by Lidia Paulinska | Sep 9, 2016
IDF, September 2016 – At the Intel Developer Forum, while a lot of the discussion was on IoT and smart connections, Intel continued their technology advancement and development of multi-core processors for the consumer computer market. The company held a briefing to announce their 7th generation Core series microprocessor.
The new processors continued the take advantage of the new process technology. The processors use the Intel 14nm+ technology which is an updated and advanced version of the 14nm process released a short time back. This new process is about 12% faster than the standard 14nm process and allows for increased productivity in the design. The new process is not only faster but also lower power so the designs of the new PC’s using them can be thinner and lighter with longer battery life.
The higher density design on the 14nm+ process allowed for the addition of a new graphics engine to be built into the chip that will now support UHD 4K video without an additional external GPU card or chip. This will all the computers for be used for immersive applications such as VR, and high resolution movies.
This year, there are supposed to be over 100 designs from multiple manufacturers that will be released with the new core generation core processors. These designs now support new standard functions such as USB 3.1, Thunderbolt 3, Windows Hello, a pen/stylus, and 4K display panels. These will enhance both gaming/entertainment and standard office productivity. The computers with the new processors, and supporting the new DDR4 DRAM memory and Flash memory storage solutions, are many times faster and more productive than a computer from as little as 5 years ago.
by Lidia Paulinska | Sep 6, 2016
Siggraph, July 2016 – The annual SIGGRAPH event is the meeting place for the academics, innovators, industry and professional media producers to meet and share their experiences. The commonality is the blending of the technology and engineering with the artistic vision that drive cinema, TV and advertising. To help realize these visions on a release schedule, the computers used had to change and became workstations.
Dell’s Precision Workstations had a lot of visibility at the SIGGRAPH 2016 show even though Dell did not have a booth on the show floor and the company did not introduce any new products. We living on providing solutions – said Molly Connolly, WW Industry Strategist, Media & Entertainment – We are looking for symbiotic microcosms. She confirmed that the company understands the balance with software professional community and also their customers. Her focus is on how we can engage with the community and listen what their needs are to make their workstations even better.
Dell’s workstation is a solution for the SIGGRAPH community.
The facts are that you don’t need the workstation if you are just running office and email but everyone who is creating visual and digital content, and those who are using the professional applications for creating the digital content; those professionals need system commonality, multi-processors with multiple cores, ECC memory, professional graphics compute capability, fast storage, fast IO & networking. All that workstation provides.
Workstation are for time critical applications and they are designed not to fail and require the user re-crate the content. If you running a 3 day rendering task, and you know that your film has to be in theaters in 8 weeks, the workstation is the solution for you. The same for broadcasting space. Broadcast cannot let the screen go dark or have the content interrupted.
Dell’s workstations for M&E Tech space enables the magic to happen – said Molly. Dell’s workstation has been used by the last five winner of Academy Awards for Visual Effects. Molly went on to state that – “We’ve been very fortunate. Dell precision workstation has been recognized as leader in performance.” This recognition has been for both the desktop and portable workstations.
This capability is what is driving Dell as one of the dominant platforms for the creation of VR content. The workstations are designed to support all the pieces needed for this new stereoscopic and 360 degree content marketplace, and are being quickly adopted as the computer of choice for the VR creators.
Looking at the process. Artists create the content – mostly at the workstation, they manage the content – typically on server, then they deliver the content and you enjoy it (or consume it). The workstations, with their fault tolerant design, construction for long hours of continuous operation and capacity for high performance computing allow this process to happen on a predictable schedule, freeing the artists to create their vision, rather than worry about the computing.
by Lidia Paulinska | Sep 3, 2016
Fathom events, August 2016 – On Wednesday, August 24, 2016, Fathom events offered a one-night only screening of the classic American film, “Thelma & Louise,” featuring Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon respectively in the title roles. This showing was in celebration of the films 25th anniversary.
Film critic Roger Ebert in his syndicated column of January 1, 1991 praised the film as being a classic in the expansive, visionary tradition of the American road picture. “It celebrates the myth of two carefree souls piling into a 1956 T-Bird and driving out of town to have some fun and raise some hell. We know the road better than that, however, and we know the toll it exacts: Before their journey is done, these characters will have undergone a rite of passage, and will have discovered themselves.
What sets “Thelma & Louise” apart from other great classics of traditional road movie like “Bonnie & Clyde,” “Easy Rider,” and “Rain Man,” and iconic buddy movies such as “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” is the fact that the heroes are both women.
They are initially presented as two very ordinary working-class girlfriends, Louise, a waitress at a small Arkansas town who lives with an Elvis look-alike musician, and Thelma, a housewife married to a verbally abusive buffoon who’s a self-important rug salesman. To escape their hum-drum lives, the girls decide to hit the road for a weekend of fun, but through successive, unanticipated events, often hilarious, yet equally as often, toxic and life-changing, the weekend is extended into a microcosm of an almost cosmic release of these two women’s inner, repressed selves. It’s as if we’re witnessing the free-flowing liberation of their inner-most psyches. They bare progressively their souls in the name of freedom throughout their journey and ultimately pay the price. They seem to take on a universal every-woman identity, one which few have the courage or the means to explore.
The film has two additional characters, understandably not included in the credits: the first is the harsh, barren, and unforgiving Bad Lands through which they journey seeking “a good time;” the second equally as harsh and brutal is the overwhelmingly male-dominated milieu in which they live, visually engulfed by big-rigs, 18-wheelers, oil tankers, predatory truck stops and run-down gas stations, all symbolizing the threatening and palpably dangerous environment in which they must survive. It’s all hard-edge and steel and one can almost smell the oil and stench of burning rubber.
But like a couple of unexpected, fragile daisies growing through a pile of concrete rubble, Thelma and Louise grow and mature spiritually in unanticipated ways, precariously pinched between a New Life of self-awareness and utter destruction.
This is not a “chick flick” or “women’s lib” gesture, but rather a ground-breaking cinematic milestone, in what may be viewed as the emergence on the popular screen of the female archetype in which the essence of womankind is given full and very moving expression.
Produced by Ridley Scott & Mimi Polk
Genre: Drama, Road Movie, Thriller
Rated: R
128 minutes
Cast: Susan Sarandon as Louise, Geena Davis as Thelma, Harvey Keitel as Hal and Brad Pitt as J.D. (debut)
Review by Hugh McMahon and Lidia Paulinska
by Lidia Paulinska | Aug 30, 2016
Siggraph, July 2016 – In an interview with Jeffrey Ovadya, Director of Sales and Marketing for Vicon Motion Systems, we got a chance to hear about their latest mocap camera and also Project Katana which was being demonstrated on the conference expo floor at SIGGRAPH 2016.
Motion Capture, or MoCap has moved to the mainstream for VFX production in movies, TV, advertising and most content creation. It has even expanded to support automated PTZ camera movement for live TV production using virtual studios. The primary product from the company is high speed cameras for motion capture that are mounted to a scaffolding system or framing to define a 3D space where the movement is captured. The new cameras and software are designed to be smarter and easier to use, as mocap moves from the professional space to the prosumer market.
For simplicity in the use of mocap, Jeff said that Vicon has started a program called “Project Katana”. The idea behind it is to have a system that in real time will create a mocap skeleton model ad bring the data into systems like Final Cut. The goal is to have final quality, fully rigged and articulated skeletons of the mocap session at the end of each shot. This will provide full skeletons of all characters in the 3D capture space, at the end of each day, along with the production dailies. In order to perform this analysis, the studio setup and network has to be self-healing. The data environment for motion and the rigging connections in the project are being done using a Matlab mathematical modeling core.
The booth at the SIGGRAPH expo was showing the system however there is not release date or a “product name” for when Project Katana will be released.
To address this shift towards simplicity, Vicon has introduced the Vero camera. It is available in two models the v1.3 which is a 1.3MP camera and the v2.2 which is a 2.2MP camera. Designed specifically for mocap applications, the cameras are an 850nm IR greyscale camera that operates at either 250FPS for the v1.3 or 330FPS for v2.2. The high frame rates on the cameras allow for real time and full range live motion capture.
The cameras have a variable focus lens from 6mm-12mm for use in low angle and high angle applications. A major design simplification for the user is the single cable connection. The cameras have standard RJ45/Cat5e Ethernet connector that serves to be the interface for the camera control, data connection from the units and power the units using the POE specification. For this single cable connection system, the cameras have been designed to only require 12W to operate. Like the prior generation and larger camera the Vantage, the Vero has on-board sensors that monitor camera position and temperature to ensure optimal performance.
by Lidia Paulinska | Aug 21, 2016
Siggraph, July 2016 – Due to the complexities of scheduling a large cast of actors and crew it is difficult to move the production to locations around the world. Due to tax rebates and incentives many movies are often shot in just a few locations. What is the solution for a production that is supposed to span the world? That was the situation that was presented to the production of Captain America Civil War which was primarily shot in Atlanta Georgia.
At the Siggraph this year the lead production session was dedicated to “The Making of Marvel’s Captain America: Civil War” movie. Victoria Alonso, Executive Vice President of Physical Production from Marvel Studios, Dan Delleeuw, VFX Supervisor and Swen Gillberg, Associate VFX Supervisor from Marvel Studios, Jean Lapointe, Compositing Supervisor from ILM, and Greg Steele, VFX Supervisor from Method Studios were discussing the production process of the movie.
As we already know the film was primarily shot in Atlanta Georgia and filmmakers utilize VFX to bring locations from around the world to Atlanta digitally. The presenters were detailing the stats for this film. The numbers for the 135 minutes film Captain America: Civil War were as follow: 2,782 finals were created; 2,745 finals were used in the movie, 415 shared shots between multiple VFX teams, 194,608 frames. The production team created description of total 12 characters that play in the movie including: Captain America, Falcon, Scarlet Witch, Winter Soldier, Hawkeye, Ant Man, Iron Man, Black Widow, War Machine, Vision, Black Panther and Spider Man. Every character was evaluated under the criteria such as: Fighting, Agility, Strength, Endurance, Intuition or Psyche. For example the Winter Soldier: Fighting – Incredible, Agility, Strength and Endurance – Remarkable, Intuition – Excellent, Psyche – Typical.
For those who think that the developing story of the film like Captain America is a linear process: Script > Look Development > Story Boards > Previs, they are mistaken. The panelists showed that is more like a matrix of those elements and multiple teams working and a lot of material needed to be shot. Many times short post schedules sometimes required that they started on the assets before the foreground was shot or the sequence was fully realized. They don’t always stick to what was originally planned with pre-vis or story board. As a result a lot additional material was shot to cover all options such as time of day, weather, and any camera angle.
The production of Captain America Civil War was collaborating work of 18 teams worldwide working on a single project.
