This will be looooooong – these are my raw notes, as taken, of sitting in on the panels at the DGA Digital Day today. I saw almost everything, but skipped out on some VFX stuff to go see the footage demos, which I found a bit disappointing due to incompleteness – no D21 or Sony camera footage. But it was VERY helpful to see camera demos back to back to back to get a sense of what they could do. Coverage begins after the jump. And since it is my raw, unedited notes as taken, no complaints – you get what I typed without looking, so if I typo’d, yeah. I typo’d. The best stuff is the one on film distribution – indies, take heart – there IS hope, you just gotta play a different game.
DGA notes
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7th digital day
new talks on film financing, social media, internet, etc.
get advice on legal, ethical, and tax issues. SEC regs on investments and vary state to state
-ethical and legal issues – piracy – threatens to destroy the community we work in and base or livelihoods on.
DGA theater ROCKS
short anti-piracy video with theme of “It’s Called Stealing” – somewhat hysterical in tone, but the message is valid – clothes disappear from backs, food disappear from in front of children, cars disappear in front of assistant directors
*I always felt these spots should show sports cars disappearing from in front of greasy execs, bikini girls disappearing from in front of pools, powder disappearing from tabletops)
Scott Billups will be here for 5th time
Experiments in Low Budget Filmmaking
arthur Allen Sidelman running things today
EXPERIMENTS IN LOW BUDGET DIGITAL FILMMAKING
Ted Bogosian, film was 50/50
charged by HBO to explore storytelling between journalistic truth and emotional truth via narrative
shot using HVX200
$2500-$3000/minute, 37 minutes, $100K
Devito and Freeman started ClickStar, launched with this
50/50 are odds of passing the odds of Huntington’s disease to offpsring, half drama/half doc, what to do with tough information in an ethical situation
two of the people were actors – the couple who finds out she has it are actors
was it a cheat or a new form?
question – what about insinuating a product? dangers of mixing reality and actors? Risks in the technique? They put a prologue in the front, – actors involved, any relationship to real people is intentional –
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Billy Dickson – shooting on F900, “IQ 145”
all shot
a web series, shot 3 weeks in North Carolina on a greenscreen, 99% of show in greenscreen,
saved money on sets and locations and stuff – wanted to see if could do a
$100K of production costs, $200K by time all done (double original budget)
all the backgrounds were composited on Macs and PCs by the director, did it in Lightwave and AFter Effects, composited with the sets and rain and whatever else in the background – took 6 months by himself
compression for a web series – cut it in FCP, output to QT, put all the files to DragonFly, Flash based encoding, streamed from low def to high def over the internet, and their system would check your bandwidth and send you the appropriately sized feed.
Katy Garretson – HVX200 – “Nurses Who Kill” – Fran Drescher contacted her about 2 women who wanted to do a web series – had a budget? 9 day shoot, 40-50 crew every day, done under DGA & SAG new media contracts, 2 cameras w/grip & electric for under $7000
money went to grip & electric package, 2 cameras, 2 HVX200s, both donated by the operator & media manager, lighting equipment and food – did it under deferred pay
laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaame – you see all of that $7000
nurseswhokill.com – lauch an episode a month starting in September – relying on donations and kind help to finish
got music for free from online somewhere
HOW DO YOU INTEND TO MONETIZE?
-deferred pay, whatever they get in, after creation costs are covered, distributed by percentage according to their deals
more than 50% of folks in front and behind camera were women,
Davir Orr – shot on 5D Mark II, 1080p30 video
looks better than the HVX by far!! Color rendition is nice,
called “refresh” – rolling shutter artifacts? Didn’t see it!
budget was $2500, were over 200%, was $7500 by done, 12 minute teaser for a feature
records onto a CF card, files from card are QT H.264 files, which pulled into Avid, edited, and finished in a Smoke
music is temp score for now
plans are to finish the short, use as leverage to finish the feature, release the short as a self contained piece, take it to festivals, try to leverage from there, screen play is finished, in the short you figure out what happens to the guy – you light it differently from film – were able to light useing light panels, available light, and a few kinos. Sound was recorded separately, used a separate sound person recording into a separate system
disadvantages to this since it looked so good – was all donated time – disadvantages – need to be aware of moving the camera too quickly – if you don’t have the look in camera, but you can’t push in post – don’t have leeway in post – BRITTLE! They did extensive tests, have to light to get it exactly right. Lattitude in post is limited
-Kees Van Osstrum – RED – is a feature, decided to make it for the money they had, $300K, 11 day shoot, DGA/WGA/IATSE/SAG, financed out of Michigan, shot in Los Angeles on a sound stage in Burbank, shot 10 minutes a day of finished material, one set/location, Christina is the name of it, looked pretty good, a DRAMATIC diference between his ungraded, primary (dailies) and final/beauty pass.
A strong indicator that you need SOME coloring applied…
Gary Walkkow, Panasonic HVX 200 – budget $175K, did $145K, cut from 20 to 16 day shoot,
they shot a car crash backwards – started parked at the telephone pole, then backed up and had a guy jump into frame
they cut on Final Cut home computer
finishing the editing on the feature now – market it directly to buyers, sell DVDs or stream on web? Hoping to sell to a DVD company or something, hit up the festival circuit
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did a film on the Red,”The Awakening of Spring” – for $75K, shot in 2 1/2 days, on the Here (Hear?) channel
overall, looking at these – the HVX200 stuff – looks like crap compared to Red & even the 5D Mark II. Seeing that footage, makes me wish I’d gone to that DSLR moviemaking thing last week. Teh bigest drag, that he did NOT mention, is that the 5D Mark II ONLY records 30p. It does use an efficient codec (considering), but yeah – no whip pans, no hand held that isn’t totally steady.
hearing filmmakers crow about tiny production budgets that are deferred – as a producer, I’d be happy with that, as anyone involved, I’d be incensed – there is NO WAY a once a month webisodic is going to make its money back!
In looking at all of these, the best bang for the buck look is DEFINITELY the cinematic look of the 5D mark 2. The funny thing – they had it up on serious sticks and a big fluid head (probably somebody’s own gear or donated) – that head alone would cost several times what the camera and lenses would cost.
5D Mark 2 with updated firmware starts to become something shootable, albeit with various limitations – they also didn’t mention the limited record times – 5 minutes at a time or it starts to overheat.
Hey! “Ladies and gentlemen and a few writers”
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new developments in financing and distribution – Peter Broderick
(the crowd thinned out considereably for this panel as compared to the last one)
peterbrockerick.com
a tour of the new world of distribution –
he is a “distribution strategist” – works with filmmakers at any stage to come up with a distribution strategy – they only had reactions – they’d get offers or not, get into festivals or not
is more complicated now – think strategically, have a vision of your distro before you begin, and as you go, let that vision evolve as needed
in the last 6-7 years has worked with 6-700 filmmakers – he gets reports from the frontiers
waaaaay more narrative than docs people
websites? meaningful mailing lists? Facebook? Twitter?
Creative Capitol conference – 800K people following on Twitter for a cellist’s new album
used to be you’d hope to get distro, you’d hand over all the rights and all the control for 15-25 years of your film.
%age of filmmakers who made about overall deals were happy? About 3% were OK, the rest were apopleptic or wretched.
about 2% of folks were happy at Sundance
hybrid distro now – not all or nothing. Split up the rights – a DVD deal, sell DVDs on your websites still, etc.
a series of individual deals instead of one big deal (see picture)
filmmakers have direct access to audiences now – direct access – that audience can be part of a core personal audience, that can be carried forward. They will hopefully think of you as if they are patrons supporting an artist
-more and more artists are coming from old to new distro models
10 examples – fix of features and docs from a few million down to a few hundred thousand dollars
doc called Faster – about Grand Prix motorcyle racing – some folks showed up on his doorstep – the core audience is all over the world, will be great –
this guy thinks in terms of core audience – “if we have a scene in a bowling alley, every bowler in America wants to see it” –
they said they were going to get publicity at Cannes – they got more publicity than anybody else because there was a MotoGP race, they drove down the street with the racers, they came up the driveway of the big hotel with all the press with 35
-the core audience went from “maybe I’ll get a DVD” to “when can I get the DVD”
-$13K of tix in 3 days at one theater to launch with NO press
-started selling DVD from teh website, sold 5000 in 2 weeks, sold another 8000 in a coupla months.
DVD was $30 shipped, making $18 profit per sale, getting names and email addresses of every buyer. In a store, retail deal likely would have made $2.50 apiece, have to have an honest distributor and live long enough to actually collect it.
-showed to a distributor and said 13000 DVDs sold, the distro said that’s it, the market is tapped, were talked into it, sold 50K more DVDs, told prior buyers there’s a new, better DVD coming out, and sold’em the new edition with a free t-shirt, 8000 folks bought the second edition
hybrid distro – with a distro and direct – if a director is active selling online, helps to push more DVDs sold overall
Ewan McGregor did voiceover
feature called Reversal – set in high school wrestling, wrestler losing weight to try to be a champion, ends up in hospital
filmmaker shot it on 35, limited theatrical in East, sold DVDs from garage, paid interns to exchange links between his website and other websites – college/high school/Olympic wrestling – linked to 400 other websites, 20K DVDs, $400K profit, got hosed by creepy distro, made $15K from retail dsitro, made over $1M direct distro, 70K DVDs sold, reached out to audience – buy direct, get a CD of soundtrack if buy direct, even though Amazon is cheaper
One Six Right – the Van Nuys airport doc! so niche! Asked about distro plan – guy said 10K pre-orders – everyone interested in the romance of small planes will be into this says the director. He finishes the movie and starts selling, sold 9000 DVDs in 9 days, he reached the core audience, he was selling CD of soundtrack, 40% of folks were buying that without seeing the movie, selling signed posters – that the director signed, $35K on signed posters
-sells through a pilots catalog, madea new twist on One Six Left, he made an HD version to show at NAB to see everywhere, kept doing small screenings, people are paying him to advertise his movie for 12 months? He’s giving it to public television for free (was paid to air on Dsicovery) – he can do underwriting – offered the movie for free, made his buget back from the underwriters on the public televison version of the movie
-Note By Note- a doc about the making of a Steinway – a single Steinway piano
played for 2 weeks in NYC, did the festivals, filmmaker had $10K to do a theaterical service deal, hooked up with Jim Brown in New York, played in theaters fora week or two – semi-theatrical screenings – Steinway decided to tour THAT piano, somebody plays before or after the event
-In Kansas city, 150 people in audience bought 47 DVDs afterwards. At least a third of the people that see it buy the DVD.
made money ontheir theatrical/semi-theatrical (really rare!) – how you think about audience – Hollywood’s most sophisticated analysis is quadrants – old/young, male/female
this filmmaker’s audience thinking – (see the picture) – went to national convention of piano tuners – all the core audiences are audiences he can reach directly – internet, in person, organiations of these folks, etc – NO MIDDLEMAN NEEDED – he can reach these folks himself
-selling directly from his website, at screenings, educationally, etc. – this will have a long life – it doesn’t get stale, will sell for years. That theatrical and semi-theatrical established it in minds – this worked really well
of course, beautifully shot and passionately made
Spring of 2006 – The Secret – a cross between “What the Bleep do you Know?” and the Power of Positive Thinking – they put this and 3 other trailers online virally, on the website you could buy the movie on DVD, or stream it online for $5 to stream it. Over 90% of folks who paid to watch it online then bought the DVD. Sold 20K DVDS in the first few weeks, people were recommending it to other people, buying copies, etc.
Amazon would call and give the terms and the filmmakers would turn them down
They sold a couple of hundred thousand DVDs before the book came out, they were on Larry King, Oprah, etc., then it exploded, book out in November, book STILL on bestseller list, in 40 languages currently, sold 2M DVDs the first year, kept going since then – The Secret is a total aberration – so what to be learned? Audience analysis – those who liked the film became their marketing effort
Four Eyed Monsters – I’ve written about before – 2 young people agree to not talk, is the story of their romance – doc based pseudo reality
– – premiered at Slamdance, never got the all rights distro
at SXSW a deal didn’t show up, started realizing they need to unlearn what they’d been told about distro
they started a podcast (the podcast had been about the making of the movie) – was a soap opera to follow the story, started to build the audience, decided to do theatrical in their own way – were able to book their film buy seeing a city list, see who has requested and how many have requested – if get 150 people that want to see it, they’ll go to and show then
-selling DVD from website, and the theatrical, put it all up online on YouTube for free, about 800K viewings there, 60K income from that and a place that got $1 per signup, had people send in videos in response to the movie, user contributed content, they created an audience around this movie and they’ll be able to take with them to other films that they do
Poeple using the internet to raise money for making movies
Robert Greenwaldt’s films – made Uncovered about Bush administration lies to get into Gulf War, then made Outfoxed about Fox news, sold 100K DVDs in 2 weeks, Walmart, the High Cost of Low Price, so they had a week of house parties with different themes, health, environemnt, etc – 7000 house parties
Iraq for Sale – spring of 2006 – if he’d get $50 or more, could be in end credits – he’s got a couple of hundred thousand dollars raised, has to get it done in time for elections – has the idea of raising the money online – raised over $200K in 10 days in small contributions from email and web campaign – had 200K people on his mailing list – he’d removed middlemen on distro, now he’s done it for fundraising
Jill Sobule – a funny singer makes a website called jillsnextrecord – needs contributions – was funny – put your persona online – not just your bio! A sense of the person helps. Was all contributions, NOT investments. She owned the music when she was done as well – the album came out last month and she’s doing great
from England – The Age of Stupid – hybrid doc/narrative – set in 2064, an archivist looking back to see where we went wrong. Raised money in a crowd funded model – no money from distro, studio, etc. -they wanted total control creatively, for distro, and for keeping the money. Started raising money online – these were not regular investments – if you gave 25 pounds, gave a warm and fuzzy feeling – for $2500 pounds, got a profit share – were loans made to production that didn’t need to be repaid – tons of resources to find there – how to crowdfund your own film, all the legal docs, etc. – could it work in US? Dunno. Contribution models woudl be interesting – raised 450K pounds for production, 150K pounds for distro, 150K pounds for campaign related to the movie – to turn viewers into climate change activists
movie opened with a green carpet premiere in London, a solar powered tent, satellite distro to 60 other cities, opens in September in US, a one night premiere, innovative in everything they’ve done.
turn viewers into activists
should see website and newsletter – is funny/cheeky/impressive
automated the process for organizations that want to show it in a special screening
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Star Wreck – in Finland, got 5 students and unemployed people who want to make a parody Star Trek feature. have little money and expertise or experience, decide to do social filmmaking – reach out to folks online, find out ways to work online with people – got music that way, found some actors that way, found a writer that way, a lot of VFX people and processes – got 300,000 people involved, 300 people in the end credits for their contributions
filmmaker said 50% of what you see is contributed by other people when asked about having a
people involved told others about it, released it on internet for free, 8M downloads from aroudn the world, sold a lot of DVDs in a lot of countries, if you give it away people will want to buy the DVD. “Wreck a movie” – explains the model. The budget (final) was 15,000 Euros, or $22K. the VFX look GOOD
next film is Nazis on the Moon – doing it in a more traditional way, $4.2M budget already raised traditionally. Using contributions from people for he making of the movie.
Anvil – The Story of Anvil –
(side note – if you just make a “regular” movie, it’ll get Netflixed, and ripped, and bootlegged, and WTF is your money….)
back to Anvil – Becka and ??? about Anvil – what didn’t happen at Sundance – two years since the moment when they launched the film – n the making of the film, all the collaborators did it for the love of the movie, had incredible crew and technicians doing it for points in the movie, felt they had something very strong going into Sundance, the rug was getting pulled out from under specialty market. Screened at Teh Library on a friday night – seen a great reception to their film, kept waiting for something to happen, the movie was going off, and the offers weren’t forthcoming. Played Fri/Sat/Sun, narrative folks missed it. Thinkfilm, WarnerIndie, etc. were interested, but they didn’t jump on it. Filmmakers didn’t see it as niche, distributors did. Distributors didn’t see it as a relationship film, etc. They owned the movie so could be selective about what they opted to do – didn’t just have to take the biggest number. Were getting mid-six figure numbers, marketing folks were wantign to stick it in Sunset 5 for a week – marketing commitments were 5 cities, modest P&A up front, etc. – it didn’t make sense, the distros wanted the farm in terms of rights. Would have meant giving it away for less than what it cost. Everybody that came out of the film wanted to be an advocate for the film – the band was there with their merchandise, and they had the back of the truck open and were selling DVDs to old ladies who’d never listen to it but wanted to support them.
a year of conversations with different entities – so what they did in the end – they kept screening the hell out of the movie to keep spirits up – had by that time seeded some word of mouth support for the film. In the end they decided ot lock into dates at the Nuart 5 months in advance for a week there. Got word at the same time that VH1 liked the movie – Sundance they thought VH1 had seen it, never had. VH1 bought DVD and TV rights for the US. Foreign rights sales were supporting the P&A for that effort. VH1 supported the movie by TV promotion – they ran the trailer on VH1 primetime 45 times a week, and VH1 got more and more released, the plan was DVD release day and date with first broadcast, are stil out in 150 theaters now – in early October it’ll be released. VH1 supporting The Anvil Experience – the band and the movie became the experience – the band plays at the end – see how it is real.
they maintained the rights to sell DVDs from their website
next up -trailer for Good Dick – about a disfunctional couple, he works in a porn store, she’s the customer
indie acquisitions was witnessed to be going steeply downhill starting at Toronto before Sundance. They’d hoped to get a good deal at Sundance – the programmers at Sundance supported it, packed screenings, eerily quiet thereafter. Shortly after that, thought about doing self distro.
The stars were co-producers, everyone was interested in self distro, went back to original investor, and asked about putting up more to do a release? Was a $200K feature, had sold the UK rigths at Sundance for $100K, were in a good position to ask for more. Got $200K more, the idea being to go all the way – theatrical through whatever was next. Put together a team, Abramarama, 42 West, and Peter (speaker) to execute the plan – to do a small theatrical release in 7 markets, did Q&A and appearances etc. Had a donated marketing campaign – a 15 minute piece of the film, online and VOD promo, got 363K downloads on VOD on coupla netowrks like IFC. Started looking around for deals, Peter was saying split up the rights, is tricky but doable. Did VOD and digital (iTunes and Amazon) Warner Home digital with Gravitas, then a separate DVD deal with Phase 4, reserved right to sell DVDs adn sell and stream on their own site, planned a college tour (since that was their audience, good way to interact with fan base), were able to book college screenings and lectures and get paid $5K and then sell DVDs and merch.
(“merch” is the word for merchandise)
splitting up rights – is increasingly complicated, is like microsurgery, gotta make sure the deals fit together rather than undercut. Is easy to cut a TV deal that will prevent you from making a DVD deal, etc. – gets dicey!
If working at a low budget level to start with,
if making a $5M movie, still stuck in the old world
if in the $200K range, that is a good range for this kind of thing
At Sundance producing summit, they are paying $50K to $100K right now – in self/hybrid distro
stay under $1M, or better yet stay under $750K for self/hybrid
how do you quantify & monetize the VOD for narrative features – when you hear stories about VOD platforms sending checks to filmmakers in the low four figures for the life of the movie, that is scary stuff!
keep your budget incredibly modest, keep them under $500K then fantastic. Don’t forget about foreign, UK was first sale for both of these teams, did meaningful sales in Japan then Australia, was all before the US came together.
If you’re working with a foreign sales agent, want to structure it where after a year, any territories where they haven’t sold DVD or digital rights YOU could sell into those markets directly from your website.
Wanna market globally, not just domestically, use the web to creative opportunities for you – be it streaming or DVD
deferred income for crews – when do they get paid? At point of recoupment, Anvil isn’t there yet – once the filmmaker is whole, then everybody else gets a cut
Q: somebody did self distro and got it on Amazon before a DVD sale, how to approach distribution for DVD when it says you have DVD release on IMDB?
A: better to ask forgiveness than permission according to Peter, but were able to get the deal they wanted. DVD people wanted rights for stuff they didn’t even have the technology to exploit yet – they wanted
NACA – National Academy of College Activities or something like that – screened at the NACA convention i Nashville, brought the talent, promoted lectures and screenigns and NACA said was most popular screening they had ever done
Q: how does Peter work?
A:has a 15 minute talk, he won’t if he doesn’t feel he can cost justify his effort. A lot of the time is to save them from making mistakes, or help optimize.
more resources on his website.
the old fashioned attitude of “lets put together a band!” surround yourself with a talent pool and work it hard
grassroots when you don’t have the fiscal means to buy it
you need a team to both make and DISTRIBUTE the movie – is only half the battle!
set aside half the movie to release it if you don’t get your dream deal
make deals with investors to use the tax credit money for that effort
use festivals as a launching platform to go shortly after festival to benefit from the publicity
better love your film!
Better think about how to market & sell it before you make it – social marketing, getting it to taste makers, etc – is never too early to get that effort moving!
can MAKE your distribution happen, isn’t just a passive waiting game to try and get it anymore.
SCOTT BILLUPS –
“Digital on a Dime”
he got to stand in for Cameron 3 times – he’s standing in again for Cameron –
first presented 5 years ago – talked about Moore’s Law and how it affected the indsutry, and looked 5 years ahead – he predicted
speed and capacity would double every two years, size and price would be cut in half
in 1989, made a digital camcorder using no tape. Could record at 6 megabits/sec.
storage and size have worked by Moore’s Law
when digital devices become optimal, they merge with other devices that have become optimal.
cellphones were projected the ability to shoot, record, distribute high quality video – iPhone 3GS can do it. A growing list of companies – were 6 manufacturers of clip on lenses for the iPhone, at some point a nutjob will make a tiny matte box and follow focus.
the rig to support the iPhone costs twice what the iPhone does
the new video iPhone can shoot, edit, and deliver an image substantially better than the 3/4″ Umatic standard stuff from back in the day. As the percentage of news clips on cellphones increases, we get more citizen journalism –
“When the people formerly known as the audience employ the press tools they have in their possession, that is citizen journalism.”
devices are becoming so small, we have to think up new ways to use them
a credit card sized cellphone is selling elsewhere
future is about software integration
software more than hardware is causing the first rethinking of the motion picture knuckleheads
we need a quick grasp of where we really are – is all about context – “without context we are chalk outlines on the boulevard of broken dreams”
Mike Most – think about where it’ll end up before you shoot it – X camera and Y editing system
Terence Curren – the digital workflow can degrade the footage
Tim Sassoon – maintain quality all the way through – start out with something significantly better than what you’re going to deliver – shoot something a higher quality than what you need at the end
medium determined by conditions of the shooting environment
compression used can affect the workflow – it wants to stay native – make sure which editing apps will keep it native all the way through
can use Cineform or ProRes or whatever for most of a movie and make a good result, go uncompressed for blue/greenscreen for that 10% you need it
capturing a cinematic image for a digital camera system – is more complicated than film ever ws
but for a cinematic image, is MUCH harder on a digital system than on a film system
digital cameras have hundreds of variables that will bite you on the ass if you get it wrong
producer’s guild and ASC tested the Panasonic 3700, Genesis, Red, F35, D21, F23, Viper
Scott had actually used all of these on real jobs – they are all good cameras with different flavors – what might work well for one DoP, budget, scenario, etc. could be good or career ending –
each has an image stream that has to treat them differently, running through the same meatgridner will NOT give best results! horses for courses
the best results – qualitative results – F35 is favorite for film/TV – has full format sized imager, 4:4:4 to tape or S.two, the EX3 is the other end of the spectrum, for B or C
can intercut in post because the colorimetry is similar
until the F35, the 3 big dogs were Genesis, Viper, and Red
has used them all on big stuff – any one of these could easily be best for a given scenario – gets nervous when people start comparing them – Mike Most compares Red to Genesis – Red is referred to a 4K camera – true in one sense, the Genesis is referred to an HD resolution camera since it outputs 1080p – the chipin Genesis has more pixel elements than the Red does. How it is combined and the resolution is a design decision – people get hung up on the 4K vs HD – the reality can be different than that.
high dynamic range imaging from camera in the next couple of years – digital will blow past film for dynamic range (when?)
the non-tape solutions can transfer more data faster – is just a matter of having a relationship with a post house that can handle it. What is convenient and fits into your digital workflow is all that matters
Think about these matters upfront – how to store and recall and use your media across the way. This guy shoots Red on location, instantly clone it off the camera, have 3 negs. The R3Ds aren’t used, make ProRes for offline, finish from the R3Ds. Don’t tkae up a ton of storage – only use the 4K R3D
if client proposes a workflow you, them, or your friends haven’t done…..DON’T DO IT.
looking 5 years out – individual production companies are doing their own finishing in a bunch of different ways – facilities will be leaner and meaner and their products will not be as proprietary
5 years from now – Moore’s law has had its way with our industry, scabs are still healing. hardware differences are just bickering at this point. Entire productions can fit on Jimmy’s first credit card
4 petabytes a day of content coming out
Your home computer can hold more than the library of congress
Chroma key has become de riguer with such clean signals
the second wave of digital will effect how we work – software enabled methodology will change how we manufacture our content
SIGGRAPH opens in 2 days, the software that stabilizes shots in software
cloud point math has been around – used in VFX for matchmoving – but matchmoving is becoming consumer tech
Moore’s Law wil continue to have its way with hardware – software can go from brain to market much faster than hardware because it has to be manufactured
from here on it, people will debate when they don’t understand that software is what’s driving the industry
hardware is what people will debate when they don’t understand what is driving the industry
a few seemingly obscure software innovations will change the face of production than any piece of hardware ever has
what currently takes 2 weeks to shoot
the changes that affect US – post houses morph to production groups that can create, finish, and distribute with a web of interconnectedness
-those newfangled facilities dont exist yet – 12 currently inproduction, 6in the US, 3 in LA, at least one in Marina Del Rey or Playa Del Rey
Motion Encoding heads – to match
Previsualization systems – the live integrated 3D compositing/encodin solution
Evergreen Films in Culver City – storage and fiber everywhere – petabytes of storage – 32TB for $9000,
be in connected facilities
motion capture sensors in ceiling on a greenscreen stage, treadmills, greenscreen walls, etc. – realtime – background and foreground and instantly composite in the next room.
at 2K and above res
digital 3D theater – put a digital theater in there, do their own DI work – shoot with their cameras, VFX up front, sound stages, finish it on their own
more ambitious is Universal – rebuilding on the fire site
building new sets digitally – instead of fake brick facades, can digitally swap out
smart stage – could communicate with any location in world if they do it right – all the toys ever dreamed about and wanted, all set up, just start shootin’
light probe generates a 4K stream of live action video for use as a live virtual backplate
projecting live or pre-recorded onto a virtual cyc – many no post production pipelines
ideal source for camera maps
camera mapping is becoming de facto approach
camera mapping works for most shots, and makes a library of locations for pickups and reshoots
camera maps could last for an episodic
luminance values from light probe then creates a lighting matrix which can be recreated on the smart set
IBL – image based lighting
has only been scene in academic/military/high end 3D
first commercial use in live production
photographing a shiny sphere – take HDR of such, use for 3D and lighting
used in Ben Buttons to light the digital head
put arrays of LEDs around actors to recreate the lighting
can do over 1/24th of a second with high speed photography, can decide how to light them in post – this is putting a light source to move the key, turn rim on/off,
so all these systems work now and have been used in commercials, features, etc.
getting closer to on set VFX production
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2D to 3D
Michael Jabalisko – 3Di solution is a 2D to 3D conversion company, can take any existing film and convert it. They are a 60/40 ratio – take 60% automated, 40% human value/judgement
they make a punch list of what they want to work on, figure out the deliverables, upload treated footage so director or whomever can review and give feedback, once they have signoff, they send up the final treated piece
pipeline- series of steps to do some rotoscoping and scripts that break it down into elements, have a proprietary rendering process it, runs it through their renderer, the elements are set up to render for stereo or for multi-view (stereo or auto-stereo) – 3Di does regular or auto stereo (requires no glasses) – hold the autostereo version for the future when that technology is ready.
how much per minute: $25k$35K per minute depending on scene complexity – until they see the footage they can’t give a solid number
-multi-view – when is this autostereo viewing future going to occur? Samsung is trying to push into the commercial market as early as next year – the displays are out and are expensive, are not ready for home use, are $8000-9000 price range, will drop in price, beginning of next year will enter the consumer market – how does the no glasses part work? see the demo outside to the right – 42″ Phillips autostereoscopic display –
Q: where are they doing the work?
A: do most of it done in Orlando, working with relationships to try to bring some to LA, discussions of doing work in “other areas” – India?
3D Sound:
myEZTV.com
OH.
MY.
GOD.
Demo straight from dotcom crazy 1997 – for integrated TV/shop/custom channel/local public access/make your own TV channel/click on his pants to buy them – OMFG, I can’t believe the DGA guys let them in there. For SHAME!
The demo guy kept saying they had monetization built in…uh huh…sure. Everything reeked of “doubt it doubt it doubt it” – when the first slide said “Synergy” I leaned over to my friend and said “Did we just skip the needle back to the dotcom era?”
’nuff said, they don’t deserve any press on this platform, with all the buzzwords I was hearing 10 years ago when I was hip deep in Dotcom Demolition Derby Mode. UI looked like total crap from a decade ago, too.