Archive of the 3D Category

I call Thursday NAB’s “rump” day, a short, casual afternoon of thin crowds, when tired booth personnel slip away to visit competitors and otherwise view the show floor for themselves. It’s my favorite day.

For instance, I swung by RED’s tent and found no lines. I stepped immediately inside and like those before me, ogled the aluminum prototypes of the upcoming 5K Epic (the small boxy one) and 3K Scarlet (“3K for $3K”) rotating behind glass. more

Serendipity on the show floor makes for impromptu sessions. Tuesday I ran into cinematographer Bill Bennett in front of the Sony F35 parked on a dolly in front of Brand Pro’s booth. Not much to say about the F35–35 means its newly developed single CCD is the size of a Super 35mm film frame–except that it’s as impressively thought out as last year’s F23 on which it’s based, and like its double first cousin, Panavision’s Genesis, did once, it sets a new highwater mark in 4:4:4 RGB high-end digital cinematography cameras.

Well, for $250,000 without lens, it ought to. A lot to pay in weak dollars for tighter depth-of-field and better dynamic range than the F23, plus 1-50 fps variable speed in 4:4:4 (compared to F23’s 1-30). But you do get every pixel you pay for. This is a full-on 1920×1080 RGB image—no Bayer interpolation of phantom R and B pixels here, no sir. Leave that to lowly CMOS cameras like the REDs, Silicon Imaging 2Ks and Minis, and Arri D21s (at NAB upgraded from D20 with new 2K RAW data output mode). more

Monday’s dharma at NAB was about bigness and smallness, and I’m still thinking about it.

Yesterday Tim Robbins gave the keynote speech. Ever since FCC Chairman Newton Minow gave his famous “vast wasteland” speech at NAB in 1961, it seems NAB has played it safe. Past keynotes I’ve attended have featured Ronald Reagan (attacked on stage by an ice sculpture-wielding assailant, yards from where I was sitting), Barry Diller, Richard Parsons of Time-Warner, James Cameron and the like. Safe Republican choices, not likely to get former NAB CEO and good ol’ boy Eddie Fritts in any Washington hot water.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the Convention Center this year.

How Tim Robbins got invited to give the keynote is anyone’s guess. But there he was, on stage, facing a large morning audience of radio and TV broadcasters, cable owners and mixed-media types. more

When a company with a product line as big and deep as Autodesk makes its NAB presentation, you’ll forgive them for thinking like an auto company and describing the updated apps as their 2009 product lineup.

Trevor Boyer has already posted notes about Autodesk’s Sunday press conference. While each of the major products announced have plenty of notable and usable improvements, I’ll vote for lower price points and ability to work with compressed media as the most significant moves that herald future trends. Smoke 2009’s $64,000 tab for a turnkey hardware/software finishing machine–storage included–is a great breakthrough. For the first time, (fiscal) hope is offered to those many mid-level shops which blanch when faced with six-figure offerings from Autodesk, Quantel, et.al. (At present, this was described as an introductory price available through July 21, 2008. It’s a little unclear what happens after that; maybe if enough new buyers are attracted, the price will hold.) more

While portable HDDs are turning up on HDV camcorders around the show floor, the promise of portable 4K field production came a bit closer with the pending release of Codex Portable from Codex Digital. Now on display in the Band Pro booth, the Portable (scheduled to deliver this June) is shown capturing 1080p, 4:4:4 data from a Sony F23 camera. The lightweight disk recorder– a pricier solid-state version will also be available at some point this year– is about the size of the toaster and records HD, 2K, and 4K from Sony, ARRI, Panavision, Panasonic, Thomson, and Dalsa cameras. more

The Digital Cinema Summit continues this morning with sleep-inducing updates like “Thwarting In-Theater Piracy” and “Report from NATO,” but the morning’s first exchange, “The Exhibition Perspective: Truth and Consequences in the D-Cinema Rollout” was chock full of provocative insights.

Turns out the U.S. has taken a long lead in Digital Cinema, with nearly 5000 digital cinema screens in commercial service, exceeding the entire rest of the world by a factor of 10. For instance, since Nov. 2005, over 300 Hollywood movies have been released digitally. Wendy Aylsworth, VP of Technology at Warners, said further that while all Hollywood films today undergo a D.I. in post, the primary purpose of the D.I. is the DCI (Digital Cinema Initiative standard) projection master, and that the color-corrected files crafted for film output are created secondarily. If true, that’s a genuine “see” change. more

Iconix had been on my radar as manufacturers of (relatively) affordable, high-quality HD pan-tilt-zoom cameras that are used in broadcast applications such as award shows and sporting events. These have a 2K capture capability, but their fiber back ends would output up to 1080 HD.

Until now, of course. Under the leadership of CEO Bruce Long, who’s had the reins only since October, Iconix has expanded its focus - and that’s putting it rather mildly. A former visual effects supervisor who’s also worked at Technicolor and as the president of the National Lampoon, Long speculates that he’s the only CEO on the showfloor who’s got a movie that he exec-produced in theaters (National Lampoon’s Bag Boy). He’s convinced that one of the ways studios will be able to keep attracting moviegoers to theaters is stereoscopic 3D releases.” more

Today’s schedule at the Central Hall Content Theater concentrates on VFX, Animation and New Digital Workflows. Hear about animation and ambition on the Indian subcontinent at 9:15; Barry Sonnefeld and team talk about the look on Pushing Daisies at 10:45. At noon my dear colleague Carolyn Giardina of The Hollywood Reporter moderates a VES session with an eclectric group of 3D and traditional animators on the blending of techniques. Horton Hears a Who! filmmakers will take the stage at 3:30.

On the workflow front it’s the F23 and the Red Camera. The F23 session (1:15) focuses on onset workflow; at 2pm there’s a case study about Red/FCP workflow.

To find the Content Theater, look for the teal-ish tube tent in front of Central Hall with eight or so flatscreens playing a come-on loop, pass through the double doors into the building and start walking straight ahead about 100 feet, maybe less. Content Theater is off a little to your right.

This is the 3D NAB.

Most of yesterday, the Content Theater in Central Hall cycled through case studies and insights from U2 3D, Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D, NBA 3D, Bugs 3D, and a live 3D transmission from 3ality Digital’s posh facility in Burbank. (I think this is the first time in history that “posh” and “3D” have appeared in the same sentence). The people–Peter Anderson, for example, Steve Schklair or Charlotte Huggins–who have literally devoted their lives to this incarnation of the moving image, are not so much vindicated as relieved I imagine. Though it’s tough to ask them now, swamped as they are by their sudden relevence. The subset of filmmaking in which you can, in all seriousness, call yourself Phil Captain 3D McNally, has finally emerged from the underfunded frontier into the glare of real life commerce. more

My taxi from McCarran Airport makes a beeline down Paradise Road–a corridor of clutter and billboards hawking spent acts like Bill Bixby, Jamie Farr, and “comedian of the year” Rita Rudner–to the Las Vegas Convention Center and NAB 2008. It’s good to be back.

At LVCC I encounter the weekend calm before the storm. The show floor is being readied for the thick, swarming crowds that will arrive on cue Monday. True to form, incongruities are in place too. At the LVCC’s entrance sits parked a cube truck dressed as a giant tube TV with eight-foot rabbit ears. Ohhh-kay…

What catches my eye is the message displayed on the big mock screen. “What is the digital television (DTV) transition?”, it asks the unassuming passerby. more