NYC Production & Post News

World Goes 3D, Indies Unimpressed

2010-03-09T17:46:02Z

The success of the 3D versions of Avatar and now Alice can have only whet the appetite of major TV set manufacturers as they ready a push into a new, untapped home market.

Panasonic begins selling a new series of 3D-enabled HDTVs at Best Buy this Wednesday. According to the Wall St Journal and other reports, the company will discount its 3D TVs as much as 50% in the US compared to Japanese pricing in order to rack up big sales quickly.

Analyst firm DisplaySearch forecasts 3D-ready TVs will grow from 0.2 million units in 2009 to 64 million units in 2018, with the first hurdle already gained: the tech specs for the Blu-ray 3D spec was recently completed.

Progress means different things to different groups in the industry, of course. Take TV set manufacturers. Sure, over the years better technology raises all their boats, but if you make widgets for a living you face a mean reality since technical and manufacturing improvements wipe out any differences among competing products. Thus the flip side of easier and cheaper production consists of living with ever thinning profit margins.

According to industry researcher DisplaySearch average selling prices for TVs in 2009 were expected to fall for the first time since the flat panel TV transition began.

So while the changeover to a new technology standard can be hazardous, it can also raise your bottom line. Building and selling 3D parallels what HDTV gear did for the industry: give reasons to raise money, invest in factories and marketing, all to slake the tech needs of a new batch of consumers who want the some of the buzz that they’ve felt from the latest and greatest movies.

So while we’re only on the cusp of the changeover to 3D in the home, expect to still hear plenty of noise about the technology over the coming months from Panasonic, Sony, Samsung, et.al. Scoring top position early on can be crucial to owning a sector of the market. Or at least that’s what tech companies have come to believe.

Here’s a quick look at some of the most recent news:

PCWorld reports that Sony will begin selling 3D TVs in Japan on June 10 and worldwide at about the same time. A PlayStation 3 firmware upgrade, meanwhile, will add 3D support to that platform.

The Financial Times describes as “ambitious” Sony’s stated target of selling 2.5 million 3D televisions in nine months starting from that June launch. This indicates how important 3D will be to the company’s bottom line, says FT.

Sony’s Mr. Ishida said they aren’t concerned by Panasonic’s head start since there is still so little 3D content available.

Jumping out quickly with new product, however, could backfire, as some standards—such as fully interchangeable 3D glasses among the various makes of 3D TVs, haven’t been set. “For the 3D TV industry, if you want fast adoption, or a nice, seamless, easy consumer experience, you want to work as hard as possible to make sure that everybody’s glasses can be used at a friend’s house,” says DisplaySearch TV analyst Paul Gagnon.

Everybody needs to show they’re studying the 3D situation very intently. ESPN and Sony have set up 3D test facilities. Panasonic, meanwhile, trumpets its 3D Blu-ray authoring facility in Hollywood.

ESPN’s Innovation Lab at Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, will be its hub for developing 3D technology. ESPN launches its 3D channel this summer to cover the World Cup. Sony and CBS opened a 3D research center and screening facility in Las Vegas at MGM Grand Hotel & Casino to focus on “consumer perceptions toward 3D programming”, as well as ways to deliver 3D content in and outside the home.

Ending on a more cynical note is Peter Bart in his Variety article Movie biz doing the splits. Bart sees an ever-widening gap between tentpole pics like Avatar and other expensive 3D productions—which continue to suck up more and more of the money that’s out there–and smaller, Indie fare ala Hurt Locker, Precious, and An Education, for which money and distribution keep drying up.

Considering how much of New York film and TV production fall under that latter Indie banner, that doesn’t make for a very heartening glimpse of the future, 3D or not.

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Hurt Locker’s Abel Cine Connection

2010-03-10T00:23:35Z

The Hurt Locker, of course, pulled in a raft of Oscars, Golden Globes, and other awards. But its connection to Abel Cine might not be as well known. Turns out the film relied on gear provided by the rental/sales house including Aaton (XTRprod and A-Minima 16mm film cameras) and the Phantom high-speed digital camera.

Digital Cinema Report features a story on it, including an interview with cinematographer Barry Ackroyd, a long time Aaton user.

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Streaming Production and Flash Delivery Workshop

2010-03-08T13:23:14Z

Lisa Larson-Kelly and Jan Ozer lead the workshops.

At the FIT campus on Tuesday, March 23rd you’ll have the chance to take two half-day workshops on streaming web production and Flash to be taught by Lisa Larson-Kelly and Jan Ozer. One class shows how to create workflow for streaming video production and delivery, while the other details what you need t do to set up successful Flash delivery, still the most prevalent multimedia Web technology.

These two half days are about all the time you’ll need to get up to speed, as both these experienced teachers have produced plenty of their own work, and know most of the pitfalls you’ll come across.

Jan, as he notes on his website streaminglearningcenter.com, has “produced and encoded video since the CD-ROM days (1992).” I remember recruiting him to write for millimeter and then Digital Content Producer magazines. I had been reading his articles in PC Mag, and thought they were smart, cogent explanations of arcane technology. He wrote too in a refreshing, plainspoken manner that’s still not, unfortunately, the norm in many how-to tech articles.

If you want to go beyond learning one specific technology or software app to start to comprehend the whole streaming media machine of the Web, you’ll want to attend. If you want to directly sign up, go here.

Highly recommended.

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Tim Squyres & Bobbie O’Steen Discuss Editing Altman’s Gosford Park

2010-03-05T02:05:36Z

Tim Squyres and Bobbie O’Steen (Photo: Courtesy Editors Guild)

I had a great time last week attending 92YTribeca to interview Tim Squyres on his editing work and challenges of working for Bob Altman on Gosford Park.

Squyres gave an enthusiastic account on the complex challenges of editing for that great and unique artist (no standard shot/reverse shot structure for Altman, of course, but constantly prowling cameras that left Tim digging for matching shots and cut-aways..sometimes he found them, sometimes he had to invent something).

Bobbie O’Steen, an author of two well-received books on editing, ably set up explanations of Tim’s puzzle piece. By giving his work more context, she gave a good sense of the real challenges laying behind the hidden work of an editor.

My story for the Editor’s Guild website, which includes Bobbie’s helpful explication of several of Tim’s edit decisions, can be found here.

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New City Effort on Training for Film and TV Production Work

2010-03-03T22:01:55Z

Law & Order’s Anthony Anderson with Mayor Bloomberg on the set. (Photo credit: the Mayor’s office)

A press conference on the set of Law & Orde the longest running TV show in history (okay, it’s tied with Gunsmoke at 20 years) debuted a plan to train women, minorities, and struggling New Yorkers for jobs in film and TV production.

Of course It’s just part of a politician’s nature to take to center stage when it’s time to announce a new jobs training program, and Mayor Bloomberg did just that. Well, you couldn’t get him away from the podium actually, as he introduced a series of short talks by those involved. Set in one of the court rooms of Silver Screen Studios at Chelsea Piers, the ‘Made in NY’ Production Crafts Training Program, it seems, had the requisite send-off. (You can read more about it here.)

The stage got pretty crowded, with nine others jammed in front of L&O’s faux courtroom set as the mayor held forth at the rostrum. Those taking part included MOFTB commissioner Katherine Oliver, Katy Finch (Production Director for the trial period of the new program, to be managed by Brooklyn Workforce Innovations), John Ford (president of IATSE’s Studio Mechanics Local 52), representatives from International Cinematographers Guild Local 600, and actor Anthony Anderson from the TV series, who obviously didn’t have far to go to attend.

Guest instructors will teach other skills such as operation in the grip department. All participating trainees will be provided with

The idea? Provide grip training, e.g. rigging and dolly operation, to “persons of color, women, veterans and economically struggling New Yorkers”. At the end of the yearlong course, a year of job placement assistance is promised.

A pretty tall order, and just 10 or so slots for the first year, but of course this is just the sort of effort a city government can take on, but have rarely bothered about in the past under other administrations. Score one for Bloomberg, who seems energized on the issue; perhaps he’s embracing entrepreneur-in-chief for his last term as an antidote to the lackluster response by the electorate revealed in the last election.

City council president Christine Quinn couldn’t attend, but it was made known the council pushed for this new effort after a 2006 study–the Mayor’s Task Force on Diversity in Film, Television and Commercial Production–found few women and minorities in the city’s prosperous if tightly controlled unions.

While commissioner Oliver spotted the program as part of “ongoing efforts to encourage diversity in the local entertainment workforce”, it also takes on a wider aspect as part of various initiatives to bolster the city’s role in media production and management.

I had a chance to get a question in, and it resulted in a bit of a curious response. Addressing it to union head John Ford, I asked if such a program didn’t amount to slicing the piece of film-and-video production into smaller sections—wouldn’t his union membership be less than thrilled at the prospect?

The gist of Ford’s response was that the folks in his union—the main one all this new crowd would attempt to join–were on such a high level of competency as to make the chances of anyone from this new group getting in anytime soon pretty slim. Hmmm. Didn’t that sound like the same old closed union?

Okay, he didn’t say all that so directly. But it was telling that the Mayor immediately jumped in to elaborate, saying that that the employment situation wouldn’t stay the same, for he was there to “grow that slice” of the entertainment pie/dollar/whatever that the city garners.

Remembering my early days in production and hearing how difficult it was to break into any of the craft unions, let’s see if the new effort can bring about some welcome change.

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Backing Up is on Your To Do List

2010-03-08T16:35:22Z

I don’t cover much gear on the site, but I’m always ready to cover new, innovative tools for storage and backup. No matter what end of digital media production you work in, crucial files lost or corrupted due to sloppy backup routines will make clients drop away quicker than just about anything.

One product to handle your backup debuted recently: Prime-Cache from Cache-A comes with a good rep, as the company’s founders Phil Ritti, Mark Ostlund, and Tom Goldberg were key players on the original Quantum team which developed the well-regarded A-Series SDLT and LTO video data storage products.

The new model–Prime-Cache—aims to handle the archiving needs of small post houses and smaller field production. The company describes the device as the “easiest to use network-attached archive appliance available.” Prime-Cache writes data on low-cost, industry-standard 800GB LTO-4 tape cartridges (LTO is a secure, portable, interchangeable standard with a long history in the corporate world.)

Operating system-independent, Prime-Cache works within Windows, MacOS and Unix environments, plugs into a standard Ethernet network and backs-up at speeds greater than 50MBs. Not exactly inexpensive at $6995, it’s certainly much cheaper than finding a new client.

www.cache-a.com

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The State of New York Technology

2010-03-03T04:43:07Z

Although he does come off a little over excited in this recent post, Nate Westheimer probably deserves to be, as he seems one busy guy. Nate organized the original NY Tech Meetup and seems to be involved in all sorts of new media ventures himself. He has an interesting analysis of what he modestly claims is his take on “every major component of the NY technology ecosystem” on his current Innonate blog.

Want to create a new technology start-up of some sort in the city? Nate states that “tech ecosystem” in the city is in great shape, and supplies a little detail on the following to back up his claims (see the blog entry of March 2nd for more):

* Supply of Great New Entrepreneurs
* Foundation of great second and third generation entrepreneurs
* Efficient capital markets
* Access to large and diverse customer set
* Unidirectional flow of Human Capital through local universities into the startup ecosystem
* Bidirectional flow of Intellectual Capital between local universities and the startup ecosystem
* A media industry interested in reporting on the innovations of the industry
* Value-driven services infrastructure (lawyers, rent, etc)
* High quality of life
* Strong industry community infrastructure

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Adobe’s Current Woes, Coming Glory

2010-03-08T16:44:59Z

If you’ve kept track of the tech details related to Apple’s iPad announcement, it’s been pretty hard to miss Steve Job’s dismissal of Adobe Flash for the new device—he’s already made known that it has no place in the iPhone OS.

It’s not personal, of course, since so many Mac-based creatives rely on Adobe’s justly top-of-the-heap Photoshop, After Effects, et.al.

You can catch up with some of Job’s arguments in Ryan Tate’s article in Valleywag which details what happened when Jobs presented the iPad to Wall Street Journal editorial staff

Flash, as Adobe seems to constantly point out, is nearly everywhere on the Web and installed in computers as well, helping to make the Internet colorful with animation and graphics. Jobs’ anti-Flash arguments are fairly well known too: that Flash consumes too many CPU cycles, presents too many security holes, and finally is an out-dated technology—something he doesn’t want forward looking iPhone and iPad users to contend with.

But while Tate describes Jobs’ as “brazen in his dismissal of Flash”, the reasons are more complex than those most noised about. John Gruber on his Daring Firelball blog says “the larger issue goes beyond performance. Apple sees the web as a platform based on open standards. Flash isn’t part of that.”

Even if those performance issues are finally solved, Gruber argues, Apple won’t include it in the iPhone OS since, as he believes, Apple wants to control that whole OS. Apple is keeping the iPad OS closed too, something that’s not been the case with OS X (for which Jobs has blamed Flash for a great number of Mac crashes and other flaky performance issues).

To replace Flash, Jobs and Apple are pushing the interactive capabilities in HTML5, an open source standard not controllable by any one company. (HTML5 is a huge rewrite of the code that underlies the whole Web, so it will be implemented over a very long–in Web years–12 year time frame from now, even though some minor capabilities are now working with a first considerable stage planned by 2012. There’s more about this complex roll-out here.)

But on 9to5 Mac, Seth Weintraub in a blog entitled “The upcoming Apple vs. Flash battle” says that bringing tools to market to build interactive applications rivaling those now on hand for Flash/AIR are “years away at best”.

While Weintraub agrees that the first mobile devices running Flash will burn through batteries, he thinks the situation will improve quickly with more potent CPUs and GPUs coming to market. This will actually benefit Apple’s rival Android, as devices with Flash “instantly have more “applications” on them than the iPhone.”

So all is not gloomy in Adobe-land. Even of more import to anyone creating graphics and editing video, says millimeter’s Trevor Boyer, is Adobe’s upcoming release of Creative Suite 5, which will charge forward with support for 64-bit operation only (OSX 10.6 or Win7 64) while introducing the Mercury Playback Engine, a completely retooled codec wrangler.

The latter will supposedly be a game changer compared to what’s currently available as it uses a computer’s GPU (i.e. Nvidia only at this point) and CPU in parallel to deliver capabilities including real-time debayering of Red camera files (Red sells a $5k card to do that now), native Red 4K multicam editing, and Red keying; speedy AVCHD playback and scrubbing; zipping through nine layers of P2 files at a time; and accelerated rendering for exports.

Mercury is set to support Geforce GTX285, nVidia Quadro CX,FX4800, or FX580, with newer nVidia cards added to the list as they are released.

At the moment all of that quick, speedy editing comes courtesy of Adobe’s upcoming CS5 Premiere NLE only (look for it in late Spring). Photoshop and After Effects will surely have speed ups of their own going 64-bit native and supporting Nvidia’s Cuda architecture, but so far the Mercury Playback Engine looks like an Adobe exclusive.

Whether that makes it any more attractive to Avid and Final Cut Pro users doesn’t look probable, but the technology, bundled tightly within the whole CS5 suite, could prove attractive to many more potential users worldwide. It should be especially tempting to those shooting HD with DSLRs from Canon, Nikon, and others; this fast growing contingent is one Adobe will be targeting with the new suite. And why not? They’re one group already overwhelmingly tied to Photoshop as their top app.

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NYC Business Express Offers Biz Tool for Entrepreneurs

2010-03-05T11:57:58Z

Mayor Bloomberg and the Department of Small Business Services Commissioner Robert W. Walsh announced today a new online app that is aimed at helping entrepreneurs find the best way through the often-bewildering thicket of city government on up.

NYC Business Express offers a one stop, interactive method for identifying and taking advantage of city, state and federal programs that can help a business to locate or expand within the five boroughs.

You can apply online for new licenses, permits, and certificates and set up an account that allows you to track status information for your business.

Beyond that, the Incentives Estimator makes info about available incentives “more transparent and more accessible”

The playing field for businesses will be more level by making the information more easily available, said Mayor Bloomberg. “Business owners shouldn’t have to ‘know the right people’ or spend lots of money on consultants to access these incentives,” said the Mayor.

Another web site, NYC Business Solutions, offers no cost services “regardless of the size or stage of your business” including business courses; legal review of contracts and leases (this uses a network of lawyers offering pro-bono services); financing assistance to help identify lenders, package your loan application and increase your chance of receiving a loan.

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Manhattan Edit Workshop Offers Intensive Adobe, Apple, Avid Course

2010-03-05T11:58:09Z

Manhattan Edit Workshop Six Week Workshop Student Profile — Heather Smith from Manhattan Edit on Vimeo.

The good folks at Manhattan Edit Workshop (Mewshop to you) quote one of their guest artists in residence, Michael Tronick (editor, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Scent of a Woman) as positing that “My only advice to aspiring editors is this: learn Avid, learn Final Cut Pro, learn After Effects.”

That line-up constitutes the core of what the lower Manhattan-based school offers in one of its regular Six Week Intensive courses; this one starts soon, on March 1st. With its $5,850 tab, it’s not cheap, but you’re promised a five-day, 10 to 5 regimen that over six weeks teaches those software apps that seem to be the basic toolkit of choice for today’s editor.

If you do show up you’ll also meet Mewshops’ current Artist in Residence; create a “pro” editor’s reel; garner a “connection” to a least fifteen post facilities (hopefully ones that are actually looking to put on editors); and walk off with extras including a free ticket to the upcoming EditFest NY 2010, co-sponsored with the American Cinema Editors guild.

Learn more here.

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