for example) is gathering momentum, with the current generation of vfx artists apparently keen to “break out of silos” and become experts at everything.

Autodesk calls them ‘suite students’ and is taking them very seriously. To the point where it’s re-engineered key elements of its vfx programmes (3ds Max, Maya, Motion Builder, MudBox, Softimage and Smoke on the Mac) to make them much more closely integrated.

It’s Autodesk’s belief that the ‘old days’ when artists specialised in a single application are gone. So, the forthcoming 2012 releases of its vfx software packages isn’t just about flash new vfx features, it’s “the moment you’ll see things differently in a truly integrated environment – there are no longer silos, we’re driving commonality in all our products,” says Marc Petit, senior vp of media and entertainment.

This functionality is most obvious in a new universal interface shared by all the applications and ‘one click’ transfers from one package to the next.

Petit reveals Autodesk has also scrapped its separate product development teams and replaced them with a centralised design team working across all its creative products.

Meanwhile, Autodesk Flame Premium (Flame, Smoke and Lustre packaged together) has also been fine-tuned to remove all incompatibilities between the three applications and to give them the same look and feel of interface.

But is all this convergence necessarily a good thing? It makes sense from an efficiency point of view, but whether vfx artists or colourists welcome it is quite another thing. “It will involve a change in persona of what a colourist, for example, will be in the future – it’s a Darwinian process and some will be scared of ‘foreign’ ideas, while others will embrace it,” says Autodesk’s lead product designer Philippe Soeiro.

And, to quote Darwin: “It’s not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”

Total Comments: 2 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Post-roles-blurring_bid-237.htmlWed, 09 Mar 2011 13:06:46Surprise viral success In a little downtime spent browsing Youtube, creative Mathieu Cuvelier at digital agency Work Club stumbled across a dodgy looking, very shaky film of some old French farmers fighting and immediately thought it would look better with light sabres. Well, most things do.

So he asked his colleague, designer Dan Scott, to get to work on the footage and enhance the fight scene with different coloured light sabres.

Scott’s task was made more tricky by the poor video quality meaning auto-tracking wasn’t possible, so the sabres had to be added in frame-by-frame.

Still, it was worth the effort as Cuvelier and Scott’s ridiculous clip, which was done for no budget and with no client in mind, has gone on to clock up over 3 million views in the four days it’s been online so far.




Cuvelier, who previously worked at The Viral Factory, says the pair just distributed the film to friends and put it up on Twitter and Facebook, but it was soon posted on to b3ta.com, which helped ramp up the hits. These grew massively after the film made it to the top of the front page of reddit.com within a few hours of going up on b3ta.com.

The clip received 400k views in its first 24 hours of going online and 1.2 million after two days, becoming the most shared video on Twitter at the time.

Cuvelier says he did it “just for fun...I try to release as many small/easy films as possible as tests to see how many views they get...some fail, some get millions of views! It's a good way to learn from the internet”.

Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Surprise-viral-success_bid-236.htmlTue, 01 Mar 2011 12:59:05Real time slow motion These Sony Champions League idents, which are currently being used to package Champions League matches for the whole of Europe, were created by Anomaly and directed by Bare Films’ Jim Weedon. The vfx and post work on the clips were by Soho’s boutique vfx house Big Buoy.

The idents were made to market Sony 3d TV sets on a 2d TV screen and consist of two spots – the first, called Fans, shows a fan leading the crowd in a football chant, while the second, called Handkerchief, depicts an emotional group of supporters waving hankies as a sign of defeat.



To attempt to show the extra dimension of 3d, Anomaly decided to go for the tried and tested method of using extremely slow motion footage, spruced up with elements that “very clearly define space for the viewer”. So, in Fans, the extreme slow motion centres on exhaled breath and in Handkerchief, the focus is on frozen water droplets from falling rain.

However, what sets these spots apart from the recent batch of slo-mo ads is Weedon’s choice to create the slow-mo effect using posed actors and a real-time camera rather than going for a slow-mo camera.

Physical props were used for some of the frozen elements, supplemented by additional elements created in cg. The physical parts created by the art department include frozen clothing, handkerchiefs, jewellery and a glass of coke mid spill. The rest of the frozen effects are created in post.

To convince an initially sceptical agency that the cg elements (including cg breath) would sit alongside the physical shot effects, Big Buoy shot a test using a Canon 7d showing some slow panning moves around a model’s head with a few tracking markers.

Big Buoy’s footage went to its cg department, which used Maya fluids to create convincing breath, augmented with live action elements of steam in Flame. This was enough to convince the agency.



The idents were shot on 35mm using an AR Move camera rig for smooth freehand camera moves. The actors were primed to move in extreme slow motion and the footage was shot at 50fps to “take the edge off any little wobbles the actors may have that would have given the game away”.

To ensure the footage looked convincing, Big Buoy did what vfx advisor and lead Flame artist Jim Allen describes as “a hefty amount of stabilising work where actors were unable to keep their movements steady enough, or where people were obviously moving at a different pace to their neighbours”.

With Handkerchief, Big Buoy 3d-tracked the scenes, creating rough geometry to match the live action characters. This was imported into Flame where the rain particle system was created using the Flame particle generator.

Similarly, with Fans, the main breath clouds were created in Maya and exported to Flame where shot steam elements were placed in 3d space to enhance the look. Dust particles and body steam were also added in Flame.

A physical model of spilling coke was enhanced in Flame to “create a sense of movement”, with ice cubes shot separately and comped into the final scene.

Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Real-time-slow-motion_bid-235.htmlWed, 23 Feb 2011 10:36:38Guide to BVE's seminars Here's my guide to the best seminar sessions at BVE at Earls Court 2 this week (15-17 Feb).

The Audio Room
On the first day of BVE, the audio room is dedicated to a ‘new radio day’. These seminar sessions obviously have a radio focus, including Monty Funk Productions/Prism Sound’s Pete Nash’s seminar at 1pm entitled ‘The drama documentary – creativity at its best’. Nash’s background is as a sound designer on BBC radio drama docs, which be began working on in the early 1990s.

“I’ve done around 20 of them and they represent the ultimate in crafting sound design, being free of the constraints of video,” he says. “One not infrequently ends up with around 2,500 edits in a 45 minute drama documentary.”

In this session, Nash takes the audience through the making of Laocoon, a drama documentary for BBC Radio 4 about a sculpture coming to life. “I’ll be taking the drama/doc apart and showing how it’s constructed,” says Nash. “I use SADiE as it’s really the only tool that can cope with such large numbers of precise edits in real-time, and without having to watch the system ‘rendering’ all the time. It’s also the primary craft editor of the BBC for national radio.”

From 16 February, the audio room’s focus turns to audio for TV and film – on Thursday, at 2pm, the chairman of the Association of Motion Picture Sound, Chris Roberts runs a panel discussion called ‘From production to post – managing audio workflows’.

“The aim is for the panel to represent a good cross section of those who handle sound media, so we’ll have a sound recordist, film sound syncing specialist, assistant picture editor and sound editor/dubbing mixer,” says Roberts. “I hope to be able to discuss the challenges presented dealing with sound files through the various workflows from production to final mix. As part of this, we’ll cover the solutions that have been discovered or devised, issues with metadata and its importance in workflows and the continued importance of EDL management, particularly for conforming and re-conforming. I’d like the session to be fairly informal, so there will be no ‘death by PowerPoint’”.

Broadcast meets IT
The ‘Broadcast meets IT’ section of the seminar programme is, naturally, rather tech-heavy, with sessions covering video standards, IT infrastructures and ‘The Cloud’. One session that should appeal to a broad audience though is ‘File-based workflows mean operational efficiencies – or do they?’, which is being run by ITFC’s senior operations director Lesley Marr at 12.30pm on Tuesday 15 February.

“My experience is that technology suppliers claim file-based workflows improve efficiencies, but, in reality, many facilities struggle with this,” she says. “In this open discussion panel session, we debate whether it’s really possible to create operational efficiencies going file-based and, if so, how? The common assumption is that everything is faster, easier and simpler, but is this necessarily true? You have to integrate legacy systems, add in transcoding time and things like that, and this all stands in the way.”

Marr intends to cover everything from production shooting ratios to post production file formats and the interoperability between different technologies. The panel members will be a mix of technology providers and users, including Chris Wright, md of Dalet, and Niall Duffy, md of MediaSmiths.

Arri Production Skills Centre
Camera and production kit maker Arri has its own ‘skills centre’ as part of BVE’s seminar programme. What’s sure to attract the bulk of visitors is its daily DoP focused sessions centring on Arri’s recently launched Alexa digital cinematography camera.

The seminar, which is being held at 12.30pm every day, has a different DoP each time explaining how the Arri Alexa was used on their production. The sessions include clips from the productions in question.

On Tuesday 15 February, the speaker for the ‘Alexa - the camera of choice’ session is Adam Suschitzky, the cinematographer on Outcast (shot with an Arri D-21) and the well received remake of Upstairs Downstairs, which he shot with an Alexa.
The session on the following day is dedicated to the use of the Alexa for shooting commercials, and will be held by a yet to be announced DoP.

The final day’s Alexa session will be presented by Mike Spragg, who recently shot Kidnap and Ransom with an Arri D-21 and is currently shooting ITV’s Paul McGuigan-directed Monroe on an Alexa.

The Producer’s Theatre
The producer’s theatre has a large number of producer-centred sessions, covering everything from casting actors to 3d, music and pyrotechnics. One of the stand-out sessions is ‘Ad-funded Productions: 5 Top Tips for Success’ on Wednesday 16 February at 1pm.

The seminar is being organised by the Indie Training Fund, and presented by Tiger Aspect’s commercial partnerships director Claire Heys. “I aim to give content makers five key steps to deliver successful advertiser funded deals,” she says. “I want to give them an understanding of an advertiser’s expectations and why they might invest in TV programmes.”

The session covers the best practice in deal making and liaising with the advertiser and the media agency and “client management tips from the start of the process right through to transmission,” says Heys. On top of this, the seminar looks at the new product placement regulations – what they cover and how to put deals together between the producer, advertiser and broadcaster.

Post Production Theatre
The post theatre spans sessions mostly centred on the technology used in post production. Televisual is, however, hosting a session that’s broadly business rather than technology focused. Entitled ‘The Televisual Industry Debate’ and being held at 3.30pm on Wednesday 16 February, this panel session brings together those running some of the UK’s biggest and best post houses to talk about the future of the post industry.

Televisual’s contributing editor David Wood is chairing the seminar while the panellists include Helen Stanley, md, commercials, Framestore and Darren O’Kelly, md, The Mill. The session centres on what it means to be a ‘post’ house in 2011 – is post still a service industry or are post houses now more like production partners to their clients? The panellists will also talk about how they see the post industry developing over the next five years, and whether they believe post will have continued its move up the production food chain and if traditional service-only post houses will still exist. As well as this, there will be a discussion about the key areas of post production in 2011 and whether 3d is here to stay and really worthy of significant investment.

Total Delivery Theatre
The total delivery theatre hosts a series of seminars about web and mobile based content delivery, including IPTV and broadcasting to the iPhone/iPad. One of the highlights is a session (at 3.45pm on Wednesday 16 February) called ‘How to start, operate, monetise and sell your own UGC channel’, which is being held by i2i’s Philip Radley-Smith.

Radley-Smith says the session is aimed at companies and individuals wishing to become online content aggregators, broadcasters or “to just jump on the internet TV band wagon.”

He aims to cover issues including what’s required to customise an ‘out of the box’ channel to create your own channel. The session also looks at key factors such as who is going to watch your channel and submit content to it, how to market and promote your channel and, of course, how to monetise your channel.

Production Theatre
‘Production on a budget’ kicks off the seminar programme in the production theatre at 10am on Tuesday 15 February. Presented by Urban Fox’s Christina Fox, “This session is designed to help anyone buying shooting kit on a budget to get the best value for money,” she says. “We’ll take people through the most essential features on a camera and help them decide which is best for their shoot.”

By the end of this session, Fox says, visitors will be able to “understand the differences in cameras, have a list of essential equipment with which to get started and also have a summary list of microphones to consider.”

Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Guide-to-BVEs-seminars_bid-231.htmlMon, 14 Feb 2011 10:42:05Sky's refreshing new promos Sky's been busy commissioning some beautiful promos for its channels of late - here are two that have recently landed in my inbox.

Sky 360
The first, Sky 360, is a 50-second stereoscopic 3d promo for Sky’s film channel that centres on the eye-catching, impressive vfx work of MPC. Directed by Sky Creative’s Esther Wallace and Nick Tarte, Sky 360, slowly spins around an ever-changing landscape in a 360 camera move, gorgeously showcasing different genres of films.



“This is our invitation to enter another world.  We wanted to create a 360 pan around massive, epic landscapes populated by movie iconography. The journey takes us through a range of emotions – in a similar way that a movie would do,” say the directors.



The five main genres in the promo required different landscapes to be created – a desert for a western, space for sci-fi, a city for a romantic comedy, countryside for a period drama and an icy Christmassy scene to represent family. 



A stereo camera on a circular dolly track was used to capture the live action footage on each of the locations, but much of the locations themselves were cg creations made by MPC.



Working alongside Sky Creative from pre-production onwards, MPC created each of the fully cg environments and rebuilt the live action shots in the promo, with everything being made in stereo.



“This was a job that required very specific timings and planning from 3d pre-viz,” says 3d supervisor Duncan McWilliam. “If we could prove all the permutations worked in a pre-viz accurate to real world scale scenarios then we knew the shoot would work....give or take.”



Click here for more information and to view the promo




Sky Atlantic Bringing Cultures Together
Branding agency Heavenly has created another not entirely dissimilar set of Sky promos, for the launch of its Sky Atlantic channel (the home of HBO).

The set of five idents, called Bringing Cultures Together, explore the similarities and differences between the UK and the US by subtly cutting between the two iconic locations as the camera pans across the scene. The series of short promos consists of Bridges, Trains, Bright Lights, Cafe Diner and City Cab.


















To view each of the Bringing Cultures Together promos, click here.
Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Skys-refreshing-new-promos_bid-228.htmlWed, 09 Feb 2011 12:52:04Molinare re-launch for Spring Most of the management team has quit Molinare as the Indian owners gear up for a big relaunch of the company. So, what does the future now hold for one of London’s longest standing post players? Here are the thoughts of acting CEO and md, Molinare's COO Scott Holmgren.

“The beginning of the year has seen several changes at the top of Molinare’s management structure, with both Mark Foligno and Richard Hart choosing to pursue outside interests within the film industry. Moving the company forward will require a strong focus on not only our sales efforts but on creating efficiencies,” says Holmgren.

“This is coupled with significant expenditure that’s seen upgrades and expansion in all departments. A relaunch of a new Molinare is planned for the Spring,” he adds.

“Over the past five years Molinare has been very successful within the feature film market, but we have always had a very strong offering in TV as well. Our recent film offering has tended to overshadow the TV work, and this is something we want to rectify,” he says.

“This isn’t limited to drama either – we want to build up our portfolio of fact ent and docs, along with shortform/commercials work, produced via our internal creative agency.”

Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Molinare-re-launch-for-Spring_bid-226.htmlWed, 02 Feb 2011 12:31:48World's first slo-mo 3d ad Glassworks recreated monster trucks, Minis (using CAD data from BMW) and tyre stacks, and performed stadium extensions (doubling the size of the stadium) and crowd-replication using bespoke software, as part of its vfx and stereo 3d post work on the filmic new Mini Vs Monster 90-second cinema and TV spot.



Touted as “the world’s first slo-mo 3d ad” and directed by Robert Jitzmark from Swedish production company Camp David for BSUR Amsterdam, the commercial focuses on slow-mo 3d footage of the distressed audience response to a monster truck attempting to jump over an extended line of new Minis. Will all the shiny, sparkling new Minis survive the jump?



Glassworks’ challenge, through its office in Amsterdam, was to seamlessly integrate the cg elements (including fire effects, the audience, car reflections and stadium extensions) into the stereoscopic shot footage.



“The first step was recreating all the props like the truck, tyre stacks and stadium, to create a virtual representation of the real set. We also received the CAD data from BMW, enabling us to place cg Minis in our 3d space,” explains lead 3d artist Markus Lauterbach.



“Making use of Glassworks’ new stereoscopic tracking software, we started to track the motion of the camera rig being used on the shoot,” he adds. “Our work pipeline, enabling an immediate preview of the stereoscopic cg content, was an enormous help in finding the ideal depth, and most convincing 3d effect for each individual shot.”

Total Comments: 3 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Worlds-first-slo-mo-3d-ad_bid-222.htmlWed, 19 Jan 2011 12:44:53Confessions of a hire company It's a very tough market for camera hire firms reveals Mark Sloper, director of the 400 company. I’m currently putting together Televisual’s extensive survey of the camera hire market, which results in the Top 10 rental cameras feature to be published in the February issue of the magazine – for more info on this feature, see below. As part of my research for the feature, Mark Sloper, director of the 400 company, emailed me the following comment, which makes very interesting reading. He is happy to share his opinions, so here they are in full:

“This has been our annus horribulus. We’ve had to buy HD equipment obviously for projects at Easter 2010 and then have had them sat on the shelf as the industry can’t work out what it wants to do. Thankfully, the BBC news and entertainment departments have stuck with good old DVCAM utilising the dependable DSR-450.  Without stable ongoing work as a BBC supplier we’d be not be knowing what to do with the volumes of kit we’ve invested in.
 
We’ve been sticking with tape-based HD cameras such as the Sony 900R and BBC-approved Panasonic HDX900. Production companies and broadcasters are still unhappy with file-based card cameras because of the issues involved in archive and storage – how many hard drives do you need to store it to future proof it!? A tape simply sits on the shelf for future access, tried and tested.
 
We are interested in the Sony PMW-F3 Super 35mm camcorder, not only will it hopefully get rid of the silly DSLR cameras that are infiltrating the industry through students (they can’t capture motion) but hopefully it might even spec up to take on the infamous Red.

We’re hoping a full size model appears with the same inner workings and interchangeable lenses so that proper cameramen can put it on their shoulder without a Heath Robinson invented brace. The Panasonic 101 we have the same feelings about.
 
We’ve invested in some Sony EX3s but are finding issues with the cards and transfers – we lend the cards to clients to download their images but inevitably we get asked to dump it to tape! How ironic and it’s totally common. We sometimes don’t get the cards back for weeks and it seems unfair to charge a client for a little card so we take the brunt.
 
The rates are going down and down, unless you’re guaranteed x amount of days on different shoots and it’s for definite, it’s becoming more and more difficult to make the cameras pay their way. Luckily, because we’ve been going over 15 years, we’re able to boost our paltry hire charges with accessories, lenses, lighting, sound and grip.

There’s NO discernible difference with a good prepped SD lens as opposed to a newly-badged HD lens, most camera people have worked that out. We’ve just shot a cinema version of the British Superbike season for release in March using a five year old Panasonic VariCam at different frame rates. We’ve had differing cinema screenings and it looks superb – the right kit on the right job as they say. Check out the trailer (see below) and it looks like the very latest digital technology. It aint.
 
Anyone considering buying kit this year – DON’T. It all looks set to change again with the major manufacturers realising they have to price the latest new kit according to the marketplace. Here comes the PMW-F3 that’s going to blow all our EX1s and 3s out of the water, and just about every thing else too.”




The results of Televisual’s fourth annual survey of the camera rental market are revealed in February’s Top 10 rental cameras feature. The results are based on a survey of around 25-30 hire companies, which complete a survey form providing details of how often each of their most popular cameras has been hired out over the past year.

Each camera is then ranked on the number of hire companies stocking it and how much usage it receives. Last year, Sony’s file-based HD staple, the EX3 (pictured), topped the list, while its long-running tape-based SD model, the DSR-450, came in second.

Sony dominated the list, with only the Red One stopping Sony from taking all the spots in the top 10. However, Panasonic and Canon in particular had a wide selection of models just outside the top 10 so this year’s results may well include a wider range of camera manufacturers.

The results of the survey are published in the February issue of Televisual, which will be out on Monday 7 February. If you run a camera hire company and haven’t yet received a survey form, please email jake@televisual.com.
Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Confessions-of-a-hire-company_bid-215.htmlMon, 10 Jan 2011 12:38:063d predictions for 2011 A lot of industry hopes are pinned on stereoscopic 3d this year, with a sizeable selection of production and post outfits having invested heavily in cameras, 3d rigs, stereoscopic fixing and finishing systems, and so on, over the last six to 12 months.

And while stereo 3d is proving a draw for cinemagoers, with five of the top 10 films of 2010 in the States having been made in 3d (including Toy Story 3, Alice in Wonderland and How to Train Your Dragon), it’s a less rosy story when it comes to 3d TVs.

Reportedly, only two percent of all TVs sold last year worldwide were 3d models, while even modest estimations beforehand had anticipated 3d TVs representing at least five percent of total sales.

This isn’t completely surprising when you look at what’s available to watch for owners of 3d TVs – a solitary Sky channel and a small assortment of expensive 3d Blu-Rays (assuming you’ve also invested in a 3d Blu-Ray player).

However, things are looking up. Market intelligence company iSuppli predicts that bv the end of 2011, sales of 3d sets will have tripled compared to 2010, to about 12 million sets and by 2015, almost 80 million 3d TVs will have been sold.

Furthermore, stereo 3d company 3ality Digital’s CEO, Steve Schklair, who’s a bit of a 3d guru, has issued a series of predictions for 3d in 2011, and they reveal a wide variety of potential opportunities. Obviously, he’s a vested interest in stereo 3d being successful, but his predictions make interesting reading:
 
1. Passive viewing 3d TVs will become widely available
2. Episodic television series will begin shooting in 3d
3. The first sporting event will shoot with only one crew on the field (3d) instead of two crews (2d and 3d). The one crew will transmit both the 2d and 3d images
4. The Super Bowl will be broadcast in 3d (early 2012)
5. Mobile devices – smartphones, gaming devices and tablets (including the 3d overlay for iPad screens) will hit the market and energise both 3d gaming and shorter-form scripted entertainment.
6. There will be outdoor entertainment and advertising with giant 3d LED screens
7. Affordable consumer 3d video cameras will become available

You can read a Televisual interview with Steve Schklair at IBC here

Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/3d-predictions-for-2011_bid-213.htmlTue, 04 Jan 2011 12:23:12UK vfx showcase on Narnia The latest installment of the Chronicles of Narnia – Chronicles of Narnia : The Voyage of the Dawn Treader – is the most recent blockbuster film to make extensive use of London’s vfx houses, with MPC, Framestore, The Senate VFX, Cinesite, The Mill and Prime Focus all working on the movie. Here’s a breakdown of what each of the companies did.

MPC
The principal vfx supplier was MPC, which completed more than 700 vfx shots on the film. The bulk of its work was creating and animating the mouse Reepicheep, the dragon Eustace, the Dawn Treader ship and a sea serpent. As well as character creation, MPC also worked on extensive digital environments.



MPC had already created Reepicheep for a previous Chronicles film, but with the mouse featuring prominently in over 200 hero shots in The Dawn Treader, MPC decided to update the character to “take the spotlight”.

The vfx house’s art department designed in what it describes as subtle changes to help create a “wiser and more mature Reepicheep”. And MPC’s animators even went so far as to take fencing classes to “learn the moves and tricks of the trade” to ensure the little mouse’s sword skills were tip top.



When it came to the dragon Eustace, the main challenge for MPC was conveying emotions through facial expressions alone, as Eustace is unable to speak.

For the giant sea serpent, which appears in a 180-shot ‘dark island’ sequence in which it attacks the Dawn Treader ship, MPC designed in ocean surfaces and splashing water effects for the serpent’s interaction with the sea. The serpent itself was designed with blubbery skin and “hundreds of articulated feelers” (whatever these are) by MPC’s art department.

MPC’s work on the Dawn Treader ship varied depending on the scene the ship appeared in. For some, a complete cg ship was built while, for other sequences, MPC added surrounding ocean to a land-based physical set of the ship.



The vfx supervisor for MPC was Adam Valdez, cg supervision was by Kevin Hahn and animation supervision was by Gabriele Zuchelli.

Framestore
Framestore was responsible for the next biggest batch of vfx work on the film, working on around 280 vfx shots. The company’s key role was creating the God-like lion character Aslan – once again, Framestore had already brought the lion to life for the previous installment of the Chronicles series, so its work was focused on further refinement and improvement of the character design and animation.



On top of this, the 170-strong Framestore team also worked on the one-legged, giant-footed dwarf characters, the Dufflepuds, and vfx-heavy sequences including a standing wave and bringing a picture of a seascape to life.



The Framestore team, led by vfx supervisor Jonathan Fawkner (who also attended the shoot) worked on the rigging of Aslan to “bring it in line with Framestore’s centralised rigging tools”.

“We had shots where Aslan was walking and you saw his full body. The old rig didn’t allow the legs to be stretched far enough to make the gait look realistic,” says head of rigging Nico Scapel. “When this issue arose, we were able to iterate a change on the rig and then see a render the next day, which makes a huge difference.”

The animation of Aslan, which was handled by a team of eight at Framestore, had to be done within the constraints of him being a God, so should show “minimal signs of normal animal behaviour.” So, the team implemented “subliminal signs” that the creature lives, such a breath cycles, blinks, nostril flare, a slight shift in weight, a swish of the tail, and so on.



For the seascape picture sequence, where a picture of a seascape comes alive and waves start to roll and churn before water engulfs the room, Framestore combined a wet and dry set of the attic room with the picture hanging. The actors did their parts in the dry set, while a set of the same room was descended into a water tank to create the effect of the water rising as it enters the room.

Next, Framestore augmented water filmed gushing out of the painting on set, as there was a limit to how much could realistically be pumped into the set. To create the desired effect, Framestore used a “moving painting effect, using Corel Painter’s overpainting technique – we’d take moving footage of water and then, on a still frame, we used the impasto-like brush effect to give us something that looked a lot like the source painting but was based on footage of moving waves,” explains lead compositor Jan Adamczyk.



Finally, the Dufflepuds were created by mixing real actors for the top half and cg for the lower bodies, skin and cloth. Over 250 performances of the actors bouncing around and acting were filmed on blue screen, which were then scaled down to dwarfish size, tracked and given an animated leg and composited into the scene.

The Senate VFX
The Senate VFX produced the next largest amount of vfx work, completing 250 vfx shots for an opening sequence of King’s College, Cambridge as well as the creation of the star Liliandil, which takes on a human form.

Cinesite
Cinesite’s main work on The Dawn Treader involved creating the White Witch character. The vfx house’s team, led by vfx supervisor Matt Johnson and 3d supervisor Stephane Paris, scanned principal photography of the actress Tilda Swinton, who plays the White Witch, to generate a 3d model of the actress’s head.

The 3d model was then rigged and animated using Maya, to match Swinton’s live performance. Cinesite then added cg hair and a shroud of upper body mist to enhance the effect of her being a mythical, floating creature.

Cinesite also created green mist tendrils, which take on the form of the greatest fears of the crew of the Dawn Treader. Other Cinesite vfx included creating set extensions of The Goldwater Island sequence, and extending the bejewelled valley.






The Mill
The Mill’s work focused on the Naiad water nymphs and their movement through the sea and around the Dawn Treader ship. The company spent six months on research and development and concept work to achieve the desired look for the characters.



Prime Focus
Prime Focus completed the film's full stereoscopic 3d conversion. It converted 1,500 shots into stereoscopic 3d for the 115-minute movie. The globally focused post facility spent 24 hours a day across three different time zones working on the conversion process. In total, it delivered 600 shots from London, 550 from Los Angeles and 350 from Mumbai.

Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/UK-vfx-showcase-on-Narnia_bid-211.htmlFri, 17 Dec 2010 14:15:10Free grading and editing tools There’s a whole load of excellent free stuff available for post production editors and grading artists at present. Grab it while you can.

Free professional editing system - Lightworks
First up is the pro editing system Lightworks, as used to edit the likes of Pulp Fiction and Notting Hill, which has been updated and relaunched by new owner EditShare (which acquired Lightworks last year) as a free, open source editing package.

The new, free Lightworks provides resolution, format and codec independent edits, real-time 2k effects, varispeed, primary and secondary colour correctors, a multi-track audio mixer and voiceover tool and a newly designed user interface.



It also now works with Avid and FCP keyboard shortcuts and has native support for ProRes, Avid DNxHD and AVC-Intra, as well as stereoscopic support for left and right eye files.

The free download is not a trial version and isn’t time limited. Get the latest version of Lightworks for free

Free colour grading - Airgrade
Next up is an interesting colour grading app from Pixel Farm. The company, best known for its vfx and restoration software, has focused its attention on colour correction for the first time with a combined free Mac software and iPhone app grading package called Airgrade.

Airgrade makes it possible to do anything from a one light pass to a complete professional-level grade. The bulk of the work is done by the Mac software, which “emulates professional film and TV grading tools”, while the iPhone app is used to wirelessly remote control the software, by rolling a virtual 3d trackball and rotating a radial wheel.



Airgrade provides lift, gamma and gain controls to control shadow, midtone and highlights, as well as a saturation control to tweak the overall colour intensity.

The grading data created by Airgrade can be saved in the universally recognised ASC CDL format to transfer to a dedicated professional grading system. The graded image is also auto-transferred to the iPhone’s photo album for quick reference.

The Pixel Farm believe Airgrade will not only be useful for DoPs to establish a basic look on location but also for aspiring colourists to familiarise themselves with grading techniques. Download Airgrade for free

Free digital cinema qc, grading and editorial tool - STORM
Finally, The Foundry has made a beta version of its ‘digital cinema camera production hub’ STORM available as a free download, for unrestricted free use until 1st March 2010 (when you’ll have to pay £250 to continue using it).

STORM provides extensive on-set digital rushes quality checking tools (to check exposure, focus, colour and audio), focusing specifically on Red-acquired rushes, as well as grading and multi-track timeline editorial tools.



It makes it possible for the director, DoP and editor to view high-res takes, make a rough edit and establish a basic look for a production, all while on location.

STORM also includes straightforward metadata tagging and timeline re-conforming to speed up the movement of content through to editorial and post production systems.

Red’s ridiculously titled Ted Schilowitz, who’s apparently the leader of the rebellion, says: “Having seen STORM in detail, I’d describe it as REDCine-X on steroids. It’s well worth the time to investigate its capabilities if you are involved in post production, working with Red footage.”

Download the free beta of STORM
Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Free-grading-and-editing-tools_bid-209.htmlWed, 15 Dec 2010 12:05:06The outlook for post in 2011 There’s a lot going on in the post and facilities sector at present, with Deluxe in particular shaking things up in a big way with its purchase of Ascent Media Group.

Also in the last month, Warner Brothers confirmed its £100m purchase of Hertfordshire’s Leavesden Studios, making it its UK home.

And, at the other end of the scale, Manchester post facility Hullabaloo Studios, which worked on Fify and the Flower Tots and Roary the Racing Car, closed down for undisclosed reasons.

In a facilities sector as changeable and erratic as this, I asked a handful of post house mds what they think is in store for them in the coming year.

Cinesite’s md Antony Hunt singles out stereoscopic 3d as an ongoing positive development: “It’s been a tough climate for post houses and it’s those that continue to be cutting edge that thrive. Stereo 3d dominates the film industry and will continue to do so in 2011. We’ve made significant investment in stereoscopic and can deliver complex effects in this growing format, something that will define our work in 2011.”

The Mill’s exec producer Stephen Venning says the build up to the 2012 Olympics is the shining beacon for the coming year. “My personal excitement will be in seeing the effect the London Olympics has on the advertising industry and the creative vfx challenges that holds for us.”

Meanwhile, in Manchester, Andy Sumner, md of the city’s largest post house Sumners, acknowledges the year hasn’t been great for local facilities but believes there’s now every reason to be upbeat: “So farewell 2010, it’s certainly been a bit of a brutal time for post in Manchester – Red Vision and Hullabaloo have gone and everybody has striven for efficiencies simply to survive,” he says.

“So hello 2011, finally MediaCity is here, with seven HD studios, BBC children’s and BBC sport set to tip up in the North West, and, if we are to believe the BBC, this is only the start. If this is the case it has to be good for the whole production economy and what’s good for production has to be good for post.”
Jake Bickerton is Televisual’s features editor

Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/The-outlook-for-post-in-2011_bid-204.htmlMon, 13 Dec 2010 12:13:19UK vfx work on Harry Potter Five of London’s leading vfx facilities have spent much of the last year working on sequences in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1.

As is commonplace in vfx-heavy big budget movies, work is shared out to a handful of different companies – in this case, a who’s who of the UK’s vfx facilities – Framestore, MPC, Cinesite, Double Negative and Baseblack. Added to this, there were other vfx houses in India, USA and Australia working on the title too.

Here’s a round-up of the UK vfx work on Harry Potter.

Framestore
Framestore worked on 110 vfx shots, mostly involving two elves – Dobby and Kreacher, which are apparently both house-elves. Framestore’s vfx supervisor Christian Manz says the Framestore team of up to 60 vfx artists spent 16 months of “toil and creation” to complete its sequences on the film.

Framestore’s elves are keyframe animated rather than motion capture animated to be able to “carefully craft emotive and believable human performances from careful observation of a variety of sources,” says Manz.

The vfx facility concentrated on tweaking the appearance of both Dobby and Kreacher, compared to how they looked in previous Harry Potter films. Some of their more grotesque features were “softened out”, so Dobby’s neck was smoothed out, his arms shortened and his eyes were made less saucer-like. Meanwhile, Kreacher’s nose was shortened and his ears trimmed.




As well as the elves, Framestore was involved in a three-minute animated interlude in the film, which comes in when Hermione begins reading aloud from The Tales of Beedle the Bard.

A 37-strong team assembled from Framestore’s commercials vfx wing, led by sequence supervisor Dale Newton, worked on the animation, inspired by stop-frame silhouette animator Lotte Reiniger, who animated from the 1920s to the 1950s. Working in Maya, Framestore emulated the characters and motion of Reiniger’s hand-cut paper silhouettes.




Cinesite
Cinesite’s work centred on three key elements – Lord Voldemort’s snake-like nose, the ghost of Dumbledore and a Patronus doe.

It replaced Ralph Fiennes’ nose area with Lord Voldemort’s cg snout throughout 46 shots, which involved having to build a rig with three layers of animation controls to enable all the 16 tracking markers attached to Fiennes’ head to be exploited.



For Dumbledore’s ghost, Cinesite took a clean plate of the corridor in which the ghost appears and a green screen plate of Sir Michael Gambon and generated a digi-double of Gambon’s character. The digi-double was match-moved to Gambon and projected back on to his green screen performance to create the desired effect.

The Patronus doe appears in the film in the form of a light expanding into a semi-formed character. To achieve the effect, Cinesite generated a fully-rigged photo-real animated cg doe.

Cinesite also worked on additional effects such as a cg wreath of Christmas roses that are conjured up by Hermione at Harry’s parents’ grave.

MPC
MPC completed over 180 shots on the film. A good deal of its work went into the transformation sequence where six members of the order of Phoenix take a polyjuice potion and assume Harry’s form to confuse Voldemort.

For this sequence, MPC had to create fully cg versions of the six characters. The actors were motion captured, including a facial motion capture shoot, to provide the level of detail required.

MPC’s concept artists then tried out different ways to best achieve the visual effect of the transformation, blending features, sizes and skin textures from Harry and the other characters. A custom rigging system controlling the blending of data from the facial capture shoot provided the animators with control over the finer details.



Other characters created by MPC include cg thestrals (a cross between a horse and a dragon) and over 100 cg characters for the Death Eaters’ chase scene, including full screen digi-doubles for Harry, Hagrid and the Death Eaters.

It also worked on set extensions, and vfx work including explosions, wand effects, cg water and a bike crash during a wand duel between Harry and Voldemort.

Baseblack
The smallest of the UK facilities to work on the movie, Baseblack, ended up doing the largest number of shots. It worked on 45 sequences and over 300 shots, including every appearance of the Golden Snitch and all work on the final scene of the film, involving a huge lightning storm and Dumbledore’s tomb.

It also created the effects for spells such as Obliviate, the Deluminator and Lumos, the Horcrux Locket’s underwater attack on Harry, a wand shoot out in a café, Hermione’s magic handbag and moving photos in newspapers, as well as major background replacement throughout the film.



Double Negative
Double Negative’s work on the film was mostly focused on set and environment extensions. It extended the Burrows and its surrounds and also extended Xenophilus Lovegood’s home.

In addition to this, Double Negative added an extra dimension to the Death Eaters, introducing a ‘flayed man’ stage between their fuid, flying state and their live-action presence when they land. Double Negative also created the Patronus charm that interrupts a wedding party to inform guests Voldemort has taken over the Ministry of Magic.


Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/UK-vfx-work-on-Harry-Potter_bid-194.htmlFri, 26 Nov 2010 14:31:23REVIEW : Veebeam HD Online catch-up TV services, YouTube, LoveFilm streaming, etc, all mean more and more TV content being viewed on laptops rather than on TV. The small laptop screen and tinny laptop sound is a less than enticing viewing experience compared to TV so the Veebeam – a newly released consumer device – aims to put laptop content back on TV.

The makers of Veebeam sent Televisual one of its £139 Veebeam HD devices to see what we thought. Out of the box, the first impressions are favourable - it’s a fairly small, agreeably designed piece of hardware that sits relatively unobtrusively next to the TV.

The first task to get it up and running is to connect the Veebeam to your TV, which, with the HD version, is via an HDMI cable. An SD version is also available (for £99) that uses a composite a/v cable rather than HDMI.

Next up is installing the Veebeam software. It works on a Mac or PC, and you can install it on as many laptops as you have in your home.

Slotted into the Veebeam is a removable USB antenna that you take out and plug into your laptop. Then you have to sit your laptop in line of sight of the Veebeam, and no more than 10 metres away, and wait a few moments for the two to make a connection.

Once connected, your laptop screen is mirrored on the TV, so you can start full-screen streaming from iPlayer, YouTube or whatever and it’s all shown on your TV. The audio also comes out of your TV speakers, so it’s a very TV-like viewing experience.

The Veebeam software also installs a Veebeam player that, rather than mirroring your laptop screen on TV, ‘sends’ movie files stored on your hard drive to the Veebeam, making it possible to watch them on TV while still being able to use your laptop.

The Veebeam HD player enables high-quality 1080p HD files to be displayed in full-res on your TV, but currently Mac users can only use the player for .mov and .mp4 files. Other commonly used file formats, such as .avi files, aren’t presently supported. Veebeam says this will come in a future version of the Mac software, while the PC player already works with a much broader range of file formats.

Having used the Veebeam fairly extensively for the last few days, overall I’d say it’s a useful device. It’s very straightforward to get up and running and is much less cumbersome than connecting a display port to HDMI adapter and HDMI cable to a MacBook (along with a set of speakers as the display port adapter doesn’t carry sound for some reason) every time you want to watch laptop-hosted content on TV.

As long as you keep the laptop in line of sight, the Veebeam link seems to work fine. There’s a delay of a few seconds in whatever you do on your laptop being shown on TV – it’s not instant as it is when using cables – so this takes a bit of getting used to. And you’ll want to point your laptop screen away from you as it’s pretty distracting seeing the content a few seconds ahead out the corner of your eye on the laptop screen.

Not having a good range of movie files supported for the Mac Veebeam player is frustrating as using ‘screencasting’ (ie. displaying the laptop screen on the TV) ties up your laptop so you can't use it for anything else.

The Veebeam’s image quality – even when streaming from online catch-up services (assuming you’ve a reasonable broadband speed) – is consistently good, and downloaded 1080p HD files look suitably impressive on the TV screen, not dissimilar to watching a Blu-ray.

The main issue for Veebeam will be how long it will be relevant. Once the likes of YouView are available, Veebeam may well struggle to get much of a look in.


Veebeam Overview from Veebeam on Vimeo.

Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/REVIEW--Veebeam-HD_bid-191.htmlMon, 22 Nov 2010 13:04:33Creative iPhone gadgets Japanese artist Jitsuro Mase has created an innovative iPhone/iPad gadget that turns the iPhone/iPad into a nifty little handheld 3d cinema.

Dubbed the i3dg, Mase’s device uses mirrors set at 45-degree angles to project mini movies into the space around your iPhone or iPad. You don’t need any special equipment or polarised lenses or anything to view the 3d projections.

The visuals are created in a layout corresponding to the position of the mirrors and Mase has already created dozens of animations that show off the i3dg's capabilities. A series of i3dg films and animations are being shown at the International Film Festival Rotterdam 2011, early next year.

To see clips from some of these animations and find out how the i3dg works, see the video below.




While we’re on the iPhone, here’s another interesting device to maximise its creative potential. The Owle Bubo slots around the iPhone 4 to further enhance the 720p video capturing capabilities of the phone - providing it with a custom 37mm wide-angle lens, a high-quality microphone, and the ability to use any 37mm thread lens.

According to Owle, the Bubo gives the iPhone 4 “better colour saturation, contrast and sharpness, crystal clear sound and hugely reduced hand jitter”. It also makes it possible to use interchangeable 37mm lenses.



The Owle Bubo for iPhone 4 costs £150, or bundled with a Rotolight RL48-A, Rotolight Stand and belt pouch costs £275. For more information, go here
Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Creative-iPhone-gadgets_bid-190.htmlFri, 19 Nov 2010 11:35:41Pro Tools 9 - the lowdown Following the launch of Pro Tools 9 earlier this month, Avid held an audio event for press yesterday to run through and demo the newly improved functionality of the industry-standard audio toolkit.

The overwhelming feeling following the event is the latest version is quite a leap forward in providing users with options for using Pro Tools with a much wider assortment of control panels and audio interfaces, or even on the move on a laptop with no hardware at all.

One of the key upgrades as part of Pro Tools 9 is it is now available as a software-only version. This is the first time it’s been available as a standalone piece of software, enabling full access to Pro Tools for audio prepping, mixing and editing on a laptop.

Another significant improvement is Pro Tools 9 now supports a much broader range of control surfaces (through the Avid EUCON open Ethernet protocol), including (naturally) Avid’s newly acquired Euphonix consoles and controllers, which have been rebranded as Avid Artist Series and Pro Series consoles.

Added to this, Pro Tools 9 also supports a much larger range of audio I/O interfaces, as a result of new Core Audio and ASIO driver support.

At yesterday's event, Avid announced it is no longer going to sell a handful of its formerly separately available Pro Tools add-ons, including the popular Music Production Toolkit. These are now bundled in with Pro Tools 9 as part of its expanded features set.

The functionality added to Pro Tools 9 by the addition of these add-ons includes automatic delay compensation, ending the need to manually compensate for latencies from hardware I/Os and plug-in algorithm processing.

Other improvements to Pro Tools includes the ability to do OMF/AAF/MXF file interchanges and MP3 exports, there's also enhanced accuracy when syncing audio to video in post, through a new built-in time code ruler, and an updated 7.1 surround sound paner.

Pro Tools 9 is available as a software-only version at around £500 or packaged with different audio interfaces at increasing price points.

Here’s a collection of music and audio post people giving their first impressions on the upgraded system...


Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Pro-Tools-9---the-lowdown_bid-189.htmlThu, 18 Nov 2010 12:20:44Super-slo-mo art films Newcastle’s live action and animation production outfit J6 Films has completed a series of 30 extreme slo-mo films of people laughing for an art project commissioned by BBC Radio 3.

Each of the films is a visual portrait of someone from the North East, with the 30 people filmed ranging in age from 2 to 80 years old. They were shown on a series of flatscreen TVs throughout the concourse area The Sage, Gateshead earlier this month as part of an installation called the Free Thinking Festival.


Image credit: BBC/Dan Prince

The theme of the festival was ‘the pursuit of happiness’ and the films are “a visual metaphor of the pursuit of happiness, contemplated with a magnifying glass,” says film director Chuchie Hill.

“When high speed shooting, at approximately 1000 frames per second, we can capture every little movement of the face muscles and skin not appreciated when normal speed or live,” adds Hill.

The films (four of which are below) were produced by J6’s James Baxter.


Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Super-slo-mo-art-films_bid-188.htmlTue, 16 Nov 2010 14:15:21Foundry's all-in-one post tool The Foundry is extending its sights outside of vfx with the development of STORM, which the company says will grow to be an affordable, all-in-one vfx, editorial and finishing tool.

Best known for Nuke (which was initially developed inhouse at vfx giant Digital Domain) and visual effects plug-ins, The Foundry has developed STORM from the ground up, and has just released a beta version of the software available at www.thefoundry.co.uk/products/storm/try/

STORM has had a fairly low-key release so far, with news of the product slipping out quietly at NAB, but this is largely down to the initial release being a relatively unassuming precursor to what’s likely to follow.

As it currently stands, STORM is simply pitched as a more fully featured replacement to Red’s own free (and perpetually in beta) raw rushes colour corrector RedCine-X. Red’s Ted Schilowitz describes STORM as ”REDCine-X on steroids”.

It currently captures picture, sound and metadata from Red cameras, where it can be reviewed, quality checked, tagged and organised and cinematographic looks tried out via colour correction tools.

However, the £250 software package also crucially bundles in a timeline editor. The editor is relatively feature-light at present, but, says The Foundry’s head of product development Richard Shackleton, “Next year we want to expand it and create a big brother STORM product that’s a full production hub.”
 
The enhanced version (which will be closer to £1,000 than £250) will have a much more advanced timeline editor, be able to do basic vfx as well as the conform and grade.

“It’s not going to be for high-end work,” says  Shackleton, but will do “the bulk of work” that passes through a post production facility. The enhanced version of STORM could be ready for NAB 2011, he adds.

The Foundry is investing heavily in STORM’s development with a team of four dedicated to building up the product’s feature set.

The market for combined editorial, vfx, grading and finishing tools is already quite crowded, with the likes of Avid, Apple and Autodesk already offering similarly broad reaching products, so only time will tell if there’s space for The Foundry’s own addition to the marketplace.

Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Foundrys-all-in-one-post-tool_bid-186.htmlFri, 12 Nov 2010 12:21:58Avatar Blu-Ray 3d delayed Back in April, when Avatar first came out on DVD and Blu-Ray, it was released as a 2d-only version and with no extras whatsoever.

Now the iconic film is being reissued as a three-disc Avatar Extended Collector’s Edition, complete with 16-minutes of added scenes and hours of bonus features. Which sounds great. But the catch is, it’s still not going to be in 3d.

The only way to get hold of a 3d copy of Avatar to watch at home is by buying a Panasonic Blu-Ray 3d player or Panasonic 3dTV, as a specially made Blu-Ray 3d disc is bundled in as a freebie. But this version doesn’t of course include the extra 16 minutes that's been added to the new Collector’s Edition release, or any of the bonus features.

According to industry website HollwoodInHiDef.com, Panasonic has bought a one-year exclusive window on the Avatar Blu-ray 3d release and is holding fire on its release until the home 3d market “grows big enough to justify it”.

Quite how long the wait will be is anyone’s guess, but the lack of a Blu-Ray 3d of Avatar on retailers' shelves leading up to Christmas is going to do little to boost the so far very modest sales of Blu-Ray 3d players and/or 3dTVs.
Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Avatar-Blu-Ray-3d-delayed_bid-183.htmlThu, 11 Nov 2010 14:19:39Do DSLRs live up to the hype? Producer/director Charles Kelly emailed me recently about how frustrated he was by DSLRs being hyped up to the point where no one has a bad word to say about them. He asked if he could air his views on using the Canon 5D/7D and here's what he has to say. It makes interesting reading.

Kelly works for CSK Integrated Solutions (www.cskis.com), a production company working across all media platforms. A much shorter version of Kelly's opinion is published in the November issue of Televisual (p.21).

"Every time I pick up a magazine someone seems to have 'fallen in love' with a Canon 5 or 7D. The footage can look impressive and the price offers great value, but is true love really blind? How do these cameras actually hold up in a real-world scenario?

We used a 5D Mk2 on a project for a major financial institution, which involved a good mix of interiors and exteriors across multiple locations in the UK and India. Overall, I was impressed, but, strange as this may sound to its army of lovers, it’s certainly not perfect.

It very quickly became apparent that the majority of reviews I’d read in advance had either been penned by those from a photography background or by some over enthusiastic video-bods who’d simply taken a unit for a quick spin round the block. The 5D delivers a filmic look with a shallow depth-of-field – and that’s where most of the reviews end. In reality, the camera slightly frustrates various elements of the production process by having a plethora of operational idiosyncrasies.

I’m sure these issues are not limited to Canon models, so my experience may be of interest to anyone thinking of using one of the DSLR cameras currently on the market. So, what should a DSLR virgin be aware of?

Unless you’re simply capturing a few scenic shots it will probably be best to hire one of the bespoke mounting rigs now available. This will support the camera and allow accessories such as a monitor, matte box and follow-focus to be added with relative ease. 

The sound quality derived from on-board recording is not broadcast standard and works on automatic gain circuitry – fine as a guide or a reference but not suitable for a final programme. An external sound recoding unit is required, preferably along with some method of adding its time-code to one of the audio channels on the Canon to assist the syncing process in post production. 

The twelve minute clip record duration doesn’t sound like a big issue when you’re sitting in the comfort of your production office but you can more or less guarantee the best flurry of action, or the most important sound bite, will begin at exactly eleven minutes fifty five seconds – on a fairly regular basis!

The 5D operates on a rolling-shutter principle and this can cause some strange motion artefacts, so keep a close eye for any such aberrations as you could be able to correct many of these while filming. You also need to take care to ensure any camera pans are fairly slow and smooth; not a big deal, just be aware of it. 

The lightness of a DSLR unit can make it more prone to vibration when used with standard TV grip gear. There are lightweight jibs and arms that will give short, smooth moves so take time to investigate these options. If you’re planning a mix of track, dolly and jib moves on location make sure you’ve got plenty of time to set the whole thing up and rehearse – and have a good supply of sandbags for extra ballast.  

Hand-held work offers up new challenges; the LCD monitor on the rear of the camera is far from ideal – unless you happen to be working down a mine. Add this to the rolling-shutter and the unfamiliar / uncomfortable operating position and you have a recipe that lends itself to (very) short hand-held sequences. 

The video monitoring would make a certain Mr Heath Robinson very proud. As previously mentioned; the LCD screen on the rear of the camera is not particularly useful for daylight operation but there is the option of a viewfinder eye-piece extension – worth buying or checking to ensure it is part of your hire package. But remember, if you connect an external monitor the feed to the camera LCD is disabled

For many set-ups you may want to use two monitors; one fitted to the camera rig for the operator and another screen for the director, producer and clients. The snag is the 5D only has one HDMI output. No worries I hear you cry – use a splitter. The second snag is the camera gets confused when it senses a splitter in the cable chain; it will allow you to view both screens in preview mode but as soon as you hit record you will lose the feed to the second monitor. If you’re thinking about utilising the analogue output, be prepared for some pretty abysmal picture quality. 

In certain monitoring set-ups the 5D also has the annoying habit of changing the aspect ratio; going from a 16/9 in preview (live-view) mode to a 4/3 format in record. Very disconcerting, but this has apparently been fixed on the 7D. 

Financial savings are often cited as a great advantage of going down the DSLR route and you probably will save money on camera hire. However, you’ll need additional lenses, probably a set of four primes plus a zoom or the cheaper / faster option of two quality zooms. You will also require the external sound recording device; obviously, this will all add cost back in to the budget.

For those who have little or no experience of working on film, or high-end HD, you need to be aware that shallow depth-of-field work brings its own fairly literal challenge of maintaining sharp focus. This is much more difficult, and time consuming, than when working with an old trusty DigiBeta and standard zoom lens. It makes a lot of sense to have a focus puller, or decent camera assistant; more money on crew, but well worth it in the long run.

Although not the biggest of issues, you should also be aware the 5D only records at a standard 25fps, with the 7D offering the option of filming at 50fps, which is an improvement but still not ideal. For slightly arty scenes I often like to film just off reality, something like 30fps which isn’t as ponderous and obvious as half speed but does take the edge of straight reality. This isn’t an option with either of these cameras.

Anti-aliasing can also be an issue with some shot content, and the BBC technical department has flagged this up as a concern over the use of this camera for broadcast HD TV projects.

When you move in to post production, ingesting the large media files is slower than some other formats and you need to allow time to import the separate sound files and sync them up to the visuals. 

The Canon’s file format is H246 – great for viewing, but not so great for editing. If using FCP, you will probably want to convert your footage to Pro Res files. In Avid your optimum workflow plan will be dependant on the version of media composer you’re using. 

You also have to consider how you’re delivering the end product. In the corporate world, standard DVD is still very much the norm in meeting, training and boardrooms across the country; you may have hours of lovely HD footage but you could be delivering a standard definition programme.

Whether you create an HD master for subsequent down-conversion, or convert your rushes at the onset of editing, will probably be dictated by a number of issues; the time and money you have available for post production, whether you’re incorporating a large amount of SD material into the programme, the specification of edit suite you’re using and the current and future needs of your client.

But, either way, if not delivering in HD, take some time to investigate the HD to SD conversion process. The different software and hardware options for doing this can deliver quite a variation in end results. Image quality can also vary between Avid and FCP systems as they process and handle the media files in different ways.

Updates and software 'fixes' are available for some of these operational issues but if you’re hiring the camera these aren’t going to be an option you can explore. If you’re planning to be a camera owner you can investigate further but these downloads are invariably supplied by third parties and will invalidate your original warranty. Magic Lantern specialise in this area but their homepage clearly states, “…this Magic Lantern release comes with no warranty for any use; you use it at your own risk.”

There’s no doubt, working with a DSLR requires a bit of thought and preparation; supporters would claim some of the comments above could apply to any film camera. There’s an element of truth in that but I’m highlighting these operational idiosyncrasies because these cameras are invariably being used by people from a video background, some of whom have never even seen a film camera let alone used one. 

Plan ahead, carry out some pre-shoot tests, be aware of the challenges and all should go well. We’ll use the Canon again; for the right project, and in the right circumstances, it’s a very good option. I particularly enjoyed the discipline of using prime lenses, working with shallow depth-of-field and having access to a film-style ISO control. But I can’t help wondering; will the lover’s affections start to wander when a proper broadcast equivalent comes on the market?"

Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Do-DSLRs-live-up-to-the-hype_bid-180.htmlThu, 04 Nov 2010 11:07:49Spot on visual effects In the November issue of Televisual, there's a four-page feature showcasing the visual effects on some of the year's best looking spots. We didn't have space to print all the beautiful images we received while doing research for the feature, but they are well worth seeing, so here's an extended gallery of images from the commercials that made the cut.

As well as stills from the finished ads, we've also included a generous selection of 'before' and 'after' shots from key visual effects sequences. For detailed information about how these vfx were achieved – based on interviews with the vfx supervisors on each of the commercials – see a printed copy of the November issue of Televisual.

McDonald's Weather
This Simon Ratigan-directed spot, produced by HLA for Leo Burnett, London, is built around animated weather icons created by MPC. It shows the sun icon rising over the sea, children playing with giant rain icons and lightning icons striking over fields.









 


EA Need for Speed trailer
Framestore directed this full cg trailer film for EA’s Need for Speed game inhouse, with senior technical director David Mellor at the helm. The brief was to ”create a dynamic, cinematic, classic car chase where both sides, cop or racer, could outsmart each other”.





Philips Squeaky Clean
Andy Hargreaves and Mark Pascoe at Rushes are responsible for the cg character design and animation on this Orlando Cubitt-directed Flynn Productions spot for DDB. The commercial, for Philips’ most powerful vacuum cleaner, shows a mouse being sucked up from under the floorboards during a springclean.











Nike Write the Future
The epic Nike Write the Future spot, from W + K Amsterdam and directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, relies heavily on The Mill’s vfx work.  The ad required a 23 day shoot, 250 vfx shots, 130 massive crowd shots, five weeks of post, a feature film sized crew, and a team of 50 staff at The Mill working across its London, New York and LA offices.










 


Weetabix Happy Breakfast
Stink’s humourous Weetabix spot for WCRS, directed by Ben Dawkins, centres on three talking household pets lip sync-ed and animated by a team at Glassworks. Lead Flame artist and visual effects supervisor on the spot, Duncan Malcolm, says the vfx house was approached by Dawkins before he’d even won the job, to talk through potential ways to create a naturalistic effect for the talking animals.






 


Trident Burst
Homecorp’s Jon Yeo-directed Trident Chewing Gum commercial for JWT features a spectacular ice meteor shower created by Big Buoy. “The most challenging part was to create a meteor shower that looked beautiful and not threatening” so Big Buoy created concept art based on visual references and art direction from Yeo.





 


Sony Pure Football
This TV commercial for Sony, produced by Academy for Anomaly, was director Jonathan Glazer’s first stereoscopic spot. Soho’s vfx boutique One of Us, led by vfx supervisor Tom Debenham, completed the stereoscopic post and vfx work.




Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Spot-on-visual-effects_bid-176.htmlWed, 03 Nov 2010 12:38:53Live 3d holographic visuals One of the pioneers of audio visual performances, video artist Stuart Warren-Hill, got in touch with Televisual late last week to let us know about his new project, Holotronica, which, he says, involves using “self-created holographic visual synthesis” to create futuristic looking, attention-grabbing live 3d holographic performances.

"Holotronica is a groundbreaking a/v concept combining analog synthesizers with realtime midi triggered holographic visuals," adds Warren-Hill.

The results of all this are pretty stunning – see below for some examples.

Warren-Hill is no stranger to forward thinking audio visual work, being half of Ninja Tune a/v duo Hexstatic, the act behind the first entirely audio video cdrom album release, Rewind back in 2000.

Holotronica is doing a free live 3d holographic a/v performance on Saturday 13th November at the BFI Southbank, as part of (London-based moving image and digital arts organisation) onedotzero’s ‘adventures in motion festival 2010’.

Judging by this performance at the Kinetica Art Fair earlier this year, the BFI show should be well worth a visit.



Here’s a short clip from another Holotronica track, with Warren-Hill creating a real-time composition, triggered via midi from Ableton live.



And another one...



Finally, this is Warren-Hill performing with a weird musical instrument called the Eigenharp, creating live 3d holographic audio visual material at The Hospital Club around this time last year.



As well as the forthcoming gig, Holotronica is launching a 3d website, which goes live on 8th November at www.holotronica.tv

Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Live-3d-holographic-visuals_bid-175.htmlTue, 02 Nov 2010 13:10:59Kodak's free guide Kodak has put its popular Cinematographer’s Field Guide publication online as a free download for the Apple iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch and other e-publication readers such as the Sony Reader and Android-based devices.

The guide was originally published 22-years ago as a pocket size book. It’s been regularly updated and re-printed since then, providing up-to-date information that’s especially relevant when shooting on film. It includes sections on motion picture camera films, filter information, tips and techniques, formats and packaging.

“We are told by students and emerging filmmakers that the Cinematographer’s Field Guide is their go-to resource when in the throes of production, helping them determine the best choices for telling a story visually,” says Kodak’s worldwide director of web marketing Nicole Phillips.

The guide is available as a free ePub or a .pdf download from motion.kodak.com/US/en/motion/Tools/Mobile/resources.htm. The ePub includes searching, bookmarking, annotating and page flipping and will work most e-readers except the Amazon Kindle. To read ePub files on an iPhone or iPod Touch you’ll also need to download the free app Stanza from www.lexcycle.com/download.
Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Kodaks-free-guide_bid-171.htmlWed, 27 Oct 2010 14:26:50The audience takes control Now that stereoscopic 3d is firmly embedded into the mainstream, it will soon be yesterday’s news – so, what’s next?

Well, how about being able to subliminally influence the storyline, feel and direction of a film or TV programme via emotional responses? It sounds like sci-fi but it’s the vision of Rugby-based Keith Bound who’s developed an interactive film-analysis concept called Emo-vie.

Emo-vie tracks an audience’s response to a film and changes the story based on emotional reactions to key scenes and key moments of dialogue. So the direction of the story is adapted on the fly through the unconscious interaction of the viewer.

To make the system work, audio-visual content has to be pre-tagged with different “narrative trajectories”. The content can also change properties such as colours, tone, lighting, vfx and sound based on audience reactions.

Bound has already won a Cisco I-Prize Global Innovation award for Emo-vie. He told Televisual: “The broadcast industry has not yet managed to create a fully responsive experience for the audience. At the moment, the only way users can engage with interactive content is through conscious decisions and mouse clicks, rather than unconsciously.”

The Emo-vie system, which was originally developed for the healthcare market, uses biofeedback technology to monitor heart rate and heart rhythms and analyse the emotional intensity felt by the user. It’s little more than a concept at the moment, but in a few year’s time, who knows, maybe going to the cinema will literally be a heart-wrenching experience.
Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/The-audience-takes-control_bid-170.htmlWed, 27 Oct 2010 12:31:54The Facilities 50 goes online Televisual’s exclusive survey of the UK’s post production sector, the Facilities 50 survey, is now online.

To read the full report for FREE, click on the following link: www.televisual.com/reports-surveys.html.

The highly regarded Facilities 50 ranks and profiles the UK’s top 50 post production outfits as well as providing a comprehensive report on the state of the post production and visual effects market. It also contains contact and staff details for the UK's top post houses.

Visual effects giant The Mill took top spot in the Facilities 50 for the second year running. Two of the UK’s other large vfx-focused houses, Framestore and MPC, came in second and third respectively.

The combined turnover of all the post houses in the Facilities 50 this year is £408m. Unrealistic budgets and undercutting continued to emerge as key issues facing many post players, while stereo 3d and file-based working were highlighted as key opportunities.
Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/The-Facilities-50-goes-online_bid-164.htmlThu, 14 Oct 2010 11:30:47October's creative round-up The email inboxes at Televisual continually ping to the sound of new creative work landing on the virtual welcome mat. The last month has been no exception, so rather than just keeping the stand-out spots to ourselves, here are a few of the best we’ve received of late.

Philips The Foundling
The latest addition to Philips’ Parallel Lines campaign (the sixth in the series) is RSA’s five-minute film The Foundling. Directed by Barney Cokeliss, the spot is an epic piece of short-form work that’s been beautifully shot and finished with a truly elegant grade by Framestore’s Dave Ludlam.




The film centres on a unicorn in a circus freak show and is viewable in its full glory in 2d online at www.framestore.com/comms_highres_version/101005foundling/med.html or in stereoscopic 3d on a 3d TV in-store at a Philips shop.

The stereo work was posted by Framestore, which used its experience on Avatar to create a “subtle and immersive 3d experience”, though it couldn’t resist the odd 3d classic of a knife thrower lobbing his knife at the camera and a coconut shy ball flying right out the screen at the ducking viewer.

The Guardian’s Film Challenge
 The Guardian is currently running a competition based around a 1m25s animation by Not To Scale, which uses icons and graphic movements to represent 26 classic films. The animation was written and produced in five weeks, with Not To Scale working with Wieden + Kennedy’s creative team, led by creative director Shay Reading, to come up with the different graphics for each of the films.

The idea of the film challenge is for viewers to try to work out as many of the 26 films being referenced as they can. The first to name all 26 movies wins them all on DVD.



Discovery Channel’s Front Line Battle Machines promo
Discovery Channel is promoting its forthcoming series Front Line Battle Machines, which follows the role of various battle machines on active missions, with a commercial featuring five “animated vignettes that highlight the importance of a single pin that holds together a Chinook’s rotor blade".

The ad has just been completed by Smoke & Mirrors, whose credit list on the spot is...
Creative direction / Lead compositor - Dan Andrew (Smoke & Mirrors)
Online DS Editor - Guillaume Weiss (Smoke & Mirrors)
3D Operators - Jon Wood, Matteo La Motta, Richard Klein, Carlos Correia (Smoke & Mirrors)
Smoke & Mirrors Producer - Annika Ahl


Now Take a Bow

Nexus’ Roel and Jonathan have put together the framework for an ever-evolving film called Now Take a Bow. The film, which is built around videos submitted by visitors to the nowtakeabow website, is re-rendered and updated every hour to include the latest submissions.

Each of the participants follow directions from Roel and Jonathan to film their own take on the different stages of the video, using a webcam: “It’s a new culture of versions, where the value lies not only in the original but with all versions together,” say the directors.

Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Octobers-creative-round-up_bid-162.htmlMon, 11 Oct 2010 18:21:1657,000 channels (and nothing on) The average TV in the not too distant future will not only provide the choice of hundreds of conventional TV channels, but also endless hours of video-on-demand, catch-up TV, YouTube and masses of other online-hosted videos and vodcasts, and the list goes on....

It already appears far too challenging for anyone with Sky to settle on one channel for any length of time (I find it tricky enough with Freeview), so multiplying this already generous selection of channels by hundreds if not thousands more choices doesn’t sound like a particularly useful thing to do.

But that’s progress.

So, Philips (along with, it has to be said, a large number of other technology companies) is trying to simplify how we access this mass of moving image content, in an attempt to streamline this impending mass of choice to a shortlist of things you might in fact want to watch.

I caught up with the company at IBC earlier this month to find out more about its solution for what it calls the “modern TV dilemma”.

Philips’ “personalised TV” technology, called Aprico, centres on the ability for viewers to make ‘personal channels’. The idea is you add the programmes you like into your personal channels and – using sophisticated, well defined metadata – Aprico begins to populate the channel with recommended content based around your favourites.

So, you could create a drama channel and throw in five or six examples of the kind of drama you like and the next time you access the channel it will have a growing list of similar dramas added to it.

During various consumer tests of Aprico, Philips says that, within 17 days, 90% of TV watching was being done via personal channels rather than scheduled TV.

Alongside channels set up by viewers, Aprico also includes channels filled with recommendations from well-known brands. It also provides the option to use social networking sites to share the personal channels you’ve created with other Aprico users.

Aprico will be built into many of Philips’ future TV sets and the electronics giant is currently in negotiations with set-top-box makers about incorporating it into their boxes. The first devices with Aprico have begun shipping elsewhere in Europe, though no release date has yet been given for the release of anything in the UK. Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/57000-channels-and-nothing-on_bid-147.htmlThu, 30 Sep 2010 17:22:32Getty's video mix competition Getty Images is running a video remix competition called 'Mishmash' again this year, following an “overwhelmingly positive response” to last year’s contest. The Mishmash competition is open to anyone and the idea is to create a video of between one and three minutes using video footage and music clips from the Getty Images library.

There’s over 50,000 hours of video footage in the Getty archive, and over 50,000 music tracks, so you've plenty of options when it comes to splicing together a video mash-up.

As well as using Getty content, you can add your own stills and video, illustration, animation, artwork and voiceover. Naturally, you’re just not allowed to use stock imagery or footage from any source other than Getty Images.

The deadline for entries is 31 October, and the winners will be announced on 15 November. The judging panel includes Shine Television’s head of specialist factual Nathalie Humphreys, the director of Between the Eyes, Emil Nava, Stink TV’s Pekka Hara, and David Knight of the Promo News website and the UK Music Video Awards.

As well as the kudos of winning, prizes include MacBook Pros, Sony Pistol HD camcorders and an all expenses paid trip for two to the Sundance Film Festival in Salt Lake City. To enter, head over to www.gettyimages.com/mishmash

The best of last year’s entries are genuinely impressive, and cover everything from mini-docs to creative pop promos. Here are two of the highlights....





Total Comments: 2 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Gettys-video-mix-competition_bid-146.htmlThu, 30 Sep 2010 12:46:40Ash's A to Z of promos Having split from their record label a few years ago, Northern Irish pop rockers Ash decided to go it alone and have spent the last year releasing a new single every two weeks in what the band dubbed the ‘A to Z’ series.

Each single was available via a download subscription from 7Digital as well as a proper, old fashioned 7” slab of vinyl, with a limited run of 1,000 each. Ash also released a number of ‘B sides’ in the form of subscriber-only additional downloads.

Six of the 26 singles were promoted as ‘radio singles’ and a small budget set aside for a video. Sadly, none of the tracks dented the charts, but the quality of the music, the innovative idea of the series and the high quality, low budget videos are worthy of far more praise and attention than they received.

So, to mark the release of the final A to Z single, here’s a run down of the key video releases from the series.

Arcadia – single ‘C’
The final video for Ash's A to Z series was made after the series came to an end to celebrate the most popular song (as voted for by visitors to Ash's website) of the series – the third release, 'Arcadia'. The video is by Big Button's Nico Jones, who also made the videos for 'Return Of White Rabbit' and 'Binary'. Jones worked with Ash bassist Mark Hamilton "to produce a pacy, retro ride to match the track and indulge in some Star Wars fantasies".



Carnal Love – single ‘V’
Director Alex Turvey, working for production company Love, commissioned cake artist Lily Vanilli to make a number of strange looking cakes that singer Tim Wheeler devours in this suggestive take on one of Ash’s finest singles to date. The grade on the video was by Rushes’ Simone Grattarola. The 'Carnal Love' video is nominated in the UK Music Video Awards 2010, in the ‘best budget video’ category. The winners will be announced on 12 October.



Binary – single ‘Q’
'Binary' is the second Ash video in the A to Z series directed by Nico Jones for Big Button, following his work on the ‘prequel’ single ‘Return of White Rabbit’. The footage was shot on green screen in New York then sent back to Big Button in Birmingham for editing and post production.



War With Me – single ‘M’
Directed by Alex Beck, 'War With Me' is the mid-point release from the series.



Space Shot – single ‘H’
This black and white, space themed video, directed by New York-based Daniel Garcia, looks like it costs a lot more than it probably did to make. The line dancing robots are the icing on the cake.



True Love 1980 – single ‘A’
The first of two Daniel Garcia-directed videos for the A to Z series, the filmic promo for 'True Love 1980' is for the debut single release of the series.



Return of the White Rabbit – Prequel single
Before the series kicked off, Ash released a ‘prequel’ single and music video – 'Return Of White Rabbit'. Animation direction and illustration was by Nico Jones for Big Button (the first of two videos he made for the series).



As well as the radio singles, Ash released sporadic no budget videos for other singles in the series. These include...


Joy Kicks Darkness - single 'B'
Directed by Josh Kletzkin and shot during Ash’s A to Z tour of the UK.
www.youtube.com/watch




Arcadia – single ‘C’
This again was directed by Josh Kletzkin.
www.youtube.com/watch





Tracers – single ‘D’
Another of Josh Kletzkin’s videos
www.youtube.com/watch





Pripyat – single ‘F’
This promo features photographs from Robert Polidori’s book, 'Zones of Exclusion: Pripyat and Chernobyl'
www.youtube.com/user/darthmarkh#p/u/10/PPpmDyoSpHo



Ichiban – single ‘G’
The Ichiban video is built around film footage edited together from the (not at all cheap looking) 1961 monster movie, 'Gorgo'
www.youtube.com/watch




Neon – single ‘L’
This is basically a slideshow of photography shot and sequenced by KINo.
www.youtube.com/watch







Kamakura – B-side
The quirky video for ‘Kamakura’ was directed by Dainoji
www.youtube.com/user/darthmarkh#p/u/3/8stoiVnJLsA




Gallows Hill – B-side
Ash ran a video competition for B-side ‘Gallows Hill’ – this is one of the entries
www.youtube.com/watch





For more on the A to Z series, visit www.ash-official.com/ or en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A%E2%80%93Z_Series Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Ashs-A-to-Z-of-promos_bid-143.htmlMon, 27 Sep 2010 13:39:29IBC: full Televisual round-up IBC 2010 was “the second biggest IBC in history”, based on visitor numbers, which were up almost 9% on last year. In total, 48,521 attended the show that wrapped up earlier this week.

“The level of attendance and engagement at IBC this year is a clear indication that our industry is robust, recovering well and driven by continuing advances in technology and creativity,” believes IBC CEO Michael Crimp.

Over 1,300 companies were represented at the show and a 13th hall had to be added a month or two before the event kicked off to accommodate increased demand for stand space.

Televisual covered the event in a series of live blogs from the show room floor, which are rounded up below...

Televisual’s interview with stereo 3d guru, 3ality’s Steve Schklair, who made the keynote speech on Monday’s 3d conference day

http://bit.ly/aOn2BG

Panasonic’s new cameras – the AG-AF101, its first DSLR for the broadcast market, a newly updated AG-3DA1, Panasonic’s dual-lens stereo 3d camera and, the AJ-HPX3100, a new P2 model with vastly improved proxy files

http://bit.ly/9zA3Qo

Sony’s new cameras – two prototype models (a dual-lens stereo 3d camera and a very affordable digital 35mm model) and the PMW-500, a new solid-state XDCAM camera that records at 50mb/s to SxS cards

http://bit.ly/ausPom

Quantel re-invents the file to provide web-based editing of live footage, from anywhere in the world

http://bit.ly/9g0IL4

Autodesk packages up Flame, Smoke and Lustre into a single ‘ultimate finishing package’ called Flame Premium that effectively kills off Flame as a standalone product

http://bit.ly/9isR5L

A series of news in briefs, including the Ki Pro mini from AJA, Autoscript’s iPad prompter, Grass Valley’s stereo 3d super slo-mos and Avid’s web-editing technology demo

http://bit.ly/bBdnkw

Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/IBC-full-Televisual-round-up_bid-139.htmlThu, 16 Sep 2010 13:31:40IPad light painting An iPad and clever photographic and animation techniques are all that's used to draw the moving 3d typography and objects in this eye-catching production (called Making Future Magic) from creative communications agency Dentsu London and design consultancy BERG.

According to the creative chaps at Dentsu and BERG, "In dark environments, we play movies on the surface of the iPad that extrude 3d light forms as they move through the exposure. Multiple exposures with slightly different movies make up the stop-frame animation."

The results are seriously impressive, as you'll be able to see for yourself below...


 

Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/IPad-light-painting_bid-138.htmlWed, 15 Sep 2010 16:23:28IBC: News in brief AJA brought out a device for taking the feed from 3d camera rigs, converting it and displaying the content on inexpensive consumer 3d screens. The Hi5-3d mini-converter has horizontal and vertical picture flip modes so it can be used for multiple different 3d camera rigs.

It takes the feed from 3d camera rigs, and flips the mirrored image to orient it properly. Using HDMI 1.4a, it then displays the ‘muxed’ 3d image on affordable consumer 3d displays (non consumer 3d displays can cost upwards of $10k) to provide instant 3d on location. The device costs $495, and will be available next month.

AJA also launched a smaller, cut-down version of its portable KiPro file-based recorder. The new, slimmed down £1,995 KiPro mini records edit-ready 10-bit ProRes 422 QuickTime files onto two CompactFlash cards.

It’s lightweight, compact and can be slotted on to virtually any camera, and has a number of useful applications. On a multi-camera shoot where different cameras and formats are being used, by putting a KiPro mini on all cameras they will all record in the same file format, enabling a much quicker turnaround time.

The device also makes it possible to use cameras such as Sony’s XDCAM EX models and make HD recordings accepted by broadcasters.

The user interface of the KiPro mini is the same as the KiPro and it has the same menu controls and navigation structure. However, compared to its larger sister device, the KiPro, the KiPro mini doesn’t offer SD to HD conversions and cross conversions.

Autoscript

Autoscript has brought out an innovative teleprompter– the iPlus - that runs on an iPad, iPhone or iTouch. Designed for “shoot and scoot” news operations, Autoscript’s app turns the iPad into a fully featured portable teleprompter.

The iPlus software can be used as a bridge to WinPlus in a newsroom or studio to download/transfer scripts or running orders to the iPhone/iPad/iTouch. A handheld control – the Scroll Plus Controller - is then used to scroll smoothly through the script.

 

A lightweight plate is available to encase the iPad and mirror the screen as with a conventional auto-cueing device. It also allows the prompter to position the iPad in a convenient place for ease of viewing by the presenter.

Autoscript has packaged the app with the plate and assembly, which is a available as a complete portable teleprompter system for £700.

Grass Valley

Grass Valley used IBC to demo a means of doing high quality instant super slo-mo replays in stereo 3d, which is one of the key remaining challenges in providing compelling 3d sport broadcasts.

Using two of its LDK8300 systems cameras and a 3ality mirror rig, a Grass Valley disc recorder auto-flips the mirrored camera image and syncs the two camera channels together to create the stereo 3d image.

Grass Valley’s K2 Summit server then provides straightforward user controls to enable the marking of in and out points and the immediate playback of stereo 3d super slo-mo replays.

Avid

Avid showed off a technology demo of a new web based craft editing system that makes it possible for an editor to cut images from anywhere, via the web. All the processing power and the media stays is at the facility, so a standard laptop is enough for the fully featured editing software to function ok. The main consideration is the speed of the web connection.

Avid’s Patrick McLean says you need decent speed access (around 6 to 8Mb) for seamless, uninterrupted full blown editing, but, he says, Avid has also created an iPhone app for approvals, which works fine on even a 2Mb connection.

McLean says the system is “very responsive and includes vfx and audio as well as editing tools.” He adds that it’s “a different way of working. It’s not going to displace regular editing suites overnight.”

He says there are lots of “workflow issues to think about” before Avid can turn the technology demo into a full blown product. Currently, the editor has been built in Java specifically for the demo, but has features and functionality that will be familiar to Media Composer users.

Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/IBC-News-in-brief_bid-136.htmlMon, 13 Sep 2010 18:11:18IBC: Panasonic's new models Panasonic has released a Digital SLR – the AG-AF101 – pitched at the Canon 5D/7D market but with enhancements over these models to better suit producers' needs, says European product manager, Rob Tarrent.

“We looked at the growth of DSLRs and decided to enter this market. We designed the camera after talking to videographers to find out what their ideal camera would be,” he says. So Panasonic’s DSLR has a headphone socket and “proper SDI and HDMI connections,” says Tarrent.

According to Tarrent, the AG-AF101 (main picture) records “12-hours of footage, not 12-minutes”, has detachable lenses, “proper video and audio” and a “wonderfully shallow depth of field”. Certainly, the beautifully detailed images on the reel Panasonic showed on its stand backed up Tarrent’s enthusiasm.

The camera costs €4,900 and will be available in December. Panasonic is currently taking orders for the model.


Panasonic’s (presently unique) dual-lens stereo 3d camera, the AG-3DA1 (pictured above), which was showcased at NAB, is now shipping, says Tarrent. It costs €18,700 and Pansonic has already sold 150 of the cameras in Europe, and 800 worldwide.

Tarrent adds that Panasonic has received “extreme interest” in the camera at IBC and has taken lots of orders. However, despite the interest, Tarrent says the wait for orders taken now “isn’t months” and that it can fulfill new orders relatively quickly.

The camera has undergone a number of performance tweaks since a working unit was shown at NAB. Panasonic sent out different variations of the camera to users and asked them for feedback on the pros and cons of each model. These comments have been used to further enhance the functionality of the shipping model.

Panasonic says the bulk of orders have come from production, with some from broadcasters and the medical/education market. Tarrent explains the camera’s interaxial is fixed to roughly the same distance as the human eye, which impacts on the distance from the subject you can film and still capture comfortable looking stereoscopic footage - you can get away with filming from between three and 30 metres from the subject.



With all its focus on DSLR and 3d, Tarrent was keen to stress the company hasn’t forgotten about P2. It’s just added another P2 model – the AJ-HPX3100 (pictured above) – which has improved audio recording over existing models, is lightweight (at 3.9kg) and, as a result, more comfortable for shoulder-mounting.

Significantly, it also stores vastly improved proxy files, with 960x540 images (SD) and uncompressed audio, so you can cut to good quality images and best quality audio.

It can also work with a web and iPad/iPhone based app that enables meta data to be uploaded to the camera pre, during or after the shoot.

Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/IBC-Panasonics-new-models_bid-135.htmlMon, 13 Sep 2010 17:27:26IBC: Steve Schklair interview
3ality’s founder and CEO Steve Schklair kicked off IBC’s 3d day on Monday with a keynote speech about how best to capture stereoscopic images for live broadcast. I caught up with him at the show to talk through his vast experience of all things 3d.
“It’s all about ensuring everything is quality 3d. During my keynote speech I’ll show everyone what badly shot 3d looks like. You may not notice much of a difference at the start but after 10 minutes it will give you a headache.
We were the first guys to set up a major 3d company based around the new methodology of doing 3d. That was a decade ago. I had no doubts then that things would go 3d, not just for movies but TV too. Where else would media go? In the last decade, we’ve already had better quality, immersive surround sound, so it's natural you'd want better quality, immersive images too. To me, it’s clear TV will eventually be a 3d device.
When 3d is done properly the content is far too compelling to not want 3d. And if it’s done badly it shows, you’ll get a headache and not want to watch it. And it's important to remember that 3d doesn’t make something that’s bad in 2d good, so storytelling is still key to any content’s success.
To produce 3d shouldn’t add anything to the production schedule. We shot an NBC sitcom recently and ended up getting through more shots than previously when the show was 2d. If you have the right technology you’re fine.

But you need a similar range of shooting options as with a 2d show. If you can’t pan fast or zoom in beyond a certain point, the 3d isn''t going to be so compelling as the 2d, so the viewer will just want to switch back to how it was before.

Likewise, in sports, the stereo 3d needs to be better than 2d if it’s to survive, otherwise again viewers will just want to switch back to 2d.
New editing tools save on post production time for stereo 3d. I think SGO’s Mistika is the best option right now. It was the Pablo before but now it’s the Mistika, as it handles the geometry of 3d better. You can make slight adjustments to the interaxial settings, and it’s the only system that can do that.
Sky and Telegenic’s stereo 3d services are built around 3ality kit. They’ve done 3d so well at Sky. They found a business case for it – which has initially been sports in pubs – and made a deal with a TV manufacturer to provide pubs with the sets.

They did a sponsorship deal with the glasses and bought the best quality stereo 3d kit for their coverage. Sky trained their staff correctly and practiced for months before going on air. Crews were being sent out every weekend to practice getting the stereo 3d production right, which was expensive but totally the right thing to do. And it shows."

For more on stereo 3d from Steve Schklair, here's a recent Sky News interview....
Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/IBC-Steve-Schklair-interview_bid-133.htmlSun, 12 Sep 2010 09:55:33IBC: Quantel's instant web editing
Quantel announced a significant technological development at IBC, with what it calls “mutating file systems”. Basically, the techie types at Quantel have managed to re-engineer the computer file to make it possible to work on the contents of a file before the file itself has even been created.
In practice, this means you can start doing frame-accurate editing on QuickTime content in FCP (from anywhere in the world, via the web), whilst content is still being recorded.
Quantel is using ‘mutating file systems’ on a development called Project QTube whereby a shoot can take place anywhere in the world with the producer on the other side of the world able to instantaneously view all the assets from the studio, including the live assets, while the shoot is still taking place.
The producer can ingest, edit and log the content immediately over the web. It’s live and instant and can all happen over a normal internet connection.
Quantel says it will be delivering products based on mutating file systems by the second half of next year.
Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/IBC-Quantels-instant-web-editing_bid-132.htmlSat, 11 Sep 2010 14:34:48IBC: Autodesk Flame Premium
Autodesk is combining Flame, Smoke and Lustre in a single product called Flame Premium, effectively killing off Flame as a standalone product, it announced at IBC.
The entire package – which is software and turnkey hardware - costs less than Flame did a year ago, and, for the first time, provides Autodesk's full suite of finishing tools, covering vfx, editorial and grading.
“The market dynamics are changing and clients need a higher return on investment,” Maurice Patel, Autodesk’s entertainment industry manager, told me at the show. “People want more integrated workflows. They still want to offer premium client-supervised services but Flame Premium, as the ultimate finishing tool providing vfx, editorial and grading, means you no longer have to segment your offer.”
“The grading market is in transition and Flame Premium is part of the future,” he adds. “Colourists, compositors and editors have unique skills but each has to learn new skills. Now many of these skills are overlapping, and this needs a flexible solution.”
Patel says that, with digitally acquired footage, grading is no longer linked to telecine so, “The telecine workflow is disrupted. You can now grade at any part of the process, and material needs to be free-flowing between editorial and grading.”
Autodesk is still planning to offer Flame, Smoke and Lustre as separately available products, but Patel says, “The price of Flame by itself is so similar to Flame Premium it would be foolish not to go for Flame Premium”.
Responding to the release of Flame Premium, Digital Vision’s vp, worldwide marketing, Martin Bennett, says, at the moment, there are still separate roles for the editor, colourist and vfx artist so a single system isn't going to be appropriate for many post houses. However, he says, Flame Premium is likely to appeal to small to medium size houses that want to offer a wider range of services.
Bennett adds that, in three to five years, there is likely to be increased convergence of job roles and that Digital Vision could then make strategic alliances with other companies to offer a similarly broad toolset covering advanced vfx and editorial functionality.
“It’s the same as with the audio world, where one person now does what were previously numerous different job roles. We are very aware of how things are moving on the picture side and are very much going to be part of that change,” he says.
Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/IBC-Autodesk-Flame-Premium_bid-131.htmlSat, 11 Sep 2010 12:10:21IBC: New Sony cameras
Sony unveiled a series of interesting new cameras at IBC, including a dual-lens 3d model, but before it got to any of that, it opened its IBC press conference by blasting straight into a five-minute stereo 3d reel. Alongside the usual footie and Hollywood 3d animations, it included a bit of Hendrix in 3d, which at least added variety to what I suspect  won’t be the last  3d reel I see at the show over the next few days.
David Bush, marketing director, Sony Professional, was the first to take to the stage and revealed Sony’s slightly forced sounding new banner for its professional products and services - Creatology; a mix of technology and creativity.
Bush says, after IBC, Sony is heading out on a Creatology tour, structured similarly to its Power of Images events last year, with a series of roadshows, master classes, training events and so on taking place in key European locations.
Back to IBC, Bush says Sony’s focus at the show is on 3d, HD and 35mm. Before any talk of new products, Bush announced Sony is about to open a 3d centre of excellence in Basingstoke. This will provide training for producers, directors, camera operators and convergence operators, and will be open from next month.
Next came the product news, delivered by audio visual media director Olivier Bovis. There’s plenty of it. Firstly, there are upgrades to Sony’s 3d box, the MPE-200, used recently for the slightly underwhelming 3d World Cup.

The box’s new features, “take another leap forward,” says Bovis, with it now able to do live 2d to 3d conversions, 3d picture stitching (where images from three cameras are stitched together to form a wide angle 3d shot) and 3d graphics insertion.
The images produced by the box’s 3d stitching and its live 2d to 3d convertor were, it has to be said, pretty impressive.
Bovis then unveiled a prototype dual-lens 3d camcorder (main picture) that will be available “some time next year”. It’s based on a new lens system with a half inch sensor. The shoulder-mount camera will “fill out our 3d line-up” and be well suited to sections of a 3d sports broadcast such as the manager interviews at the end of a game, for example.


New HD cameras from Sony include the PMW-500 (above), a new XDCAM EX model that’s capable of 50 mb/s acquisition, making it the first of Sony’s cameras recording to solid-state memory to fulfill broadcasters’ minimum HD requirements.
It’s essentially the same camera as the PDW-700, the XDCAM HD422 model that records to Professional Disc. The 500 will be around 10% cheaper than the 700, and its introduction means Sony is able to “offer a disc-based solution as well as memory-card based product,” so you can choose which one best suits your workflow, explains Bovis.


At the top-end, Sony revealed another prototype – this time for quite a dinky looking and currently unnamed digital 35mm camera (above) that’s going to be much more affordable than Sony’s F35 and SRW-9000PL models.  
“Our desire is to take the 35mm world into a much more affordable environment,” says Bovis. The camera will be ready by early next year and “it will be more affordable by far” than Sony’s current 35mm models, says Bovis.
Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/IBC-New-Sony-cameras_bid-130.htmlSat, 11 Sep 2010 09:17:47Who's buying what at IBC? The giant kit fest that is IBC (9-14 Sept) kicks off today and there’s little doubt what’s going to be the main focus for most visitors - 3d stereoscopic tools. Whether purchasing for a post house or stocking up a new studio, you’ll have stereo 3d very high up on your shopping list. 3d camera rigs, 3d monitors, 3d fix-it tools, 3d recorders, 3d whatever; it’s all going to be of interest.

You’d be forgiven for thinking there’s nothing else going on, but for each facilities company there are specific kit requirements that – gasp! – have nothing to do with stereography.

For camera suppliers, the Arri Alexa is in strong demand, as are the much-anticipated DSLR cameras expected to give Canon’s much-loved 5D and 7D models a run for their money.

Post production houses are just as keen as camera hire/sales companies to check out new cameras, as new models and formats have a massive ripple effect through to the kit required for editing and finishing.

Also key to post and vfx houses and studios are good quality, affordable reference monitors – any manufacturer able to produce a high quality, cost-effective monitor capable of replacing CRTs is going to be in extremely hot demand.

Over the following paragraphs are the detailed opinions of those making purchasing decisions at facilities companies as to the products that will cause the most buzz at the show. The comments are split into four different areas – visual effects, cameras, post production and studios – which are some of the key facilities sectors covered by the 1,300 exhibitors at the show.

Davie Johnston
chief technology officer, MPC
“One of the most interesting topics at IBC will be the maturing of stereo vfx workflows. Much like when HD came on the scene there are a few years of “whisper” suites and prototype equipment demos before the technology starts to mature and client expectations are known.

"There are a few approaches to some of the difficulties associated with stereoscopic. Companies like DVS and SGO have taken a custom hardware approach to solving some of the issues. The latest incarnation of Clipster includes many 3d-specific tools including stereo conform and EDL support as well as stereo DCI mastering. Mistika from SGO is positioned as a stereoscopic finishing system with an emphasis on grading but it also has editing and compositing built in. Both of these systems work well with most of the digital acquisition formats including the Red camera.

"Other companies are taking more of a software-led approach. Autodesk and The Foundry are probably two of the most interesting. Autodesk’s latest versions of both its systems products and software products all have support for stereoscopic working. An interesting addition to The Foundry’s Nuke product is Ocula; a set of stereoscopic tools to aid with alignment and discrepancies in both depth and colour. Away from stereo 3d, I’ll be looking for a decent monitor to replace CRTs with the Dolby offering being one of the prime candidates but the price may continue to be a shock.”

Steve Prescott
director of technology, Framestore
“I’ve decided to split my technology lists for this year’s IBC into three different sub categories, based on things I can get now, things I’ll be keeping an eye on and things that may one day be available. The ‘now’ things on my list include the latest cameras and workflow solutions for the weird and wonderful files they produce.

"I like an easy life so I’m looking for automation solutions for quality assurance and ways to automate other boring stuff like media transfers, file conversions, backups and archiving. To help make sure I don’t get eyestrain and headaches at work, I’ll be looking for the latest and greatest 3d stereo equipment, 3d cameras, 3d camera rigs, pre-production tools, post production tools, monitoring and test equipment.

"I’ll be looking, on the bright side, for monitor technology that’s better than LCD, has good contrast ratio, accurate colour rendition and a wide viewing angle. On my ‘future watch’ list are new ways of delivering moving images, better compression algorithms and where the next generation of grading, compositing, conforming and delivery systems may be coming from.

"Finally, on my ‘wish list’, which Moore’s law tells me should be coming along soon, are 50TB hard drives, 256 core processors, 500GB flash drives, 100GB networking and smart phones for your wrist.”

Roy Trosh
group technical director, The Mill
“Conversations at The Mill these days tend to be about how fast (or slow) the network is running, why the disks are full and what’s the biggest render farm we can fit in the building. A lot of the infrastructure that glues a vfx house together just isn’t covered any more at IBC.

"We don’t go to Amsterdam to look at 10GE switches or render boxes – we will however have a look at what SANs DVS have to show and what BlueArc is demonstrating with their network attached storage (NAS) technology. Most high-end ads are touched in some way by Autodesk Flame and Smoke and/or The Foundry’s Nuke-X. We will spend time with the development teams trying to influence their new versions to make our lives simpler and slicker.

"I imagine there will be those that are going to Amsterdam still wishing they’ll see a replacement to the Sony Grade One CRT monitor. We truly believe the industry has moved on. Most vfx houses now use relatively cheap Plasmas driven by 3d look-up-tables which clients have come to trust for a fraction of the cost of the old Sonys. Clients just want to see what their images will look like at home. £30k monitors are a thing of the past.

"Our clients want the full service and so whilst Flame and Nuke are essential, we buy a lot of lower cost 2d software from companies like Adobe. We will be trawling the aisles looking for clever plug-ins that were first shown at Siggraph but have now made their way to IBC.”

Duncan Martin director,
Pro Motion Hire
“We’ll be looking at lenses such as the new Zeiss compact primes that have interchangeable lens mounts, as well as preview monitors and rigs, and of course 3d equipment. Without question, 3d is still the main buzz - that and ‘super’ HD cameras such as Arri’s 2K Alexa.

"Also, there will be a lot of interest in DSLR cameras, in particular we will be looking at Panasonic and Sony’s answers to the Canon DSLRs camera, which are rumoured to be previewed at the show. The industry seems to be on a bit of a high off the back of the World Cup, European Championships and the impending Commonwealth Games, so I think people will actually be buying as opposed to window shopping – well, we certainly will be.”

John Brennan
md, Procam Television
“I’m looking for a HD wireless monitor, something lightweight and compact. I’m also keen to identify workflow solutions and methods of making media management simpler. I’ve always liked products from Convergent Design – the Nano Flash is their smart and compact system enabling affordable tapeless workflow with Compact Flash cards. These guys have also developed a portable 3d HD recorder/player, the Nano 3d, and I can see this being an important development for affordable 3d shoots.

"With the launch of our new company, Pro3D in September, I will also be looking at compact 3d cameras to see how they perform alongside cameras mounted on 3d rigs.”

Jamie Allan
post production consultant, Jigsaw
“You can expect to see the Arri Alexa camera at every turn, which is certainly one to see close-up if you’re interested in the future of digital cinemas. 3d will no doubt be a major talking point – Panasonic are leading the way in the dual-lens camera market with their AG-3DA1 but, with leading stereoscopic figures preferring the control of a dual-camera system, there will be many new 3d rigs from an increasing number of manufacturers.

"Also, look out for the growth of DSLR hybrid cameras and 35mm alternatives based on Micro 4/3s and Sony’s NEX system. The most cutting edge tech on show will probably be NHK’s Ultra High Def camera systems that are capable of 8K resolutions.”

Shane Warden
joint-md, Pepper
“Long ago you’d never meet a post person in the camera halls at IBC, but this year you’ll see them prowling to try and keep up with this year’s acquisition ‘gotcha’. Whether it’s a camera or a new solid-state medium, it’s here that our immediate future takes shape and the race to perfect the best workflow begins. I’m keen to see what Avid bring to IBC as the fruit of the MaxEdit and Blue Order acquisitions – we’ve seen a tempting glimpse at NAB and there’s significant potential.

"Stereo fix-it tools will be in abundance I’m sure, but there’s only so much we can do with badly shot stereo. I like the idea of [the stereo 3d workstation] Sid, which heralds a welcome new way of thinking at Quantel

John Cryer
co-owner, Platform Post Production
“As a post house specialising in graphically demanding projects, we’re finding clients are starting to explore the possibilities of their projects being produced in Stereo 3d. We’ll be looking at products that enable us to fulfil our clients’ 3d ambitions cost effectively, whilst ensuring projects run smoothly and profitably for our business.

"A robust and flexible file-based workflow is paramount, since we’re looking to add to our stereo 3d capabilities, so we’ll be looking for a solution to further improve our file-based workflow, our service, and our bottom line. Picture monitoring is another area we’ll be looking at, not only from a 3d projection point of view but also the slowly improving flat panel products.”

David Klafkowski
technical director, The Farm Group
“We’re in the throws of re-developing our live and tape-based logging applications, so we’ll be looking at various ingest and transcode tools – the key suppliers being Telestream, Amberfin and NLTEK. Meanwhile, our Isilon appears to be growing at an alarming and, I have to say, reliable, rate (touching wood), so we’ll still be looking for fast and reliable secondary storage solutions. Our current favourite is an offering from Infortrend but ask on a different day and we’ll give a different answer.

Archiving is a subject that we continually investigate (then promptly bury our heads in the sand and hope it goes away). You never know, IBC might help us find a universal, reliable, secure, fast and cheap format.”

Darren Woolfson,
group director of technology, Pinewood
“IBC this year is going to have two major areas of interest for me – 3d stereoscopic tools and core infrastructure to support working in an environment of data. As more of the movies being made at the studios consider shooting in 3d, for the majority that choose this route it will not only be the first time they have made a 3d movie but quite possibly the first time they have shot a movie digitally rather than on film.

"At Pinewood, Shepperton and Teddington Studios we are therefore looking to further develop our core infrastructure to more easily enable productions to move large amounts of data around the lots and to deliver the services that are required for digital filmmaking, whether for 2d or 3d. We’re also beginning to see convergence in the required tools for film and TV making at the studios, and will be looking at IBC for storage and media asset management systems that deliver for both. Typically, different productions will have their own favourite tools for certain tasks.

"Rather than trying to second guess requirements and buy these tools at the studios, what we’re looking to do is develop the core infrastructure that will allow a multitude of different productions the ability to use the equipment that they wish, connected into the studios’ ‘data warehouse’.”

Jane Anderson,
vice president, MTV Studios
“MTV Studios are looking at a variety of elements at IBC this year. With our plan to migrate to a native HD infrastructure, IBC is a great time for us to look at our intention to bring multi-format cameras to the studios, as well as high definition switchers and routing, video effects, graphics and flat screen displays with flexible multi-viewers, integrated under monitor displays and tally routing in the galleries.

"We are also looking at new 5.1 surround sound monitoring and multi-format sound mixing and encoding for each of our studios. And, as the industry-wide move away from tape-based acquisition continues, we are looking at disc storage solutions and increased direct ingest into our post production systems.

"Another thing we are exploring at IBC is new compression options for live HD transmission to broadcast clients. We’re also interested in developments in low energy solutions for lighting, miniature camera systems and studio camera supports. Finally, IPTV is an area MTV Studios has been working on closely over recent years (with our inhouse web content colleagues) and is something we’re continuing to explore. There’s a sizeable presence for IPTV at IBC so we’ll certainly be checking this out.” Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Whos-buying-what-at-IBC_bid-128.htmlThu, 09 Sep 2010 16:21:57REVIEW : Grass Valley ADVCmini Grass Valley has just released this sleek looking video capture device – the ADVCmini – aimed at the consumer and pro-sumer market. It’s pitched as the “best and easiest” way to transfer video from your VCR, camcorder and other video equipment to your Mac, ready for editing in iMovie and uploading to YouTube.

Televisual received a review copy, which I've spent some time putting through its paces. The first thing that strikes you about the device is it’s solid and well build and styled very similarly to an Apple product.

It has three different inputs running along the front and side panel – S-video, composite video and SCART, and, rather handily, comes with the appropriate leads for each of these.

Grass Valley emphasises the straightforward nature of getting the ADVCmini up and running, with just a bit of software to install and a USB cable to connect. Sure enough we were ready to capture video pretty shortly after unpacking it all. So far, so good.

But it is possible for things to be too straightforward. A case in point being the supplied ADVC Capture software, which is the only software you can use to grab video from your devices. Beyond a few sliders for adjusting video settings for saturation, brightness, etc, there’s not a massive amount you can change.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially for novice users, but if you’d like to tweak the settings a bit or specify exactly which folder videos are saved to, hard luck. What there is is a very primitive ‘quality’ slider for selecting the type of compression used, and you can decide whether video is recorded as an iMovie file (so it’s dumped in your Movies folder) or an iTunes file (so it’s auto loaded into iTunes).

Video from the video device you’ve connected to the ADVmini is shown on a preview screen, and you just press record to begin capturing. It consistently captured high quality images from an old Hi-8 camcorder I’d connected through the composite video input, and the video and audio stayed in sync, even on single recordings of ten minutes or so in duration.

The ADVCmini uses something called 3d Y/C separation to separate the composite video signals into luminance (Y) and chrominance (C ) signals, which apparently minimises artifacts such as distortion and discolouration, and also prevents audio and video from becoming out of sync.

This is all well and good, but when I tried to connect the same camcorder through S-Video, the software refused to record more than a five to ten second clip before stopping. The lack of any detailed options for changing video capture settings meant further investigation to try to fix the problem was impossible.

Nevertheless, the video captured through the composite video input was impressive and, once imported from my Movies folder into iMovie, could be edited alongside the other video clips already on my hard drive and held up well in terms of image and audio quality.

For those wanting a no frills means of digitising old video tapes and analogue camcorder recordings, the ADVCmini will do a commendable job and costs around £130. A more sophisticated update to the ADVC Capture software should be top of the developer’s ‘to do’ list though.

Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/REVIEW--Grass-Valley-ADVCmini_bid-123.htmlTue, 31 Aug 2010 16:38:32Ambitious file-based shoot for Escape from Scorpion Island The month-long shoot for CBBC’s kids game show Escape from Scorpion Island, produced by The Foundation, was quite a monster. There were over 20 file-based cameras to keep on top of, and footage for over 28 hours of programming to capture.



Shepherd’s Bush post house Clear Cut sent editor Zeb Chadfield over to Queensland, Australia to take care of handling the file-based rushes on location.

Chadfield was responsible for making sure the footage from 12 Panasonic P2 cameras (a mix of the AG-HPX500 (pictured below) and AG-HVX201AE models) and eight ‘wearable’ digital cameras and helmet cams, was accurately taken off the P2 cards, quality checked and backed up before the cards were wiped and re-used.



With a total of 28 hours of the game show being shot over the month and more than 20 cameras on the shoot, the media management side of the production was particularly challenging.

To copy rushes from the P2 cards, Clear Cut invested in a Panasonic AJ-HRW10 P2 Rapid Writer (pictured above), which takes up to five P2 cards and copies to two drives simultaneously, providing an instant backup.



Once copied, the cards are erased and ready for re-use. Clear Cut then used Avid Media Composer running on laptops to group the rushes into different folders for each of the challenges of the show.

The laptops also made it possible for Chadfield to check the focus, white balance and shot framing of the rushes to ensure these were problem-free.

Audio from “a horde of kids running round with radio mics” was recorded on location onto a multitrack device. The audio and pictures were synched together when back at Clear Cut’s West London facility and the edit was done on Avid Adrenalines at broadcast resolution from start to finish. Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Ambitious-file-based-shoot-for-Escape-from-Scorpion-Island_bid-115.htmlThu, 05 Aug 2010 10:39:50Creative round-up Here's a collection of recent creative work, which arrived too late for our August issue.

The first is a well-made 16-minute documentary called The Last Resort, made by three students from the University of Portsmouth – Russell Oastler, David Kinnaird and Lucas Way. The doc centres on the decline of Southsea, Portsmouth through interviews with the owner of Southsea’s model village, a sea-front café manager and a group of die-hard swimmers who swim in the Solent every day of the year.

The film manages to capture the fading spirits of those interviewed and is poignant but not entirely lacking in hope. It deservedly won the ‘best documentary’ award at the Inspire Film Festival.



Next up is an art-related video painting competition called The Open Prize, which aims to find a new video artist to work with London’s Open Gallery in an ongoing commission for video paintings. The prize is being judged by Ben Lewis (BBC), Ziba de Weck (Parasol Unit), Marc Valli (Elephant and Magma Books) and Hilary Lawson (Artscape Project).

Over 500 submissions of video paintings were received during the competition, with 10 shortlisted entrants exhibited at the disused Nicholls and Clarke warehouse on Bishopsgate.

You can see the work and find out more about the 10 finalists at http://www.openprize.co.uk



Finally, animation production company Lightparade emailed over a 60-second spot for NSPCC’s Childline, directed by Jake Mengers. Real Call is an animated representation of a call between a child and a Childline counsellor.

Two waveforms are shown with a fluttery, nervous, jittery waveform depicting the voice of the child caller, and the supportive, calm voice of the counsellor shown as a smooth, controlled line. It’s a very effective way to get across the work of the charity.

 Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Creative-round-up_bid-111.htmlFri, 23 Jul 2010 12:46:28Toy Story 3 in 3d on 4K I was fortunate enough to be invited to a preview screening of Toy Story 3 last week - strike that, just checked the diary and it was the week before, damn, how time flies. It was not just any old preview screening but Toy Story 3 in 3d on 4K no less, numbers fans.

The 4K bit is something Sony is getting quite excited about as a 4K projector is apparently capable of four times the quality of a standard digital projector. And this, in theory at least, means crisper, better-looking images.

Added to this, 4K has specific benefits when related to 3d as the higher resolution makes it possible for both the left and right eye images to be projected at the same time, instead of alternately. This again should mean a more comfortable viewing experience when sitting through a feature-length 3d screening.



One of the few UK cinemas kitted out with a Sony CineAlta 4K digital projector and RealD 3d is the Apollo Cinema on Regent’s Street, so that's where the screening was held. Problem was, I foolishly assumed Regent’s Street ended at Piccadilly Circus so struggled for a good 15-20 minutes to find the place.

Unfortunately, arriving late meant all the better seats, and even the merely mediocre seats were already snapped up. I ended up stuck in the front row, some way to the right of centre of the screen, which was far from an ideal spot to make the most of the supposedly superior image quality.

From this not so auspicious location, the images looked ok, but weren’t noticeably better than any other 3d screening. On occasions the left and right images didn’t manage to accurately create a single 3d image, but this was almost certainly down to being seated in such a dodgy location.

Having since read the reactions of other journos at the same screening, who weren’t fashionably late and were sat in prime locations, their experiences sound exactly in line with what Sony’s hype would make you believe. So...if you get a chance to see Toy Story 3 in 3d on 4K, be sure to arrive in time as it sounds like it’ll be worth it.
Either way, what a cracking film; it even tops Toy Story 2 in my opinion.
 Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Toy-Story-3-in-3d-on-4K_bid-110.htmlWed, 21 Jul 2010 15:27:14Is the post industry in trouble once more? The Farm Group's Nicky Sargent and Envy's Dave Cadle talk about whether the post industry is in trouble once more in the current issue of Televisual (p.21). This follows the closure of Welsh giant facility Barcud Derwen and The Club, based in Covent Garden.

The piece was edited to fit quite a small space in the magazine, so if you'd like to read Nicky and Dave's full, unedited comments, here they are, via the wonders of a blog...



Nicky Sargent, md, The Farm Group

“It is very sad to see more casualties in the post production market; Barcud and The Club as recent examples. However, to many of us who have survived in this volatile sector for nearly 100 years, it is not that surprising.

Without looking specifically at the casualties named or other recent companies that have gone down or gone down and bounced back, some of us get on with running pretty successful companies by adhering to a few simple rules:

1. Be in a location kind of near some work
2. Don’t be too big and too small
3. Try and make some money by charging enough to cover the overhead
4. Do that on a regular basis and then collect the money

We think that, in fact, the post production market is more stable now than it has been for many years. There are 10+ “big”, “stable” companies. The ownership of these companies seems to have been constant for several years; each has some form of definition against their competitors; each has a key core of management and creative staff; each has a pricing structure that continues to attract some work.

I am not surprised that, despite the push to the regions and nations, in the main all of these companies are in Soho. It now seems that us old post bores have left the Mucky Duck and grown up!”

Dave Cadle, md, Envy
“Post production isn't in trouble. In fact, there exciting times ahead. But in these recession times it's even more important to get your company to work together.

Post production companies have always been oversubscribed and of course it's never nice to hear people losing their jobs when companies go under. It's easy to drop rates and try and win work, which massively affects your margins and thus restricts any future investment.

Embracing your clients' workflow is so key considering budgets at the moment. Clients want a safe haven for their work. They want it to be delivered on time, correctly and within budget and this in turn creates repeat business, which is so important for any facility.

It goes without saying that cash flow is key to any successful company and business plans must be very robust and realistic in these recession times. They must be set and tailored to your own margins considering the issues of rates at this moment.

It's all well and good trying to win a job by lowering your rates but it devalues your facility's brand. In my opinion, clients will pay the best rates when they know they are going to be guided through their project. Mastering their workflow is key.” Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Is-the-post-industry-in-trouble-once-more_bid-106.htmlMon, 05 Jul 2010 14:34:40Making art of architecture MPC and commercials production company Gloss Media are amongst the companies creating dramatic, interactive window displays for the London Festival of Architecture 2010.

Gloss’s commercials director Simon Burrill has teamed up with The Hospital Club’s “creatives in residence” House of Jonn, “visual artist in residence” Alex Shepherd and aberrant architecture to create an installation for Selfridges’ window display.



The installation, Welcome To Your City, is based around conversations with members of the public giving their take on London, each of which is “turned into customised shoebox housing units.”



These “micro-homes” are placed together in the window to create a model city that grows throughout the two-week residency, as more and more interviews are shot. The footage in the windows is a mix of lo-fi phone video clips and a performance-based studio shoot.

 

MPC’s installation, Urban Prairie, which has been created by its digital department along with architecture firm in square lab, also centres on public interaction. The ambitious project sees MPC’s window turned into a virtual prairie, covered in a “sea of grass” that sways in the breeze. Images on 42” screens set behind the ‘real’ grass further intensify the visual effect of the prairie.

The movement of the grass is controlled by the speed and location of passers by. Optical sensors and something called arduino boards capture the movements of people walking past the window, which are then translated into kinetic responses via a series of servos, creating the effect of a swaying sea of grass.

The wind effect then travels to the grass on the large screens before eventually fading off into the horizon.

I’ll put up some pictures of MPC’s window display as soon as they arrive in my inbox... Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Making-art-of-architecture_bid-105.htmlThu, 01 Jul 2010 12:45:16Horror film splice's Benjamin Button style facial animation The scarily convincing facial movements of the ‘young Dren’ character in Warner Bros’ new horror flick Splice were created by facial animators Image Metrics, using data captured during a motion capture shoot at Toronto’s Core Digital studio.



During the shoot, a rig controlling the cheeks, eyes, eyebrows and forehead of the actress Delphine Chanéac, who plays the adult Dren, captured a wide range of facial movements.



Five animators and four tracking artists at Image Metrics used this data to build an accurate if unrefined first animation pass for the character.

Next, the animation team “took more time” to intricately refine this initial pass and further hone the realism of the movements to closely match the vision of director Vincenzo Natali.



In total, Image Metrics’ proprietary rigging and animation technology, which has been used in a long list of games and films (including Benjamin Button), created 128 seconds of facial animation in Splice.

Check out the trailer for Splice below and watch carefully for a few tantalising glimpses of the ‘young Dren’ character.

  Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Horror-film-splices-Benjamin-Button-style-facial-animation_bid-104.htmlTue, 29 Jun 2010 15:17:21Behind the scenes at a 3d outside broadcast Sony Professional has put together a 'behind the scenes' video demonstrating how live 3d sports broadcasts work. The video (watch it below) was recorded during the run up to a live 3d broadcast of a Premier League match on Sky a few months ago.

A very similar setup is currently being used to broadcast 25 World Cup games in 3d. Unfortunately, none of these games is being broadcast on TV in the UK as neither the BBC nor ITV has a 3d channel.

The good news, though, is it's recently been confirmed that 40 cinemas (including branches of Odeon, Cineworld, Vue and Empire) will be showing eight of the matches in 3d, from the quarter finals onwards.


 Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Behind-the-scenes-at-a-3d-outside-broadcast_bid-103.htmlFri, 25 Jun 2010 17:50:30The 2d-to-3d conversion debate There's been a strong reaction to the comment from Framestore's vfx exec producer of commercials Tim Keene (who was also exec producer of 3d effects on Avatar) in Televisual this month about how much he dislikes 2d-to-3d conversions.



One of the responses we received about Tim's piece was from Prime Focus' Martin Hobbs, who heads up View-D, the facility's proprietary process for converting 2d to 3d stereoscopic images. Martin has equally strong feelings about the subject – so in order to provide some balance, here's the full, unedited version of Tim's comment piece, followed by Martin's response.

Is Sky right to ban 2d to 3d conversions?

Tim Keene, vfx exec producer, Framestore
"Sky’s recent – and slightly controversial – announcement that it’s banning 2d to 3d conversions on its new 3d channel is excellent news for our industry. For too long, 3d has been associated with the age-old red and blue anaglyph glasses that gave us all a headache. But with improvements in stereographic techniques, 3d is now a subtle and very watchable artform, as proven by the outstanding success of Avatar. But if 2d content is simply re-versioned into 3d via a post-process, the effect is more awkward and in danger of harking back to the bad old days of painful viewing experiences.



True clarity of depth can only be achieved if the work is originated stereographically, ie – where it’s shot 3d in the first place using two cameras in ‘stereo’; one for each eye. The subtleties of depth perception are surprisingly recognisable by the human eye. Converted footage is effectively a cheat and runs the risk of producing ‘bad’ 3d which can detract from the viewing experience.

The concern, given the already massive investment and excitement over the emerging world of 3d, is that poorly executed 3d runs the danger of making the experience 'gimmicky’ and 'B-movie' like. There is now little excuse for this given the UK expertise that is now at hand in both production and post production, something Sky is only too aware of. And, it should also be noted that if material is shot or generated in 3d in the first place, you get the 2d version for free.

If new 3d platforms, like Sky 3d, don’t boldly stand up for industry standards by discouraging 2d to 3d conversions, 3d  will lose all the hard-earned credibility it’s recently gained. And the headaches will just start all over again."



Martin Hobbs, exec producer, Prime Focus
"The question that was posed in June’s issue of Televisual to Framestore’s Tim Keene - ‘Is Sky right to ban 2d to 3d conversion’ - was somewhat flawed. Although Sky initially said they wouldn’t use any converted content, Chris Johns, chief engineer at BskyB, has gone on record to say that while they’ll be looking for native content where possible, they’re continuing to monitor 2d-3d conversion technology and they’ll look at conversions on a case-by-case basis.

Tim Keene’s response also contained some sweeping statements. I agree with Tim that converted footage can ‘run the risk of producing bad 3d’, but the technology’s evolving and when it’s done right - and it’s creatively led by people that know what they’re doing - it can produce great results on a timescale and at a cost that will be instrumental in providing content as fast as the technology itself is moving.



Conversion shouldn’t be ruled out – planning early is the key. Shooting in 2d with 3d conversion in mind is a time and cost effective alternative to shooting stereo 3d and if you work closely with your post house from the beginning they can advise you on shooting in a way that will look best in 3d – which is just as important when shooting in stereo.

Obviously when converting existing content you won’t always have this luxury. There are some shots which have the potential to give you a headache, for example when there’s rapid movement between shots or when a wide shot zooms in quickly to a close up, as these don’t translate well when converted into 3d. But there are ways of minimising these effects and if you choose the right conversion technique and the right team, they can make this happen.

At Prime Focus, our artists have spent many years calculating 3d space for the post production and visual effects projects they’ve completed for 2d films, TV programmes and commercials. We’ve used these skills, along with our stereo 3d VFX experience on films such as Avatar and Journey to the Center of the Earth 3d, to develop our 2d-3d conversion process that sits as part of our stereoscopic 3d pipeline, and which was recently used to convert Clash of the Titans to stereo 3d for Warner Bros.



I’m certainly not saying that conversion is the only way – at Prime Focus we’re working on content that’s been shot in stereo, content shot in 2d that we’re converting, and a mixture of the two. But Tim Keene’s view that converted footage can only lead to a painful viewing experience is flawed and misleading."
 Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/The-2d-to-3d-conversion-debate_bid-101.htmlWed, 16 Jun 2010 12:48:03What's the future for stereo 3d broadcasts? Yesterday’s Westminster eForum, held at a very near capacity Congress Hall, London brought together the great and good from the world’s of stereo 3d and TV technology to talk about what the future holds for 3d broadcasts.

With a delegate list including all the main UK broadcasters, representatives from many Government departments, management consultancies and plenty of city types, it was a fairly corporate, suited affair.




But it was far from dry, with speakers such as BSkyB’s director of product design and TV product development Brian Lenz (pictured), providing further detail on the broadcaster’s forthcoming 3d channel, which launches in the autumn.

Lenz revealed the channel will mix arts, docs, films, general entertainment, music and kids programming alongside (naturally) sports content, with the emphasis being on quality, not quantity: “It’s in our own hands to control quality – that’s the key,” he says.



He pointed to Sky’s recent 3d commission, the David Attenborough-fronted Flying Monsters and an English National Ballet production, both acquired in 3d, as good examples. He admitted there’s currently a “scarcity of content” in stereo 3d, but added that Sky “isn’t prepared to fund everybody’s first 3d project, as it isn’t likely to be their best.”

As regards the technical side of Sky's stereo 3d broadcasts, Lenz says Sky subscribers won't require new Sky set-top-boxes. He added that the transmission structure to deliver 3d is the same as HD, so there’s no need for Sky to make any costly infrastructure changes either.



Lenz says the same stereo 3d broadcast works with all 3d TVs, so “you shouldn’t be alarmed by any talk of format wars”. He compared the option between active and passive screens (the two different types of 3d TVs available to consumers) as similar to choosing between plasma and LCD.

Whichever you go for, the screen will be able to display all 3d broadcasts so, says Lenz, “The format war is really just hype.”



Paul Gray, director of European TV research at consultancy company DisplaySearch, who was up next, talked about the price of 3d TVs, which, at around £1,700, he says, will remain a niche interest until prices fall to the £800 mark. This will happen, Gray believes, “very, very rapidly”, at which point 3d sets will then grab around a 10% slice of the TV market.

A few speakers later came Tony Mattera, director, Digital Switch Over Network Design at Arqiva. He explained the pros and cons of the different means of getting stereo 3d content through terrestrial TV. It’s technically possible already, using the existing transmission infrastructure, by transmitting the left and right image side-by-side, he explained.

But the limited bandwidth available for terrestrial broadcasts makes this option (which would mean having a dedicated channel only viewable on 3d TV sets) an extremely inefficient way to do things.



Instead, Mattera says, the focus is on looking to transmit 3d and 2d at the same time, using a system called ‘2d plus Delta’. This makes it possible to transmit a 3d version without using additional bandwidth. Essentially, it works by transmitting the 2d version complete with additional data so conventional TVs display the 2d picture and 3d sets utilise the extra information to create a stereo 3d image.

The system just requires a new encoder at the transmission end before it can be transmitted through existing infrastructure, so again, this wouldn’t be a massive upheaval for those companies providing transmission services.

Mattera acknowledged there are potential issues as to whether ‘2d plus Delta’ impairs the quality of the stereo 3d image, but says it depends on the content and that Avatar, for example, would work “quite effectively” transmitted this way.

 

Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Whats-the-future-for-stereo-3d-broadcasts-_bid-99.htmlFri, 11 Jun 2010 16:23:41Famous faces brought back from the dead William Shakespeare, Abraham Lincoln, Napoleon and “arch criminal” John Dillinger are amongst the key historical figures brought back from the dead using what Cardiff-based indie Wild Dream Films describes as “revolutionary technology” for its forthcoming History Channel doc Death Masks.

The doc takes the ‘death mask’ face casts made of famous figures from the past at their time of death, and recreates them in vivid detail using "advanced facial-reconstruction techniques and 3d imprint detailing".



The resulting facemasks, as showcased in the doc, represent an exact replica of every feature of the faces and “help solve age-old mysteries about the way these people lived their lives and how they ultimately died.”

Death Masks features two scanned masks (based on an official and an unofficial mask) of Abraham Lincoln, which apparently provide fresh insights into his health and reveal how the civil war aged him.

“In the process of creating these lifelike faces, amazing new details emerged about these historic figures – what they really looked like, what illnesses they suffered from and how they lived their lives,” explains director, Wild Dream’s Stuart Clarke.



“We reveal the real face of Shakespeare [above], make Abraham Lincoln open his eyes and blink and have solved the mystery surrounding the death of arch criminal John Dillinger."

Death Masks is being broadcast on the History Channel in August, and has been nominated in the Best History Programme category at the Banff World Television Festival awards. The winners of the Banffs are revealed on Monday 13 June.

 Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Famous-faces-brought-back-from-the-dead_bid-95.htmlTue, 08 Jun 2010 18:35:33Great promos from BUG 19 Every other month Adam Buxton (of Adam and Joe fame) hosts BUG at BFI on the South Bank. BUG showcases the best creative work in music videos and sells out very quickly to an audience of promo directors, designers, producers and a sprinkling of general public.

The format is simple – Adam sits on stage with his laptop and rambles on about great pop promos, screens a batch of them and then browses through a load of inane YouTube comments about the videos, rinsing them for full comedy value.



He does this twice a month (for the month it’s on), with one of the nights featuring an on-stage interview with a promo director and the other BUG night (the director’s cut) the same but without the director interview.

Anyway, it’s a great night (co-organised by Promo News's David Knight) and, for those who missed out on last night’s BUG 19 Director’s Cut, here are a few of what, for me, were the highlights...

Probably the most impressive of all the videos was Paris production company One More Production’s director Patrick Jean’s Pixels. It’s a spectacular piece of work, which is listed under the ‘inhouse’ section of One More Production’s website so was clearly made for love not money. Having said that, this morning a press release went out from US production company Mothership to say Jean has been added to its roster for commercials work in the US, following the viral success of Pixels.

Furthermore, Jean is joining up with Adam Sandler's Happy Madison Productions to create a “big-screen version” of Pixels, with the plan to make a "Ghostbusters-style action comedy” where characters come out of a video game to wreak havoc in the real world.



Next up is Factory’s promo for New York singer-songwriter Diane Birch’s Valentino, directed by Dennis Liu. This meticulously planned one-shot video is super impressive and one of those ones that begs the question, 'How did they do that?' Fortunately, that mystery is solved in the behind the scenes video Factory has also handily put on YouTube.

Here’s the finished video.....



And here’s the behind the scenes reveal...




Adam Buxton was particularly proud to present the next highlight, Radical Media’s ever-changing interactive experiment for Johnny Cash's Ain’t No Grave. The reason for his excitement is one of his digital drawings features in the promo. The concept is for visitors to the Johnny Cash Project website to choose a frame of the video and draw their own portrait of the scene.

All the submitted user artwork is then pieced together to form the finished video, and because new artwork is continually being submitted, the promo is never the same twice. Each piece of work has to be approved before it becomes part of the video, so while Buxton’s fairly convincing sketch of Cash made the cut, one of his other efforts from another frame of the video, which in all honesty was a bit rubbish, was rejected. He wasn’t at all bitter about the rejection either!

Click the image below to find out more and view the current Ain't No Grave video...



There were plenty of other inspiring videos shown last night, including Max Hattler’s art-inspired loops 1923 (aka Heaven) and 1925 (aka Hell) – see my earlier blog for more on these.

But the final one I’m going to finish with is the one Buxton finished the night with last night. It's a blast from the past from the Adam and Joe archives and a cheeky little warmer for the World Cup. Originally made way back in 1998, here's (click the image below) Adam and Joe’s ridiculous football video, the Footy Song. Enjoy!



For more on BUG, head to www.bugmusicvideos.com - the next two BUG nights will be at the BFI on 15 and 23 July. Thanks to Locomotion for getting me in last night, and well done on your consistently high quality title sequences for the event. Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Great-promos-from-BUG-19_bid-92.htmlFri, 28 May 2010 12:10:18Weta reveals Avatar vfx process At an Autodesk-organised talk at BAFTA last week, Weta Digital’s head of layout and animation technologies Shawn Dunn spoke in detail about how the facility created the widely admired cg/vfx on Avatar.



On Dunn’s laptop was a treasure trove of goodies to get any Avatar fan hot under the collar. As well as a dozen or so hi-res scans of the original concept paintings of both the Avatars and Pandora, we were treated to footage of Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana covered in markers, acting out scenes during the motion/performance capture shoot.

But much of the talk focused on a series of ‘template’ visualisation video clips created by James Cameron’s Lightstorm Entertainment facility.

These were handed over to Weta as a meticulously detailed reference for each of the scenes and look surprisingly similar to what ended up in the movie, albeit in much lower res and without anything like the elaborate detail, lighting and finishing touches.

Weta’s task was to take the many different elements of these ‘template’ videos and recreate them in the photo-real detail seen in the finished movie.



Dunn, who spent three and a half years working on the film, revealed Weta had a team of 900 working on the vfx/cg of Avatar at any one time. The company ended up creating 170 minutes of mostly fully-cg shots, and worked on 53 different characters.

Weta built a 4,300-machine render farm to handle the work on Avatar, and created 10TB of data every day. There was a network of water pipes running around the render farm to try to keep it all cool, yet at one point Weta had to shut it down, concerned the place would catch fire after a big bit of metal somewhere in the render farm started smouldering under the pressure of the work.



Over the time it worked on the film, Weta built up a library of elements such as plants, trees, leaves, moss, insects, and so on, so the first step whenever it received a new ‘template’ from Lightstorm was to use proprietary-developed software to auto-scan through each scene and work out which elements it already had in its library and which needed to be created from scratch.

During the talk, Dunn confirmed Cameron was a real stickler for detail, to the point where he had very strict instructions as to the direction individual flies should move in scenes where there are hundreds of barely visible flies hovering around in the fog. Dunn said that most days Cameron would be on the phone for three to six hours to catch up on progress and talk through the next batch of work.
 Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Weta-reveals-Avatar-vfx-process_bid-91.htmlMon, 17 May 2010 10:25:36Could this be your TV's new remote? The humble TV remote’s days look to be numbered with manufacturers falling over themselves to come up with new, uncluttered pointing devices more able to cope with navigating the onslaught of new channels and video-on-demand content soon to be cluttering up programme guides once internet-delivered TV becomes the norm.



I was recently invited to have a go of a prototype of one such device; the Philips uWand. The first thing that strikes you is it has very few buttons and looks not unlike a Nintendo Wii controller. It works in a similar way too, being controlled by gestures, so when you tilt the uWand left or right the on-screen cursor whizzes off in that direction.

To select a programme, you point the uWand at the screen and rotate it to move the programme guide in that direction to locate the one you’re after, then click to select. You can add programmes to be recorded by just dragging and dropping them onto the on-screen ‘record’ box. It’s also possible to navigate around the Z axis of a 3d screen by moving the uWand forward and backwards.

Here's a slightly cheesy demo video of the uWand in action....

I initially found it quite fiddly and frustrating to make the uWand do what I wanted it to do. As with anything, though, after a bit of practice it gets easier to get a handle on. What makes things easier still is the ability to adapt the speed of the on-screen cursor to suit your needs.

Philips has user trialled the prototype uWand, and (naturally) reports back encouraging results. It gave 200 families in Amsterdam a Philips net TV along with a standard remote control. After a month, they were given the uWand instead of the standard remote and 75% preferred it. Their satisfaction ratings for the net TV also increasing from ‘fair’ to ‘good’.

The company is now looking to license the uWand technology to TV and set-top-box manufacturers. Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Could-this-be-your-TVs-new-remote_bid-90.htmlWed, 12 May 2010 16:18:50Uninterrupted panoramic London views from new TV studios Are these the best views from any of London's many TV studios? These are the really rather impressive backdrops to the five high definition studios making up the Associated Press's new complex at The Penthouse, New Zealand House, 80 Haymarket, London.



The five HD studios, two of which are multi-camera setups, were unveiled at a launch party at the end of April. They have been built by AP Global Media Services, the video newsgathering facilities wing of the Associated Press.

The views from the different studios take in many of London's best-known landmarks, including Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, Trafalgar Square, the West End, the City, London Eye and Buckingham Palace.



The studio complex includes editing facilities and high-speed fibre transmission links to the Associated Press's global satellite network.



The Associated Press hopes to attract production companies after recognisable London backdrops and believes the studios will become the "premier live shoot facility in London".


 Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Uninterrupted-panoramic-London-views-from-new-TV-studios_bid-87.htmlFri, 07 May 2010 16:33:17Final round-up of NAB news - part three Here are eight more highlights from NAB 2010 - the final batch of NAB news from the show floor of the Las Vegas Convention Centre



EVS

EVS launched a new, affordable, entry-level version of its server, the XTnano, for live slo-motion HD and SD instant replays. Developed for live broadcasts with medium and small sized OB productions, it is controlled by the Nano Remote, which has a jog knob, a T-bar and LCD display.

As well as live replays, the XTnano can be used for clipping and playlist creations. Transfers of footage can be made faster than real-time to removable media and Final Cut Pro.

The company also showcased its sports graphics system that integrates into its live slo-motion systems, enabling graphics and basic analysis functions to be overlayed over instant replays.

The system will be used in the FIFA World Cup to overlay graphics such as the offline position, the distance to goal and other graphic animations on the instant slo-mo replays.



Orad

Orad has just launched its own EVS-competing slo-mo server the company says is around half the price of EVS’s servers. The Orad PlayMaker Slow Motion Video Server is an eight HD/SD channel device that can handle input from two super slo-mo cameras.

It has a smaller form-factor than EVS’s servers and is capable of working on stereo 3d live broadcasts. Orad’s device provides 120 hours of storage in SD or 60 hours in HD and is operated via a touch screen panel with programmable buttons to enable, for example, the tagging of fouls, offsides, corners etc, making it straightforward to sort the database according to this data.

Also competing with EVS, Orad showcased its PlayMaker Studio graphics overlays, which make it possible to create instant replays with on-screen details including distance from goal and offside.

On top of this, PlayMaker Studio’s impressive tracking function enables detailed cg analysis during half-time, full-time and summary highlights packages, using virtual players that look like the players on the pitch.

The type of cg highlights broadcasters can provide using PlayMaker Studio include detailed analysis of player and ball movements, both in 2d and stereo 3d. It is possible to do flow-motion analysis in tennis, for example, which creates still images of the player each time they hit the ball so you can see how far they have moved around the court for each shot.

Orad also premiered a beta version of a new interactive screen, designed for sports presenters to use as part of their live analysis of a game.

It is currently possible to draw movements on screen and control frame-by-frame video playback by sliding left and right on screen, and more. Orad expects the interactive screen technology to also be useful for coaching.



Sony

Taking up one of the largest floor spaces at the show, including a full-size OB truck, Sony’s product focus at NAB was dedicated both to new products and the company’s consultancy services, which were being heavily pushed.

New products include a petite entry-level file-based professional AVC HD camera, the HXR-MC50E, which is aimed at the corporate market and video bloggers. It’s designed to “combine the simplicity and useability of a traditional consumer camera with the picture quality and support of a professional camera.”

Sony also announced a new model in its XDCAM EX range, the shoulder-mounted PMW-320, which provides a “low cost way of turning the EX3 into a studio configuration,” says Sony general manager, media sales, Mark Bainbridge.

It has a smaller sensor compared to Sony’s higher-end studio cameras, so isn’t capable of the same picture quality, but is a fraction of the price at $12k, including an interchangeable lens. It will be available from October this year.

Towards the end of last year, Sony announced that owners of its flagship SRW-9000 SR camera would be given the option of migrating to a 35mm single PL mount sensor. This is now available as an irreversible upgrade at a conversion cost of $60k.

Outside of cameras, Sony showcased 24” and 42” 3d monitors and a new 7.4” LED field monitor, providing “very high contrast ratio” with no need for a backlight. It costs £2.5k-3k.

Rather than purely focusing on showcasing products, around a quarter of Sony’s stand was dedicated to its systems/IT consultancy, design and implementation wing, aimed at broadcasters, production and post production companies. Current clients for its systems design consultancy include Sky and, with its NAB presence, Sony is “looking to identify potential partners” for future work, says Bainbridge.



JVC

JVC looped an impressive 3d video of beautiful landscape photography to showcase the capabilities of its 2d-to-3d rack unit converter box, the IF-2D3D1. The device, which costs $30k, looks at the contrast, colour and depth cues your eyes see and runs through 2d footage, turning it into stereoscopic 3d.

David N. Walton, assistant vice president, marketing communications, JVC, says it can be used for 2d-to-3d conversion on live events, as it only has a latency of less than two frames. He added, though, that it’s “going to have some errors, and isn’t a magic box to provide perfect problem-free 3d.”

Walton says, following the development of prototype models prior to launch, “The firmware has been improved dramatically up to launch and there are manual controls on the box to adapt the output to get it right."



SENSIO

Also centred on 3d, with a decade’s worth of working in stereo, SENSIO used NAB to promote its SENSIO3D 3d ‘virtually lossless’ delivery technology, which squeezes the left and right eye into one to enable distribution of 3d content through conventional 2d broadcast channels networks.

The company has two main targets for SENSIO3D; firstly, the consumer market, with VoD and pay-per-view being “very well suited for stereo, with lots of movies and premium events,” says Nicholas Routhier, president and CEO.

The other is the theatrical/”out of home” market. Routhier says SENSIO has worked on 20 events in 3d since last year, with clients including the NBA. It has also recently teamed up with 3d live events company Aruna Media for the delivery of the World Cup in 3d to cinemas and stadiums worldwide.



SGO Mistika

Having made major inroads into the stereo 3d finishing market over the last six months, with sales to Framestore and Sky, SGO concentrated on stereo 3d enhancements for the latest 5.0 release of its Mistika system.

The update is based on feedback from customers, and makes the tools more familiar and logical, as well as introducing a set of new tools.

The new tools include refined options for controlling convergence, enabling images from the left and right cameras to be properly aligned and made identical size in post.

There’s a new tool for adapting inter-ocular distance, making it possible to artificially change the position of the cameras if they are too far apart. This can make images easier to view even when they aren’t necessary badly shot.

Another new feature is the addition of vectorscopes for colour monitoring, which make it much more straightforward to colour-match the left and right images.

SGO also used NAB to demo a live stereo 3d feed to Mistika, which is aimed at checking and testing everything is set up correctly prior to the shoot, and avoiding having to correct so much in post.



Snell

After 15 years on the market, Snell’s restoration tool Archangel has finally gone high def. The updated real-time defect-remover, which takes out 80% of defects such as dirt, dust, film weave, scratches and grain, has, since its inception, been limited to SD content, but is now capable of the real-time restoration of HD images.

The new Archangel is being launched at a lower price than its predecessor and, as well as coping with higher res images, has an improved interface and filters. “If you’re working on full length feature restorations, the Archangel will pay for itself in five jobs,” says a Snell spokeswoman.



Farmer’s Wife

Scheduling and facilities management software providers Farmer's Wife booked a hotel suite near the Convention Centre to demo its new iPhone app providing on-the-move live worldwide access to a facility’s Farmer’s Wife server.

The slick-looking iPhone interface enables a producer to check and add bookings, view ‘To Do’ tasks, assign notes and check the schedules of the people in their facility, seeing live what’s happening at the facility. The app also provides access to the facility’s Farmer’s Wife contact database while on the move.

It is also possible to view and update live information on a production’s budget using an iPhone or iPad on location, so you know on the day precisely where a project is at in terms of its budget.

The iPhone app is available for free for those on a service and maintenance agreement with Farmer’s Wife, and those buying new Farmer’s Wife systems. Simon Hadfield, md, Farmer’s Wife, LA, says a system for the average sized UK post house costs around £7.5k, including the iPhone app. Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Final-round-up-of-NAB-news---part-three_bid-86.htmlFri, 30 Apr 2010 17:18:51Framestore's view on post houses becoming production companies

The facilities pages (p.16/17) in the April issue of Televisual includes a short comment from Helen Stanley, Framestore’s md of commercials, about whether post companies should become production companies.



Helen provided more copy than we were able to include in the magazine, due to space limitations. The rest of her copy provided interesting reading, so here’s the full transcript of Helen’s comment:


“Post companies are set up differently to production companies. Our skill sets aren't in live action shooting, especially those high end beauty, comedy, drama or action sequences.... and we underestimate this at our peril!

However, straight cgi commercials and those with cgi characters performing over live action plates, are both areas where Framestore has been working successfully for some years.

Our main competitors here being traditional animation houses who have diversified to house their own cgi teams.

Computer animation is Framestore's strength and, like the traditional houses, a number of our key animators know how to tell an animation story and we have executed a number of spots in this genre.

Our digital and design teams have pioneered the direction of both virals and title sequences for a number of years, and are now directly competing with design oriented production companies.

In the States, where the post companies have directed cgi/vfx heavy spots since the early 90s, there has never been an issue with their storytelling (maybe Pixar helped with that) and Framestore NY has directed many excellent spots since its inception.” Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Framestores-view-on-post-houses-becoming-production-companies_bid-84.htmlTue, 27 Apr 2010 11:39:05Blackmagic shakes up colour grading, live from NAB, part two The biggest news in colour grading systems to come out of NAB is Blackmagic’s complete re-engineering of its DaVinci Resolve colour correction suite, culminating in the release of a software only version of the professional-level system for a mere $995.

It is aiming the software-only version, suitable for grading HD and SD content, at Final Cut Pro workstations using control panels such as the Tangent, providing the means to offer high-end colour correction at a very affordable price.



The new Resolve software is also available with the DaVinci Resolve Control Surface, which has been designed by colourists to “work together in total harmony”, with controls placed near natural hand positions and lift, gamma and gain adjustable at the same time.

The software and control panel version costs $29,995.



Finally, there’s a top-end version for grading at higher resolutions of up to 4k as well as working on stereo 3d content and Red files. The DaVinci Resolve Linux License configuration comes with the Resolve Control Surface and allows the grading system to be powered by a cluster of computers with GPU cards, enabling real-time processing.

The Linux-based multi-GPU license Resolve costs $49,990, including the Control Surface.

As well as providing a cost-effective grading platform for the professional finishing of all genres, including modestly budgeted corporate work and pop promos, “The software-only version makes it possible for any director to do preparatory work and try out some grades on a $995 system, then move up to the next Resolve for the final grade,” says Blackmagic’s Simon Hollingworth.

He adds that, compared to Apple’s Color software, which is packaged with Final Cut Studio, “The systems are like chalk and cheese. Colourists can take their existing experience with Color and apply it to the DaVinci way of grading. They already have most of the core skills and can now benefit from the same grading solution as used on Hollywood films.”



Reacting to the news of DaVinci’s new products and consumer-level pricing, Digital Vision’s vp worldwide marketing Martin Bennett questions where the support and servicing will come from. By buying an off-the-shelf $995 product, Bennett argues the level of servicing customers expect from a professional-level application will be lacking.

“We provide 24 hour a day support and proactively help customers, continually doing minor releases, bug fixing and so on. It’s more and more about the level of service you can provide. Customers know they can knock on our door and get immediate service.”

However, Bennett admits that Digital Vision would “at some point like to go to all price points, primarily to offer something for the education community, to bring on the next generation of colourists.”



As well as its announcements around the DaVinci Resolve, Blackmagic also used NAB to showcase the stylishly designed UltraStudio Pro, “the next generation of input/output device for uncompressed SD and HD using USB 3.0”.

By utilising the new USB 3.0 interface rather than firewire, the UltraStudio Pro capture and playback device runs at 4.8 Gb/s, which is enough speed for uncompressed 10-bit HD video.

The desktop device, which costs $895, includes a seven foot breakout cable with an impressive number of video and audio connections including 3 Gb/s SDI, HDMI, s-video and 4-channel analogue audio.

It also has a built-in up, down and cross converter enabling editing in one format and output to any HD or SD formats.



Blackmagic also launched a USB 3.0 version of its UltraScope waveform monitoring product, which enables on-set monitoring of video and audio on a laptop. It is powered by the USB port, eliminating the need for a power source on location. Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Blackmagic-shakes-up-colour-grading-live-from-NAB-part-two_bid-79.htmlWed, 14 Apr 2010 19:11:56Live from NAB, Las Vegas - part one In the first of Televisual’s dispatches from the floors of NAB at Las Vegas Convention Centre, here are a few of the highlight product releases so far….

Panasonic

Panasonic used NAB to showcase its lightweight, dual-lens file-based stereo 3d camera, the AG-3ADA1, which it describes as “the world’s first professional quality, fully-integrated HD 3d camcorder”. The company is now taking orders for the camera in the States, which has a list price of $21k and will be made to order for delivery in the autumn.



The AG-3DA1 is designed to be much more straightforward, affordable and portable compared to using two cameras on a rig to capture stereo 3d. The lenses, camera head, and a dual Memory Card recorder are integrated into a single device and it has built-in stereoscopic adjustment controls and functions for automatically correcting horizontal and vertical displacement. The camera automatically recalibrates enabling hassle-free 3d image capture.

The 3DA1 records at 1080/60i, 50i, 30p, 25p and 24p and 720/60p and 50p in AVCHD. In AVCHD PH mode, it records up to 180 minutes on two 32GB SD cards. You can switch from left, right or overlay views on the built-in LCD display.

Avid

Avid has acquired audio console specialist Euphonix, to “expand our portfolio and offer customers, from independent producers creating music in their home studios to broadcasters preparing segments for national broadcast, a complementary set of workflow solutions,” says Avid’s chairman and CEO Gary Greenfield.

He adds that, “As audio and video workflows continue to converge, we are now well positioned to deliver control surfaces that work across both audio and video applications, making the content creation process more cost-effective and efficient for our customers.”



Avid’s official line at the moment is it intends to continue to support and sell both Euphonix and Avid’s own Icon audio control surfaces.

Avid has also launched the latest versions of its editing systems Media Composer and Symphony, which now have “native support” for file-based formats including Red, QuickTime (to enable direct editing from cameras such as the Canon 5D and 7D and importing of footage from devices such as the AJA Ki Pro) and Canon’s XF codec used in its new 4:2:2 50Mbps-capable camcorders.

Avid also now offers full support for Panasonic’s file-based AVC-Intra compression when working with the P2HD format.

Native support for these formats removes the need for time-consuming transcoding, re-wrapping and log and transfer processes when working with these formats.

The editing packages also have improved audio effects and an enhanced user interface.

Autodesk

Much of the current focus for Autodesk is on connecting pre-production, production and post production, making it possible for a director to be hands-on in all aspects of cg/vfx production at every stage of the production process.

As part of this, Autodesk’s vfx, compositing and grading products now have a consistent set of tools for stereoscopic 3d production, from conceptualisation through cg/vfx to compositing, colour grading and finishing.



Stereo 3d aside, the newly launched 2011 versions of Autodesk's applications include advanced lighting (through pixel shading) and over 100 photo-real ‘substance’ textures for Flame (such as bricks, concrete, wood, etc), “new creative tools” in Lustre, a redesigned interface for Maya and modeling and texturing enhancements for 3ds Max.

Autodesk also announced a new ‘sketchbook’ application for getting started on new ideas on both the iPad and iPhone.

For more on Autodesk at NAB, head to http://area.autodesk.com/nab2010

Quantel

One thing you can guarantee at every NAB is Quantel CEO Ray Cross announcing the current year to be the best ever for the company. Last year was the best of the decade and this year has apparently already surpassed the greatness of 2009.

Cross pointed to something fairly mundane ­- FCP integration in its broadcast newsroom systems - as being partly responsible for its latest healthy performance, this development apparently bringing in $10m of new business that wouldn’t have otherwise come in.



New product announcements for Quantel, of course, all centre on stereo 3d. Mind you, Quantel has more right than many to champion everything stereoscopic, having been at least a year and a half ahead of the game and having its grading system Pablo chosen for finishing Avatar.

Its stereo stuff for this year includes a new stereo 3d multi-layer timeline with integrated vfx for its iQ and Pablo systems and time-saving stereoscopic tools including geometry correction and stereo colour balance (for matching left and right eyes or taking a balance from the middle, and auto-drawing shapes from one eye to the other).

Quantel also has a new stereo 3d workflow for sports and studio work, which includes an as yet unreleased new stereo 3d broadcast editor.

Cintel



Long-standing scanning firm Cintel (previously Rank Cintel) has brought out a new auto image enhancement and restoration box, imageMill2, that provides real-time 2k grain, dust, scratch and noise removal as well as image stabilisation.

The box is available as a standalone product or as part of Cintel’s ditto evolution scanner, enabling full, automatic image restoration to take place during the scanning process.

Cintel also announced a new website, www.usedtelecine.com, which as the name suggests, is the place to go for second hand telecines. All scanners sold on the website have been fully refurbished and come with a Cintel warranty and 0% finance options.

Part two of the Televisual NAB blogs will include Black Magic’s $995 da Vinci professional grading software and Digital Vision’s response, The Foundry’s Nuke and Ocula updates, EVS’s new affordable XT Nano slo-mo server and its sports graphics system for detailed, graphics overlays on instant replays in the World Cup, and Canon’s new 4:2:2 50Mbps-capable file-based camcorders. Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Live-from-NAB-Las-Vegas---part-one_bid-78.htmlTue, 13 Apr 2010 21:32:01No 3d World Cup on TVs in the UK

With all the hype surrounding the FIFA World Cup being filmed in 3d for the first time this year, you might assume you’d be able to head to your local pub to see some 3d matches on its fancy new 3d TV screens.

Or even watch the games in 3d in the comfort of your own home, if you’ve been particularly quick off the mark to snap up your own 3d TV set.

But no. At a press conference today revealing FIFA and Sony’s stereo 3d plans for the World Cup, it became clear that, as the BBC and ITV is broadcasting the World Cup and not Sky, there’s going to be no 3d World Cup on TV in the UK.



Instead, there will be “up to 50” UK cinemas screening some of the matches live in 3d. Which sounds pretty good until you find that none of them is an England match, that is until we (hopefully) get through to the Quarter finals and onwards through the tournament.

In truth, it’s all a little underwhelming.

ESPN in the US and Spanish broadcaster Sogecable are broadcasting 25 World Cup matches live to 3d TV sets around America and Spain, and FIFA is “expecting more” broadcasters to also provide a “3d home viewing experience”. Niclas Ericson, FIFA’s director of TV, estimates a global audience of “hopefully a few hundred thousand people” to watch each game live in 3d.

Seven camera positions will be used for the 3d filming at each of the 25 matches earmarked for 3d, says David Bush, director of marketing, Sony Professional, Europe. On top of this, some of the coverage from 2d cameras will be converted live to 3d to supplement this footage.

Three of the stereo 3d positions will be above pitch level. Two OB trucks, including the Sony-designed Telegenic stereo 3d truck, will cover 3d transmissions of the games, with Sony’s new stereo image processor (the MPE-200) used to auto-resolve imperfections in camera alignments and help ensure high quality 3d images.

 

Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/No-3d-World-Cup-on-TVs-in-the-UK_bid-77.htmlThu, 08 Apr 2010 15:49:43US cg firm launches in UK American cg firm Speedshape has set up a sales office in London and aims to open a Soho-based cg animation studio later this year.

The company, which started out in Detroit eight years ago, specialises in cg-based car modelling, taking CAD data and building photo-real car exteriors and interiors for print ads and marketing brochures, and animated sequences for TV and digital spots. Current clients include Ford, Mazda and GM.

Its Transformers cinema spot for the launch of the Chevrolet Camaro is below...




Speedshape also builds interactive websites such as Mustang customiser, which enables visitors to build and paint their own versions of the car (see image below).



As well as cars, the company has worked on animated cg packshots for the likes of Jack Daniels and Proctor and Gamble.

The UK office’s first commission is a seven-minute ‘mood piece’ for an as yet unnamed car brand, working with a “top-end commercials production company,” says Speedshape’s Danny Morris. Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/US-cg-firm-launches-in-UK_bid-76.htmlWed, 07 Apr 2010 16:01:57Sky's new 3d channel - the details.... The next issue of The Producer magazine, which goes out free with Televisual next week, features an interview with Brian Lenz, Sky’s director of product design and TV product development, in which he reveals full details of Sky’s forthcoming 3d channel.



“We’re looking to have between six and eight hours a week of programming content to start and, as we get a library of content, that will grow,” says Lenz. He adds that 3d will be an ‘appointment to view’ proposition: “It’s not about trying to fill six hours of programming an evening, it’s about providing a couple of great shows per week."

The channel will kick off on Saturday with the screening in 3d of the Barclays Premier League clash between Manchester United and Chelsea, including live mixing between camera positions, slow-mo 3d replays and 3d graphics. While there will be next to no viewers with 3d TV sets at home at this point, over a thousand pubs and clubs in the UK and Ireland have already signed up to the channel.

As well as sports, over time, movies, entertainment, natural history and music will all be available in 3d on the channel. The broadcaster is announcing a wider schedule for the channel in the autumn. One thing that’s not on the list of potential things to be broadcast is 2d programming that’s been converted to 3d. The channel will have a minimum of 90% native 3d footage and any remaining 2d-originated footage must have been captured in HD.

See the Spring 2010 issue of The Producer magazine for further details
Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Skys-new-3d-channel---the-details...._bid-70.htmlTue, 30 Mar 2010 11:50:27Mesmerising art-inspired animations

Experimental animation director Max Hattler has just completed two strangely enticing animation loops inspired by paintings by French “outsider artist” Augustin Lesage (see artwork below).



Hattler, whose recent work includes distinctive tour graphics for Basement Jaxx and an intricate and eye-catching stop-frame animation called Aanaatt, directed the films, which were made by a team of student animators and cg artists at The Animation Workshop – Centre for Animation in Viborg, Denmark.


The hypnotic, mesmerising loops are both heavily influenced by Lesage’s A Symbolic Composition of the Spiritual World paintings, from 1923-25. They are being showcased at the Lumen Eclipse “public media art gallery” in Cambridge, Massachusetts in a Hattler solo show that runs from 1 April to 30 June.

 

 

1923 aka Heaven (by Max Hattler) from Max Hattler on Vimeo.



1925 aka Hell (by Max Hattler) from Max Hattler on Vimeo.


Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Mesmerising-art-inspired-animations_bid-66.htmlTue, 23 Mar 2010 16:02:48Stereo 3d: Do you speak-a my language? Linguists would have had a field day at The Foundry’s stereo 3d Nuke Masterclass at Vue, Leicester Square today, observing the fascinating alien language used when referencing the how’s and why’s of all things stereo 3d.

 

 

The phrases being banded around in the packed cinema, perhaps predictably full of mid-20s to 30-something males, were beyond comprehension to all but the relatively few DoPs, camera operators, techie geeks, vfx artists and producers who’ve already tried to tackle a full-scale stereo 3d project from acquisition through post to delivery.

 

Try these for size... “disparity field”, “interaxial separation”, “monoscopic depth cues” and “interocular distance”. Not to mention the ‘basic’ stuff such as “positive and negative parallax” and “convergence points”. This stuff isn’t for the faint hearted.

 

The Foundry’s Simon Robinson started off proceedings by trying to explain a lot of these terms, with the aid of some handy diagrams. Personally, I was still pretty confused despite his valiant efforts, but he was preaching to the converted, with many audience members already fairly well versed in stereo 3d geek speak.

 

The first proper talk of the day was by Andy Miln, director of stereo 3d specialist, Inition 3d, about how best to shoot in stereo 3d. His detailed examples elicited loads of complex questions from the 3d-educated audience, addressing the finer details of using different cameras, mirror rigs (which apparently reduce those aforementioned “interaxial separations”), doing focus pulls and things like that.

 

Then Framestore’s Theodor Groeneboom, who worked on Avatar, took us through using Nuke to do stereo 3d post production. He made the point that it doesn’t matter how well prepared you are on the shoot and how many times you’ve tried to eliminate potential problems, a tonne of post production cleaning up work WILL be required to bash the stereo effect into shape and make it all comfortable to watch.

 

The main culprits requiring post work are colour mismatches and vertical misalignments between the left and right eyes and unmatched lens reflections. All are fixable using quite fiddly post techniques, but the message (and this shouldn’t come as much of a surprise) is that stereo 3d is heavily demanding of time and effort in both production and post.

 

After a morning spent at this Masterclass, the best advice for doing stereo 3d would be to surround yourself with people who've had proper, in depth prior experience of stereo production.

Not only will they help ensure everything runs much more smoothly and many stumbling blocks are avoided, they'll also provide a much needed translation services for mere mortals who don’t yet know their interaxial from their interocular or their disparity field from their monoscopic depth cues.

Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Stereo-3d-Do-you-speak-a-my-language_bid-61.htmlFri, 12 Mar 2010 18:06:41Ok Go - this too shall pass Not content with notching up over 50 million YouTube views for their one-shot 'treadmill' video for 2007 single Here It Goes Again, OK Go have made two outstanding one-shot promos for their current single This Too Shall Pass.

The first attempt, made by California's Bonfire Films and released last month, saw the band perform a well-timed single-take live version of the track as an ever-expanding marching band, and was suitably impressive.

But the second one, which went up on YouTube at the start of March, is truly phenomenal...



Built around an incredibly complex series of Rube Goldberg Machines, constructed by LA's Syyn Labs, it's a more rough and ready but even more extraordinary take on the type of thing made famous in the Honda Cog spot and the ace kid's game Mousetrap.

"The requirements were it had to be interesting, not overbuilt or too technology-heavy, and easy to follow," says Syyn Labs.

"The machine also had to be built on a shoestring budget, synchronise with beats and lyrics in the music and end on time over a three and a half minute song, play a part of the song, and be filmed in one shot. To make things more challenging still, the space chosen was divided into two floors and the machine would use both."

The Mill New York did the grade on the promo and also worked on "online touches, helping synergise the fun".
 Total Comments: 3 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Ok-Go---this-too-shall-pass_bid-59.htmlWed, 10 Mar 2010 19:28:15Stereo 3d at home All things stereo 3d had a major boost this week with the announcement that the first 3d TVs will be in the shops by the end of this month. Samsung is first out the blocks with a model expected to cost around £2k.

Naturally, with a price tag that high and nigh on zero content to watch, it's going to be for enthusiasts only. But perhaps not for long as, it seems, everyone is getting in on the act. Panasonic will have its first 3d TVs out shortly after Samsung, followed by Sony, which promises sets in the shops in June and aims to sell 2.5m 3d TVs worldwide by March next year.

This seems a most ambitious figure but anyone who's seen Avatar couldn't fail but notice the long list of stereo 3d releases coming up this year in the endless trailers, which will all eventually make it on to 3d Blu-ray discs.




Added to this, Sony is releasing an upgrade to make it possible for the PlayStation 3 to play 3d games, which will do a great deal to further boost the market.

The TV sets still require viewers to wear glasses, which may – beside the price – put some people off, but the success of Avatar demonstrates most people are happy enough to watch something of considerable length while donning glasses.

So, you can expect stereo 3d to be even bigger than ever at NAB next month and more and more facilities gearing up for what looks like it's going to be far more than a fad after all. Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Stereo-3d-at-home_bid-58.htmlWed, 10 Mar 2010 19:15:08Stunning shots on inexpensive kit




These beautiful images were captured for an episode of the BBC's Natural World natural history strand. The episode, The Wild Places of Essex, was shot on the Red One camera, posted in Final Cut and graded in FCP's Color, producing results with comparable detail and colour reproduction as the most expensive top-end acquisition and post kit.




Bristol post house Inc. worked on the episode, produced by AGB Films and shot by BAFTA nominated cameraman Robin Cox.

The doc, first shown on the BBC last month, explores the "unexpected landscapes and natural history of Essex, revealing far more than white stilettos and boy racers". It has since been entered into the single doc category of the BAFTAs and also entered for five Craft awards.




Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/Stunning-shots-on-inexpensive-kit_bid-56.htmlWed, 10 Mar 2010 18:17:57MPC simplifies Canon SD/7D editing MPC has added a new service to its Data Lab to make it easier to work with HD video from Canon's increasingly popular digital still cameras, the EOS 5D Mark II and EOS 7D Mark II.

Both cameras shoot high quality HD video but the footage doesn't include timecode or metadata information so things soon get complicated when it comes to conforming edit-decision-lists.

To address the problem, MPC creates new masters by renaming the Canon clips and striping them with continuous timecode and "intelligent reel ID", meaning all source footage is uniquely identifiable. The clips are then "transcoded to the native format of the required editing platform", be it .mxf files for Avid, ProRes QuickTimes for Final Cut or whatever.

Following the edit, the edit-decision-lists are "guaranteed to give a trouble-free conform," says MPC.

The process of prepping Canon 5D and 7D footage is reasonably speedy, and considerably faster than real-time. MPC processed over 21 hours of footage for a recent UNICEF campaign for RSA Films in less than six hours "from receipt of the drive to delivery to the edit house".


Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/MPC-simplifies-Canon-SD7D-editing_bid-55.htmlWed, 10 Mar 2010 17:55:55UK Screen's Report launch event UK Screen is doing its bit to raise the profile of the facilities sector with a 100-page document surveying the financial impact of the sector – which includes post production, studios, outside broadcast and camera hire companies – on the UK economy. The survey, based on extensive analysis of the sector from 2006-08, was launched at an event at NESTA (the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) if front of an audience of mainly suits.

UK Screen's report goes into great detail about the different trends and challenges in each of the key areas within the sector. The headline figures coming out of it are worth emphasising here though as they really bring home the sheer size and scale of a sector that many underestimate in terms of its value and the number of people it employs. There are 1,300 companies in the facilities sector employing 25,000 people, and with a combined turnover of £2.2bn. The challenge is now to ensure those that matter in government and elsewhere are made aware of this.

Back to the launch event... UK Screen CEO Gaynor Davenport kicked things off with a three and a half minute reel showcasing the film, ads and TV work of the sector, before Jonathan Olsberg of strategic consultancy Olsberg|SPI (which produced the report along with economic development and research consultancy TBR) took over to talk about how there’s a need to challenge the argument that the facilities sector has merely a supporting role as a service provider.

He added that he doesn’t think there’s enough awareness of the sector or its activities. The launch of the report, he said, was the start of a journey to change all this.

Andrew Graves, the md of TBR, was next, commenting that, “As someone outside looking in, the capabilities of the sector are awe inspiring”. He believes the report should not only inform policy-making but assist facilities in decision-making and in searching out market opportunities. He pointed out that the turnover of the facilities sector is larger than the whole of the UK independent TV production sector and two-thirds of the UK’s film sector.

Olsberg|SPI's Libbie McQuillan was next on the podium and raised the issue of the lack of a terms of trade for companies within the facilities sector, and that IP from vfx/graphics isn’t shared with post production houses.

Colin Brown, The UK Film Council's British Film Commissioner (who’s also on the board of UK Screen), wrapped things up by talking about the success of the UK’s facilities sector on the global stage, and, referring back to the opening showreel, said there’s a need for people to know the size and importance of the sector and for the message to get out there that: “We’re the guys who get them to look like that”.

Finally, UK Screen addressed the issue of the report being two years out of date and acknowledged that plenty has changed during the recession. Davenport said she will “capture change" to update the report, at least to some degree, with a more current picture of the sector.

Total Comments: 0 ]]>http://www.televisual.com/blog-detail/UK-Screens-Report-launch-event_bid-54.htmlWed, 10 Mar 2010 17:22:02