M+E Connections

Now we’re the first to tell you that we’re a knuckle-dragging on-prem person. We like our content, workflow and storage (especially the storage) around us … like to see it, touch it, know where it is at night. But we’re open to considering changes, especially after this past year.

So, we were interested in seeing what the Hollywood Professional Association (HPA) was going to share at this year’s Tech Retreat.

The HPA standards and sharing expertise have been vital part for the industry since probably 1948 when the Supreme Court busted up the studio system. Since then, most of the people who actually create the M&E industry’s magic have been freelancers — an estimated 800,000 in North America and Europe and an equal number for the rest of the globe.

They sign on for a project and when that film/series is done, they move to the next opportunity. That worked out well until last year when the pandemic put most new projects on hold. The fortunate folks were able to produce and put the finishing touches on projects remotely, thanks in no small part to HPA.

The standards hammered out by creative tech types, consultants, educators and hardware/software providers covered every element of creation, production, editorial and post-production. The standards enable them to use connected tools and technology as a seamless team to produce deliverables as a team, regardless of where the creatives and technologists are located.

When country, city and office lockdowns were mandated, the ability to move production and post work from one specialist to another turned from being a nicety to absolute necessity.

Last year, HPA conducted one “proof of concept” project, The Found Lederhosen, that highlighted state-of-the-art tools like virtual production sets and LIDAR planning. This year, it was pedal to the metal to prove cross town, cross country and global production would really work and which parts might come up short.

HPA management created a great three-hour documentary of how crews produced films on four continents in locations as dispersed as Hollywood, Dubai, Brisbane, London, Mexico City and Ulaanbaatar (Mongolia).

All of the projects were produced/directed by women, with the assistance of 300 volunteer filmmakers from around the world: Ruby Bell in Brisbane guided Tangent; Abeer Abdullah, Dubai created Neo-Bedoin; Sandra De La Silva, Mexico City, produced La Inquiline; Azzaya Lkhagvasuren, Ulaanbaatar created Kintsugi; British producer, writer and actor Bayra Bela produced the comedic horror film, The Found Lederhosen.

To prove the project wasn’t a one-time thing done with smoke and mirrors, each movie will soon be available online at the HPA site. Deliverables will range from HD to 8K and a range of color spaces including rec.709 and rec.2020 and sound mixes such as stereo, 5.1, Dolby Atmos and DTS. Language versions and archiving were also performed using distributed teams.

Oh yeah, and a pandemic was going on, in case you forgot. In addition to developing a whole new set of health and safety guidelines/procedures the industry had never had to deal with before, the teams had to develop/rework/refine their creative, connected, remote, collaborative and cloud-based “off-the-shelf” workflows.

Mandy Walker, an HPA keynoter and supervising DP on the poetic short Tangent, said: “The cloud is part of our future. It’s a big game-changer.”

The HPA Supersession (which really needs a catchier Hollywood title) had regular industry folks — filmmakers, editors, VFX artists, and sound designers, technologists — using real-world tools, technology and workflows in collaboration and alone in their offices/homes to complete the final works.

Each of the productions used different combinations of technologies with different workflows, cloud-based production tasks and video conference participation in the editorial, color grading, mixing sessions.

Amazon, Google and Microsoft clouds were used, and hardware/software was provided by 5th Kind, Adobe, Avid, Bebop, Sohonet, Teradici and more. With the assistance of Dolby Vine Theater, VFX house Framestore and Skywalker Sound, the finished project was a documentary by Origin Point.

Because of the close real-time coordination that was possible with the best tools in the marketplace, there was almost no “fix it in post” needed. In watching it, you quickly realize that the shortest distance between two points isn’t necessarily a straight line.

After the global tests, Joachim “JZ” Zell, a consultant on production/post-production workflow, ACES (Academy Color Encoding System) and imaging science, emphasized that the cloud is ready for today’s production work, which is important because it enables you to tap the best talents to quickly work on a segment in one country while someone else is doing other work somewhere else.

“Transmission processing needs more than just the marketing promise of 5G,” Zell said. “The best solution today is to rely on a strong 4G LTE (long-term evolution) network which is available worldwide and steady amplified signals that are capable of moving high-quality video.”

He emphasized that camera data is growing in file size and that bandwidth capable of moving high-capacity RAW content is lagging behind. He noted that bandwidth requirements are expanding as camera data grows in file size (the shorts were lensed in 4K, 6K or 8K resolution).

Several of the teams were working with ARRI and12K Blackmagic RAW files; and uploading that volume of data to the cloud is … difficult.

Video production files can be huge, and it’s not always practical to push high bit-rate files up to the cloud. Popular video codecs such as XDCAM-50 require 22.5 GB of storage per hour, and a 4K ProRes220 file can require 567 GB.

It may take a few years before project teams will be able to upload full-resolution data to the cloud but HPA and its members are working on the problem.

Until the telecommunications industry delivers on its specifications everywhere or the M&E industry develops an efficient/effective workaround, production and post teams will continue using proxy (low resolution) files of the footage, enabling remote editorial and postproduction.

Of course, the growing file sizes, transfer issues/challenges, data tracking, and coordination of everyone working with the files is one of the reasons the data wrangler has become an important part of the production team.

What the HPA over-the-top test(s) proved is that pandemic and post-pandemic era film production is not only possible but many of the new processes and procedures are not only de rigueur but in a short time will be SOP.

The forced team distancing has been a long, difficult road no one really wanted to travel in this way. What this year’s dramatic HPA Supersession proved is that interactive workflows can perform using multiple technologies across multiple production sites and productions anywhere in the world.

The key is to use the tools in a non-destructive, dynamic manner with common interfaces, underlying data formats and metadata. All of today’s leading-edge applications — Adobe, Avid and the other leading creative tools — have found the best move for the entire industry is to work together smoothly in the cloud.

Producers, directors, cinematographers and key production/post folks are then able to quickly and efficiently access, edit and work on the assets they need to turn RAW data into an exciting visual masterpiece.

At this year’s HPA Tech Retreat, Zell and the team showed the virtual event attendees that global creative production is possible and that it is reliably available now.

Andy Marken [email protected] is an author of more than 700 articles on management, marketing, communications, industry trends in media and entertainment, consumer electronics, software and applications.