2Pac, wearing only his 6-pac and low riding baggy jeans, thrilled a new audience and stunned his fans when he appeared in a hauntingly reincarnated ‘hologram’ shouting, “What the fu-k is up Coachella?”

So lifelike was his performance that The Brief had to conjure an urban legend: what if Tupac is still alive? What if he is actually hiding out in Cuba as some of his fans insist? After all, nobody saw his corpse. And what about Tupac’s prolific posthumous output? But bizarre theories aside, audiences at Coachella had only Dr. Dre to thank for making Tupac’s virtual appearance as badass as real life.

Don’t take my word for it; watch and come back:

Did you think you saw a ghost? Me too. And, frankly, we did. We saw a variation of a ghost illusion. Pepper’s Ghost to be exact. A visual effect discovered back in the 19th century that relies on an angled piece of glass to create a ghostly image. And as back to the future as it may sound, virtually the same thing that was happening back in 1862 happened in 2012 at Coachella. With one technical difference: “In the Victorian era, Pepper’s Ghost was used to reflect actual, physical objects or actors, making them appear “dimensional” in ways that projected or computer-generated imagery, typically used today, do not.”*

Dr. Dre had a spectacular vision. To bring the illusion of Tupac “back to life” to perform at Coachella. First stop Digital Domain – the Hollywood visual effects company that won an Academy Award for the work they did on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Four months later, Digital Domain handed over computer generated graphics of Tupac’s physical characteristics and movements which were captured from recorded performances.*

About the difficulty in creating those graphics, Ed Ulbrich, C.E.O. of Digital Domain, said “To create a completely synthetic human being is the most complicated thing that can be done… performances of the rapper’s hits ‘Hail Mary’ and ‘2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted,’ weren’t simply old ones captured on film and repurposed: This is not found footage. This is not archival footage. This is an illusion.”*

But still a giant step from Coachella. To bring the computer graphics and projection to the stage, Dr. Dre enlisted AV Concepts in San Diego. They utilized the Musion Systems Ltd. patented Mylar screen - which steps up all the above to a gangsta spectacle that transcends.

Visionaries are inspiring. The rest of us can steal. Now that you know how and where it can be done, you only need the right brand, a budget over $100,000 and you can envision an out-of-home experience that may blow peoples’ minds. Just imagine:

1. A flash mob over mobile going out to 6 cities across North America.
2. They congregate to witness a staged event of (say) Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel. (Easy for me to say!)
3. Whilst ambassadors for Chanel hand out samples of their heavenly new fragrance. And you can download the Sistine Chapel as a free screensaver.
Or,
4. More mundane and done by AV Concepts with other CEO’s dead and alive - Steve Jobs makes one of his otherworldly new product presentations for 2013.

Of course, with a healthy budget you can always go the traditional route. But judging from here, you might challenge yourself to thrill people.

MORE VIRTUAL TO DIE FOR
Madonna live with Gorillaz hologram using the same Musion Systems Ltd. patented Mylar screen in this illusion used for the 2006 Grammy Awards. Click and enjoy:

Séance Sources

* Rapper’s De-Light: Tupac ‘Hologram’ May Go On Tour’ Wall Street Journal, TECHNOLOGY Monday, April 16, 2012
* Report: Tupac Hologram at Coachella Cost at Least $100K Rolling Stone Music, April 16, 2012
* “Hologram” in Marketing: An Uncanny Ally? By Andrew Pryor Mashed Marketing, April 23, 2012

—–

Comment to Linda at this address: thebrief@to411.com.
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The survey, the results of which are being released Monday, just as the 2012 International Consumer Electronics Show gets underway in Las Vegas, finds that the number of consumers who watch broadcast or cable television in a typical week plunged to 48% in 2011 from 71% in 2009. The same survey, which canvased about 1,000 consumers in each of 10 countries – Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Russia, South Africa, Sweden and the Untied States – also found that the number of consumers who intend to buy a TV set in the next 12 months fell to 32% in 2011 from 35% in 2010.

Those are absolutely stunning results, which is accurate suggest that consumer behavior on television watching is changing faster than anyone had expected. There have been hints before – like the much higher than expected Q4 data on video streaming from Netflix. The company recently said that customers streamed 2 billion hours of video in the fourth quarter.

Accenture’s explanation for the trend is that the TV is losing ground to other devices – mobile phones, laptops and tablets – in the battle for consumer eyeballs. The survey does not conclude that everyone has suddenly stopped watching video and starting reading books and listening to the radio; rather, consumers are simply doing their watching in different places, on different devices.

Among the survey group, 53% own a smartphone, up from 28% in 2010. Tablet ownership jumped to 12%, from 8% in 2010. The percentage of the survey group that intends to buy a smartphone jumped to 27%, from 24%. For tablets, the number of consumers who plan to make a purchase jumped to 16%, from 8% a year ago.

Note that 44% of tablet owners stream media content; 43% download apps at least once a week.

A third of all consumers watch shows, movies or videos on their PCs. 10% watch programming on their smartphones.

Also noteworthy is the way the cloud is changing consumer behavior. 56% of the respondant say they have changed their behavior due to online services and cloud computing. Nearly a third have stopped or almost stopped renting or buying DVDs. 37% say they play online games. 26% stream online content.

And bad news for TV makers: just 25% of the survey group were interested in 3D, and likewise just 25% wanted to be able to access the Web via their televisions.

So, who is hurt by this? Well, television manufacturers, for one. Earlier Sunday, the Consumer Electronics Association predicted that TV sales in 2012 would up a crummy 1%, after just 2% growth in 2011, consistent with the slackening intent to purchase numbers in the survey. This is also a wake-up call for the multi-channel video providers – the cable, telco and satellite video systems. The data would suggest that cord-cutting is becoming a lot less theoretical than it used to be: consumers increasingly are finding the content they want to watch online, whether through legal means or otherwise. For content producers, the news would seem to be more mixed: while they don’t want to see content pirated, it also shows that the thirst for quality content is high; but consumers want to watch it where they want, when they want, on the devices they want.

For everyone in the television market – cable cos, content producers and set manufacturers – dramatic change is afoot.

Source: Forbes

The Sundance Institute has partnered with distributor New Video to offer select Sundance films through six Web options: YouTube, Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, Hulu, Amazon and SundanceNOW. It’s uncertain what the price to watch these films will be.

The service is open to every film ever shown at the festival, or brought to a Sundance lab, or given a Sundance grant, as the New York Times reports. “Filmmakers don’t surrender their rights. They (17 so far, with thousands of potential participants) can opt to go with any or all of the half-dozen sites. They have, in essence, a guaranteed means of distribution,” the article goes on to say.

This initiative hopes to give distribution deals to filmmakers who may not have been fortunate enough to ink deals with studios during the well-regarded festival. The films get an audience, even if the numbers can’t count towards box office totals.

YouTube hinted it would be giving users access to Sundance’s vast library. In 2010, the video-sharing site said it would offer the rental option of five independent movies featured at recent Sundance Film Festivals. Costing $4 each, the rental streaming library included the Oscar winner The Cove.

Robert Redford, the actor responsible for founding the Utah film festival in 1984, is ecstatic about the arrangement, telling the Times: “…it’s all kind of exciting for us, because there’s a whole category of orphan films that we think are really quite good, but they don’t necessarily get picked up by distributors, who may be a little more mainstream in their thinking.”

In an earlier press release, New Video president Susan Margolin said, “The filmmaker spends five to six years making their film, gets into Sundance, the fairy dust settles, and there’s no distribution. That’s unacceptable. In today’s environment there’s extremely powerful platforms that can be used to distribute these works.”

The exact films to be available aren’t listed online, so interested film lovers will need to search on those six online outlets for specific films.
The next Sundance Film Festival takes place Jan. 19 to 28 in Park City, Utah.

Source: Digital Journal

The Academy announced on Wednesday that the field has been narrowed from 15 films to 10 by the Visual Effects Branch’s Executive Committee. The remaining films include all of the presumed favorites, including “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” (below), “Hugo,” “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2″ and “Transformers: Dark of the Moon.”

Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life,” which has a 20-minute effects sequence early in the film, also moved on to the next round, a “bakeoff” in which clips from the 10 semi-finalists will be shown to voters at the Academy on January 19.

After that presentation, branch members will vote and the field of 10 will be cut in half to produce the final five nominees.

The most surprising cut from the list of 15 is probably “Super 8,” with its spectacular train-crash sequence. Other films that were eliminated are “Cowboys & Aliens,” “Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows,” “Sucker Punch” and “Thor.”

The shortlist:

“Captain America: The First Avenger”

“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2″

“Hugo”

“Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol”

“Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides”

“Real Steel”

“Rise of the Planet of the Apes”

“Transformers: Dark of the Moon”

“The Tree of Life”

“X-Men: First Class”

Source: Reuters

PS Mobile takes the key features of the regular PS website and simplifies them for the smaller mobile screens. PS Mobile is designed for industry professionals to view contact, product and news information quickly and easily as more of them switch to mobile browsing.

“Since the launch of our new website we have seen mobile traffic increase, and the time has come to provide our customers with a mobile site that meets their need for convenient access to information anywhere, at any time, through their mobile devices,” said Scott Hosmer, Director of Marketing and Communications for PS Production Services Ltd. “People need information and they need it now. The new PS Mobile website was designed to provide exactly that,” said Hosmer.

In addition to providing a streamlined version of the standard website PS Mobile includes a production toolbox section that is available exclusively on the new mobile site. The production toolbox offers users quick and easy access to reference material such as gel colour correction charts, beam width information, film and television electrical guidelines, illuminance tables and much more.

To access the new site users simply need to visit www.psps.com on their mobile device and they will automatically be directed to the mobile friendly version. Users looking to access the company’s full website on their mobile device can still do so with a single click on any page. PS Mobile has been designed and optimized to operate on various operating systems, including the popular iPhone OS and Android OS.

To coincide with the launch of PS Mobile the company also announced its Go Mobile and Win Contest. When users visit the site they will be able to enter the contest for a chance to win an iPad. The contest will run from September 27 to October 27.

The FinePix Real 3D W3 was launched by Fujifilm today and features a 3.5-inch LCD screen, an auto 3D mode, stereo sound recording, the ability to shoot 3D video in High Definition, and comes equipped with a Mini HDMI 1.4 port.

Fujifilm senior category manager of consumer and professional products, Matt Dole, said the new digital camera demonstrates the company’s commitment to 3D technology.

“Fujifilm has made 3D imaging more accessible to all consumers by enabling them to shoot in 3D HD and then easily view their photos and movies on most 3D TV systems,” said Dole.

The 3D camera works by taking two successive shots from different viewpoints, which also means that in 2D the camera can be set in separate modes to take two different photos in the same instant.

Source: Current.com.au

“My great concern is that the industry will not be ready,” Konrad von Finckenstein told a breakfast gathering of producers, broadcasters and content creators at the Banff World Television Festival.

“There will be requests for delays, we will have a crisis on our hands. It must not be allowed to happen,” said the chairman of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission.

The federal government wants digital signals to be converted from analog in August, 2011, but Mr. von Finckenstein suggested a trial run begin as early as April, 2011, in Winnipeg and Quebec City to work out any possible problems.

He pointed to the painful transition south of the border in June, 2009, when the U.S. government made the switch after a delay. More than $1.5-billion (U.S.) was spent on subsidies to help consumers pay for converter boxes to receive the new signals.

Mr. von Finckenstein urged cable and satellite providers to mount a widespread consumer education campaign in Canada. He also pressed the federal government to come up with a fund to help consumers pay for the added costs that may arise.

He warned of a widespread backlash if people who currently pay nothing for TV are suddenly forced to invest in cable or satellite signals.

“Clearly, it’s politically untenable to say you have no choice, you have to go to satellite,” said Mr. von Finckenstein.

An estimated 900,000 Canadian households that rely on antennas don’t have televisions equipped to receive new digital signals. About another 44,000 won’t have access to TV content at all unless they invest in a satellite dish.

Mr. von Finckenstein said the scope of the undertaking must not be underestimated.

“Everything so far has been guesswork. I hope as a result of this we get more [clarity] on it.”

Source: CTV News

“The Hurt Locker” editors, husband-and-wife team Bob Murawski and Chris Innis, earned the trophy for a dramatic film, topping a category that included “Avatar,” “District 9,” “Star Trek” and “Up in the Air.”

“It’s a great way to spend Valentine’s Day, to win an award with my wife,” Murawski said onstage, adding with a smile, “she did most of the work.”

“The Hangover” editor Debra Neil-Fisher, ACE, topped the category for comedy or musical, which included nominees “500 Days of Summer,” “Julie & Julia,” “A Serious Man” and “It’s Complicated.”

Editor Kevin Nolting earned the award for best edited animated feature for “Up,” leading a group that included “Coraline” and “Fantastic Mr. Fox.” Additionally, “The Cove” editor Geoffrey Richman won best edited documentary, a category rounded out by nominees “Food, Inc.” and “This Is It.”

An Eddie award winner often goes on to win the Oscar for editing. This year, only Eddie winner “The Hurt Locker” is also nominated for an Oscar in the category. The Academy Awards’ editing nominees this year also include “Avatar” and “District 9,” both of which were Eddie nominees, “Inglourious Basterds” and “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire.”

ACE television winners included “30 Rock,” “Breaking Bad,” “Dexter,” “Grey Gardens” and “The Deadliest Catch.”

Christopher Guest presented Rob Reiner with the ACE Golden Eddie Filmmaker of the Year award. With a nod to their collaboration “This Is Spinal Tap,” Reiner commented that he and Guest “have a friendship that goes way past 11.”

Paul F. LaMastra, ACE, and Neil Travis, ACE, were honored with career achievement awards. LaMastra’s career in television editing includes Primetime Emmys for “Caroline?” in 1990 and “Wallenberg: A Hero’s Story” in 1985. Travis won an Oscar and ACE Eddie for “Dances With Wolves.”

“Editors are the unsung heroes of film,” said Joel McHale of NBC’s “Community,” who hosted the ceremony. “When the material is good, you help make it the masterpiece that it is. When it is bad, you are like a shock trauma doctor trying to save a patient who has been shot nine times and hit by a tractor.”

ACE president Randy Roberts presented the organization’s first technical excellence award to Avid Technology for its nonlinear editing system, the Media Composer, which during the early ’90s played a pivotal role in transitioning the industry from film to computer-based editing and today remains an industry leader.

“You have seen the product transform from a machine taking up half the room to being able to run on a laptop,” Avid CEO Gary Greenfield said, thanking the editors. “You have challenged, and continue to challenge us, to get better. A few years ago, a group of ACE board members reach out to Avid and gave us some very powerful, very eye-opening feedback. Avid’s success today is based on one thing: Listening to you.”

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

Last August, MLB.com announced that it was to stream full-length live games for the iPhone and iPod. Now, it is taking that to the iPad.

“We couldn’t just take our existing iPhone app and make it bigger,” Evans said proudly when presenting his iPad app. “This big display really allows us to create a much more immersive experience.”

Alongside the live full-screen video will be onscreen stats and data: You can scroll through a team’s lineup on the bottom, click on players to get specific data, and there is a scoreboard on the top.

Emerging media producer Gary Hayes says about this new the digitalisation of television: “We are finally entering an era where the second and third screen – the PC and the mobile – are truly converging.” The increasing links between social media and TV are now embodied in a single device.

Live sport wherever you go is likely to be the iPad’s most attractive video offering, but it won’t be the only one. A generation has grown up used to watching TV series and movies on laptops, and the iPad might be a more handy alternative. “The larger and shareable display of the iPad means on-demand TV and streamed web video/TV can retain its ’scale’ and integrity while finally becoming portable, but more importantly become a viable second ‘networked’ screen actually in the TV room itself,” says Hayes.

iTunes has a TV and movie store with a catalogue of over 50,000 TV episodes and 8,000 films, 2,000 of them in high definition video – as Steve Jobs proudly demonstrated with a clip from Pixar’s animated film Up. And both might be taken soon somewhere else.

“The device though opens up many possibilities for interactive producers such as rich, synchronized web pages and apps alongside broadcast TV and the ‘friendly/social’ non-laptop device will encourage more ‘group’ activity in the same room,” says Hayes.

Source: The Guardian

HD Expo is a two day interactive conference, exposition and networking event featuring topic driven panels, educational workshops and hands-on technology that gives attendees the tools and knowledge to compete in a changing technological world.

To check out Camera Department’s in-depth coverage, including hands-on previews of the new Sony PMW-EX1R XDCAM EX, click here.