April 15
*USCs Entertainment Technology Center*
David Wertheimer - ETC
Wertheimer - ETC is focusing on anytime anywhere content. The work on
digital cinema will suport this.
Wertheimer - The ETC has built an Anytime Anywhere Content Labratory.
The students provide feedback.
*Case Study: 300, Digital Theater to Home*
David Wertheimer - ETC
Philippe Erwin - Executive Producer (Game)
Jeffery Silver - Producer
Chris Watts - Visual Effects Supervisor
The 300 had $63 million budget. It was shot in 60 days. It made $70
million on its opening weekend. It is the 3rd most successful R rated
movie ever. The film as of April 15, 2007 made $200 million domestic and
$200 million foreign. Highest scoring preview the studio ever tested.
Silver - The studio invested $150,000 to do a 2 minute test shot to see
if it was possible to get the look the studio wanted.
Watts - The studio demanded lots of Pre-Vis. It was very useful to
determine camera angles and placement of performers.
Erwin - Good games usually take about 2 years to create. Great games
take 3-4 years.
Erwin - An average time line for game development looks like this:
- Pre-Production - 4 months
- Production - 12 months
- Alpha - 2 months
- Beta - 2 months
- QA - 2 months
- Manufacture and Release - 1 month
Erwin - To make a Day and Date release sometimes the platform is
carefully selected. The PSP was chosen because it required less depth
and complexity for a game to be produced.
Watts - Film was used because it was easier to shoot at high frame
rates. Digital cameras are not as easy to use when shooting at multiple
high speed frame rates.
Erwin - Screenings of the film footage shot during game production
helped the game to match the film.
Erwin - The film shared elements with the game to speed production and
to synch look and feel. However the PSP platform dictated recreating
some assets at lower levels of complexity.
Erwin - There will be an increase in Day and Date releases.
Erwin - The game was developed with porting in mind. Very little work
little work had to be done to get the game to 3 additional platforms.
Really all that needed to be done was up-rezing of some of the assets.
This process only took 4 additional weeks.
Erwin - In 2-3 generations (5-15 years) of game consols, realtime play
will resemble the complexity CGI can create in todays cinema.
Erwin - Today games on Next Gen platforms cost $10-20 million in pure
production budget.
*In-Theater Piracy*
Mike Robinson - MPAA
Steve Weinstein - Motion Picture Laboratories
Annlee Ellingson - BoxOffice Magazine
See "The Piracy Problem" a 3 part series by Annlee Ellingson for
BoxOffice Magazine.
Ellingson - MPAA believes $6 billion were lost to piracy in 2005. 90% of
pirated copies have be cam'd.
Robinson - Cam copies can be of extreemely high quality.
Robinson - Topsites are the first servers to host a pirated file.
Facilitators are the next level of servers who spread the files to
Downloaders.
Robinson - Files can spead globaly in a mater of hours. One recent
example: Friday night a cam copy was made in Guam and Saturday a hard
copy was bought in London.
Robinson - 75% of cam'd copies come from the US (50%) and Canada (25%).
Robinson - A technological solution is required. Hunting for cams is
nearly imposible.
Weinstein - The turnaround time to get professionaly pirated copies out
to the world is about 48 hours. Some of these copies have even been
dubbed and subtitled to regional languages.
Weinstein - The industry is using 3 main methods to stop piracy:
- 1) Forensic watermarking will help the industry to track where the
pirated copies are coming from. Digital cinema helps to create a more
complex watermark system that can include time stamps. This way pirate
opporations can be stoped.
- 2) The second method is to Search out the cams. There are two types of
search. They are optical and electomagnetic. Unfortunately cell phones
interfere with the electromagnetic search and optical can be intrusive.
- 3) The third method is Jamming the cams. The industry is trying to use
optical interference methods because there are health and privacy
concerns with certain electromagnetic technologies.
Weinstein - 3D is not a piracy deterent. One half of the stereoscopic
image can be captured for 2D playback. Or alternatively both halfs could
be copied for a suitable playback device once they become more common
place.
Robinson - Screeners are NOT curently the source of most pirated copies.
Cams are.
Weinstein - Serialized cams or movie recognition technically could be
used to deter piracy. However serial numbers would require industry and
consumer cooperation for registration. Movie recognition would likewise
be problematic requiring all cam manufacturers to have recognition
capabilities built in to their products. That is unlikely due to the
proliferation of cams in all kinds of devices.
Weinstein - Most piracy today is coming through hard-goods, not internet
files.
Note: Several members of the audiance during the break were having
conversations about their various personal piracy methodologies. The
individuals seemed to believe that if they were not selling their copies
or had paid to see the original (rented or purchasd the DVD), then there
was nothing wrong with copying it for personal use.
*Delivery Issues / Inter-Society Digital Cinema Forum*
Bill Kinder - Pixar
Michael Karagosian - MKPE Consulting
ISDCF is another organization investigating standards for delivery
methods, KDMs, naming conventions, scaling methods, and silver screens.
(See www.isdcf.com)
*Digital Cinema Rollout*
J. Wayne Anderson - GBG/R/C Theaters
Bill Campbell - Orpheum Theaters (small exhibitor, 10+ screens)
Jeremy Divine - Rave Motion Pictures (early adopter, medium size
exhibitor, 400+ screens)
Travis Reid - Digital Cinema Implimentation Partners (3 largest
exhibitors, 1500+ screens)
Anderson - There are 4000+ digital cinemas today. 100,000+ traditional
cinemas still to be upgraded.
Anderson - 3D is a novelty but it does help the gross revenue of
theaters.
Campbell - Small exhibitors, like the large chains, are concened with
the cost of digital upgrades.
Campbell - Small exhibitors will be able to play movies sooner under a
digital regime because there is no limit on the amount of prints
available. They will also be able to take advantage of national ad
campaings by releasing simultaneously.
Campell - Small exhibitors will also be able to exhibit in higher
quality by forgoing older prints for digital files.
Campbell - Delivery will also be more reliable to remote theaters
because digital files will be easier to transport (over satalite,
Internet, etc.) than 70lbs of reels.
Campbell - In 2000 the cost to upgrade a single screen to digital would
cost about $120,000-150,000. Today it is slightly less.
Campbell - Film projectors can last as long as 50 years. No one knows
how long digital systems will last before they need to be upgraded.
Campbell - Film projectors are interoperable. Digital projection systems
are not yet.
Divine - Digital has worked very well so far for Rave.
Divine - For Chicken Little, Rave installed 10 digital screens. While
expanding, all new screens installed have been digital. Today 70+% of
the screens owned by the chain are digital.
Divine - All the 3D release the chain has played have done extreemley
well.
Divine - To install they take a screen down on a Sunday by the following
Friday it goes back up.
Reid - Digital Cinema Implimentation Partners plans to roll out digital
screens by 2008.
New Terms -
- Ingestion - This is the process of uploading the DCP to the server at
the theater.
- LMS - ???
- TMS - ???
*DCI Update*
Wade Hannibal - Universal Pictures
Version 1.1 of the DCI specification has been adopted as of today and
version 0.9 of the DCI specification for stereoscopic images has been
released for review as of today. (See www.dcimovies.com)
-- compsed on my hiptop --
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