The Adobe Macromedia merger is moving out of the stage of press releases and breathless analyst speculation and starting to manifest in the real world. The new Adobe Production Studio includes a Flash export feature. This is the tip of the iceburg, says Adobe VP of product management for Web and Video (and Discreet veteran) Jim Guerard, sitting in a booth at the Moose Café on Main Street. It‘s a level 1 implementation of the potential for integrating some of the world‘s most ubiquitous content creation tools with the world‘s only (so far) interactive web video format..

This intersection means something profound for Adobe‘s graphic design professionals, those people who use Creative Suite tools to make all manner of communication materials. Motion graphics become accessible (required really) in modern graphics communication. Storytelling finally becomes that old idea of multi-media experience that some hapless settlers pursued gallantly with the technology that was available in the 1980s. (Anyone remember that interactive movie at Iwerks where you could sit in a seat, push buttons and vote on the ending to a 70mm film? Talk about versioning.) more

On Park City‘s Main Street a wiry young man playing accordion and wearing a sandwich board promoting the tongue-in-cheek micro-festival Tromadance was told by local cop to stop making music on the sidewalk or face a $150 fine. Virtually all Festival film posters and flyers had been stripped off walls, windows, poles this week. There remained few visual clues that a major film festival was underway in this small mountain resort. Rowdy, chaotic, young, independent - these don‘t mix well with orderly and upscale. Face-lifted to better end, however, was the Film Center (in years past called the Digital Center) in the basement of the Mall on Main Street. Classic Mies van der Rohe Barcelona lounge chairs and chic white backlit walls framed tastefully arranged booths including Adobe, Heuris, Intel, HP, Blackmagic, Sony, Canon, and Panavision. Usually this space is a gray, dimly lit, and trade-show looking, so kudos to Director of Sundance Digital Initiatives Ian Calderon for spiffing up the premises.

Notably the only piece of film equipment at the Film Center was a Panavision Panaflex with a 17.5-75mm Primo Zoom, on hand for direct comparison to a Panavision Genesis, also sporting a 17.5-75mm Primo Zoom. Genesis is Panavision‘s entry in the Digital Cinema camera sweepstakes and uniquely uses a single 35mm-sized custom Sony CCD chip with RGB microfilters for color image capture. The body of Genesis is about the same size as the Panaflex, and the portable Sony SRW-1 HDCAM-SR deck mounted atop the Genesis resembles the Panaflex‘s 35mm magazine. (Both cameras can rear-mount their “magazines” for Steadicam use.) Truth is, Genesis is a beefed up F900 with a giant CCD. Even the menus are the same. 1920 x 1080 output however is 4:4:4 RGB. At present there are 30 Genesis cameras worldwide, with up to 12 used in the recent Australian production of “Superman,” due out this summer. more