Siggraph

Much like children, technology eventually needs to find its own way in the world, and the slow but steady development path of Cinital’s Previzion HD studio (basically, an advanced camera motion tracking/previsualization technology for visual effects work) exemplifies that. I had a nice chat with Cinital’s founder, Eliot Mack, this morning and the very first thing he told me illustrated that point. Previzion, Eliot explained, was very much developed for the broadcast/corporate end of the video production spectrum initially, only to find itself instead drawing interest primarily from the Hollywood visual effects community for high-end work as a possible tool for efficient on-set previz in real time.

It’s in that arena that Cinetal is primarily testing the technology today, and in recent months, the company has been putting the system through its paces at Stargate Digital in Los Angeles–a company known for doing extensive greenscreen work for high-end computer graphics projects. Eliot says the process has brought the technology to “a whole new level of performance,” by solving or improving issues related to the system’s keyer, real time depth of field, better tracking, and rapid encoding of HD background imagery, among other things.

He seemed confident that the system will shortly be applied to a major Hollywood feature for the first time, but what I f ound particularly refreshing was that Eliot admitted it’s been a long haul to develop the system to meet Hollywood’s specifications, and that it hasn’t always been easy going.

“About three years-plus of very hard work,” he told me. “We had the system quite advanced for some time. But now, we’re working on that little difference between being almost there and being all the way there. We’ve made such great strides in how we match lighting, even sunlight, for instance. We’ve got more work to do, but we’re pleased with how things are shaping up.”

–Michael Goldman