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Steele further explained that he will maintain ownership of the in-theater equipment, and try to generate revenues from alternative content such as corporate business seminars and virtual concerts.
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| John Woo's "The Hostage." |
“The codec bit-stream for decode has been locked with Windows Media 9 Series,” said Tim Harader, business development, Windows Digital Media Division, Microsoft. “Future improvements will focus on encoding and enhancements through Windows Media Player playback.”
Encoding for the films is being done at New York-based DuArt Film and Video Laboratories.
“Depending on the source master, any of several processes may take place, including HD telecine, color correction, resizing, and pre-processing before the source is encoded into Windows Media 9 Series format for distribution,” explained Harader. “For theatrical, you could expect that all the same tedious mastering techniques and the same amount of time would apply to a Windows Media 9 Series digital release as in any digital or 35mm release. When it comes to compression, the same logic applies — you will spend much less time on a low-res, low bit-rate version than on a theatrical release master.”
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Production and Postproduction
The production and postproduction of “The Hire” shorts, however, remained a familiar workflow although the D-cinema distribution was unexplored territory.
The shorts feature high production value; one source who asked not to be named estimated a budget of $2-million per short.
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| "Ticker" director Joe Carnahan. |
Just how elaborate was the filmmaking process? Director Carnahan told Film & Video that in his film, “Ticker,” visual effects house Asylum (which also did effects for Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down), completed more digital gunfire shots for BMW than it did for Black Hawk.
Asylum executive producer David Hofflich explained that for the BMW short “Ticker,” Asylum created 80 effects shots, including multiple sequences of automatic weapon shots. For “Ticker” and “Beat the Devil,” Asylum created CG dirt and other elements using Alias|Wavefront’s Maya, completed a second unit shoot for bullets and fire elements, and used Discreet’s Flame and Inferno for compositing in 2k. “Ticker” was output at Asylum using its Arri Laser.
Complete Post handled finishing on the short films, as well as trailers and teasers. Ron Barr edited on Discreet’s Fire, finishing in 2k. Masters were created in NTSC for TV and in HD D5 for digital cinema presentation. Steve Rundell and Beth Dewey executive produced.
Bob George of Minneapolis-based production company Drive Thru served as compressionist to bring the three new short films to the web. George reported that he acquired 10-bit video of the films from Media 100’s 844/X. He brought that into Discreet’s Cleaner for compression, using Cleaner 5.1 for the PC for RealMedia and Windows Media encoding, and the now-shipping Cleaner 6 for the Mac for Apple’s Quicktime. George noted that Cleaner supported the codecs that he needed and allowed him to “maintain as high quality as possible throughout the process.” A key feature was Cleaner’s intelecine feature. That allows a user to take a 24P movie that has already been changed to 30fps and edited, and return it to 24 frames by removing the 3:2 pulldown and interlacing artifacts.
Discreet reported that while it is not yet available in a shipping product, the company is testing Windows Media 9 Series support for Cleaner, internally and with select customers.
Clearly, Microsoft is pursuing a broad strategy for the platform. According to Eric Cullen, product manager, Windows Digital Media Division, Microsoft, “We’re focused on the film production process, including dailies that allow for remote collaboration as well as exhibition using Windows Media 9 Series. We think that from production applications such as digital dailies and digital asset management, to promotion devices such as digital media trailers on the Web to film distribution and exhibition, filmmakers and other film industry leaders are recognizing the economic value of integrating digital media into their work environments.”
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