“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.

“Just a few years back, this would have been impossible because the only support in feature animation was for CG,” says “Coraline” director Henry Selick, the American director most closely associated with the format thanks to “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and “James and the Giant Peach.”

The international stop-motion community is so small that many of the artists involved in competing 2009 releases have actually worked with one another before. Selick and Anderson intended to collaborate on “Fantastic Mr. Fox” years ago, but as Anderson recalls, “When ‘Mr. Fox’ wasn’t going to happen right away because the script wasn’t ready, that’s when I asked Henry to do the animation for ‘The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou.’” When it came time to make “Mr. Fox,” Anderson tapped producer Allison Abbate (who’d worked with Tim Burton on “Corpse Bride”) and animation director Mark Gustafson (a veteran of Will Vinton Studios, the shop behind the California Raisins).

Both digital cameras and CG cleanup were vital to low-budget “Panic,” which stars molded plastic figures and looks more “Robot Chicken” than “Chicken Run.” “Our little models of a Cowboy, Indian and Horse don’t move their lips, so funny dialogue could be recorded after shooting,” says post supervisor Adriana Piasek-Wanski.

Source: Variety

The entry of ColorWorks further heats up competition in the increasingly crowded DI space, which already includes Technicolor, Deluxe’s eFilm, Prime Focus, Warner Motion Picture Imaging and Ascent Media’s Company3.

Housed in historic 79-year-old Stage 6, where “The Wizard of Oz” and other golden-age musicals once lensed, ColorWorks will offer full-service digital intermediate, including film restoration and 4K DI.

While still setting up its new facilities, ColorWorks quietly completed DIs on three features: “Michael Jackson’s This Is It,” “Zombieland” and “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs” (in stereoscopic 3D), but it is officially unveiling its facilities next Tuesday.

“The idea is if you come here you can have everything done in one place,” said Chris Cookson, prexy of Sony Pictures Technologies and onetime tech exec at Warner. Technicolor ran a DI facility in the Stage 6 building but ankled earlier this year. Sony seized the opportunity to set up its own third-party post facility.

One-stop shopping for post has been an emerging trend for some time, but ColorWorks’ close integration of Imageworks and Sony’s highly regarded sound department gives ColorWorks a significant leg up on its competition.

They are likely to need it. The DI business is “very competitive,” said Stefan Sonnenfeld of Company3. “Some people have gone out of business, like Pacific Title. Others are teetering.”

Since the best post people tend to attract more and bigger projects to the shop where they work, signing top colorists, conform specialists and sound mixers has become essential to building up a clientele.

ColorWorks spent freely and inked some top digital colorists to contracts: Trent Johnson (”Mystic River,” numerous Disney pics); Steve Bowen (”Apocalypto,” “The Da Vinci Code”); and John Persichetti (”Sin City,” “Superbad”).

“The labs (Technicolor and Deluxe) have consistently competed with us in, I think, an unfair way, because they offered a big discount to studios on release prints.

Discounts on release prints can, in some cases, cover the entire cost of the DI. Unlike the labs,” said Sonnenfeld. “We’ve always had to win business on the merits of our creative abilities and business efficiencies and also had to be competitive on pricing.”

On the other hand, he says, newcomers like Sony ColorWorks “are artificially inflating the market for everything.”

“They’re inflating the market for talent, but at the same time they’re undercutting people to get the business. It’s the worst of

everything: higher prices, lower margins. But it’s not sustainable.”

Sonnenfeld’s concerns echo those heard from visual effects competitors in years past about Sony Imageworks, but those concerns have faded as Imageworks’ business matured and it came under internal pressure to cut costs.

Sonnenfeld expects that with the release print business likely to shrink as the d-cinema rollout continues, lab discounts will become less important. That makes it easier for companies not affiliated with a lab — including ColorWorks — to compete.

Sony Corp. is supporting the digital revolution in everything from cameras to projectors and is pushing its own shift to a workflow built entirely around digital files with another behind-the-scenes tech initiative. The studio is phasing in its “Digital Backbone.”

The Backbone is not just a network for sending files, says Cookson: “What the backbone really is, is the management overlay layer that coordinates the movement of the content.”

Roland Emmerich’s “2012″ was a trial project for the Digital Backbone, which Sony is still building out.

With the digital backbone, says Cookson, “(Each) frame becomes an asset, and tracking that asset is what the backbone is all about. When you watch it on your cell phone five years from now, that’s the same asset.”

Source: Variety

Glasses for adults and children will go on sale in December at theaters and online. RealD is also in the process of rolling out free 3D glasses for kids at theaters. The company will produce themed glasses tied in to various 3D releases — will that mean fans of deadly fish can snap up “Piranha 3-D” specs?

Source: Variety

The system aims to address the shortage of digital 3D screens by using conventional celluloid film prints capable of 3D imaging.

No exhibitors have yet announced they will install the system, but Ahmad Ouri, Technicolor’s president of strategy, technology and marketing, said he expects to announce the first deployment deals for Technicolor 3D at ShowEast next week.

“There has been a little bit of chicken and egg,” he said, “so we are pursuing a strategy of getting content owners and studios on board first.”

Ouri said of these seven companies, “If we have screens available, then they will release their content in this format.” Between them, they have 17 stereoscopic 3D (S3D) releases skedded for 2010.

Conspicuously absent from the announcement are Fox, which has James Cameron’s S3D epic “Avatar” due Dec. 18, and Disney, which has been the biggest booster of S3D among the studios.

Disney seemed to rule out support for the format.

“We’re fully committed to the digital 3D solution,” said a Disney rep. “We think it provides the highest quality to the moviegoing experience. We’ve been committed to this format dating back to our first Disney Digital 3D release with ‘Chicken Little.’ “

Fox declined to comment on the announcement.

The dubious history of S3D on film may account for Disney’s refusal to support the format and Fox’s reticence.

The “Technicolor 3D” system updates the “over-under” method for showing S3D on film. To date, the current S3D wave has used digital projection only, with the exception of traditional Imax screens that showed S3D from 70mm prints.

Technicolor execs discussing the system last month at Variety’s 3D Entertainment Summit faced sharp questions about film’s vulnerability to problems with dim images, scratches, fading and operator error.

Cameron is a notorious perfectionist and a vocal advocate of digital cinema. Meanwhile Disney has been very protective of the nascent S3D space, concerned about protecting the audience from headaches and the other issues that plagued moviegoers watching S3D on film in the 1950s, ’70s and ’80s.

Technicolor 3D does offer the advantages of being cheap and fast to install, allowing S3D to be deployed more quickly than the current d-cinema rollout permits. Even Technicolor, though, has called it an interim solution to bridge the gap until digital is fully in place.

Ouri said the system has been shown to all the majors, as well as numerous other companies, and discussions continue even with companies not included in this announcement.

Meanwhile, Universal’s confirmed it is aiming to release “Despicable Me” in Technicolor 3D next year. Pic is the first from Illumination Entertainment, the new family entertainment unit run by former Fox exec Chris Meledandri and funded by U.

DreamWorks Animation has two S3D features coming in 2010: “How to Train Your Dragon” and “Shrek Forever After.”

DWA topper Jeffrey Katzenberg, an outspoken advocate of S3D, said, “The solution they (Technicolor staffers) are working on today could potentially be very helpful to the deployment of the new 3D platform in theaters across the globe,”

Also on board to support the system are film stock manufacturers Kodak and Fuji, as well as Technicolor’s rival Deluxe.

Deluxe has arranged with Technicolor to provide film printing and post services to deliver release prints in the format.

Source: Variety

That was the refrain at Variety’s inaugural entertainment and technology summit Monday at the Loews Hotel in Santa Monica.

A roster of showbiz heavyweights marveled at the speed of technological change, and predicted the pace would increase in the months ahead as companies try to reshape old economic models, rethink megamergers like NBC U and Comcast — and, crucially, redefine their own goals and their relationship with audiences.

“I think the competitive landscape one year from now is going to be nothing like we know it today because everybody’s going to buy something — and they are going to buy it cheap,” said Media Metrics’ managing director Laura Martin during the summit’s global strategies session.

The Wall Street maven also forecast doom for the Peacock if Comcast does not take control from its current owners. “It is our view with GE that they will destroy the NBC network if they hold onto it,” she flatly predicted. “Under Brian Roberts they will have a chance.”

Mandalay Entertainment chair-CEO Peter Guber during the lunchtime sesh said that “the rate of change has changed.” Added Guber, who took his first studio job 41 years ago, “This is the beginning of the beginning.”

The former Sony honcho pointed to the low-cost success “Paranormal Activity,” as evidence of the sea change in Hollywood.

Smallscreen execs talked about the pressing need to monetize their content and overhaul the ratings tracking systems during the afternoon panel on the changing TV ecosystem.

John Landgraf, president and g.m. for FX Networks, said it’s becoming increasingly difficult for networks and cable channels to sustain programming costs. The problem, he said, is certain viewers don’t want to pay in any way, either through subscriptions or by watching commercials.

“We’ve made a lot of headway but I don’t think the end is in view yet,” Landgraf said.

At the same sesh, NBC Entertainment chair Marc Graboff said: “The audience has become so fragmented. The big hits used to pay for the losers — now, not so much.”

The democratization of distribution channels is not without its benefits, however. During her opening keynote conversation with Variety prexy Neil Stiles, Dick Clark Prods. prez Orly Adelson enthused about the ability to develop a closer connection with audiences online.

“Before, we were delivering,” Adelson said. “Now we’re connecting.”

Similarly, Stiles said he no longer considers Variety a content provider but a service provider. The company’s shift toward a pay-once cross-platform approach reflects that view, he said.

Madison Avenue power broker Irwin Gotlieb, CEO of GroupM Global, conceded during the global strategy sesh, “Life really was simpler 25 years ago when you had three networks and you could get a 30 share.”

But those days are over, he added. Now it’s incumbent upon brands to mobilize across a series of platforms. And a good way for content owners to keep control, he said, is through deals like Comcast’s NBC Universal play.

“That kind of vertical integration is necessary to enable technology yet to come,” he said.

Variety executive editor of features Steven Gaydos made introductory remarks at the summit, while VP-editorial director Peter Bart introduced the lunchtime session, which also included “Last Call With Carson Daly” host Carson Daly and Richard Rosenblatt, co-founder, chair and CEO of Demand Media.

Ty Montague, chief creative officer and co-prexy of JWT, and Vince Messina, regional sales director, Western U.S. of Microsoft advertising also participated in the global strategies sesh, moderated by Michael Kassan, chair and CEO of Media Link.

Other TV panelists included Dana Walden, chair of 20th TV, and Mark Koops, Reveille’s managing director and co-head of domestic TV; the panel was moderated by Variety’s Stuart Levine. The Hollywood Finance panel featured Screen Capital’s David Molner; Sandy Climan, prexy of Entertainment Media Ventures; David G. Sanderson, partner and director of Bain & Co.; Jeff Sagansky, chair of RHIE; Clark Hallren, managing director of Clear Scope Partners; and moderator Derek Baine, senior analyst at SNL Kagan.

A producer’s sesh concluded the festivities. It featured director Brett Ratner; producer-director David Zucker; and Bob Osher, prexy of digital production for Sony Pictures Entertainment; sesh was moderated by Variety’s Peter Debruge.

Source: Variety

But is it?

Yes…and no.

While it’s true that film stock costs more than digital tape or solid-state devices, that isn’t the only cost consideration: Crucial tech factors and prep time can add to digital’s pricetag. And the tab associated with film continues to be whittled down. So the choice isn’t an obvious one these days, and advocates for both camps say it may come down not to which medium costs more but to where those costs accrue.

“Prices are low for digital media,” says cinematographer Bob Primes (”Sleeper Cell”). “They’re a fraction of what film costs.”

That can be a factor when you’re shooting “miles and miles of footage,” says Andy Romanoff, exec VP at Panavision, which rents its own film cameras as well as its Genesis digital camera, which was developed with Sony.

“But the cost question is getting tougher,” adds Romanoff. “So many factors impact the cost of shooting. You have to know an awful lot about the technology you’re working with.”

As one example of how film continues to close the cost gap, Romanoff cites the re-emergence of so-called 2-perf shooting, which cuts 35mm stock costs in half by dividing a single frame of film into two usable parts.

“This has changed the game; you can no longer casually say that one way is cheaper than another,” Romanoff says.

Another consideration is the time spent setting up shots and ensuring their quality. For d.p. James Chressanthis (”Ghost Whisperer”), digital has some notable disadvantages.

“It’s very cumbersome, with more cables, and you’re not always sure what you’re getting,” he says. “You have to check a digital camera to make sure you’re registering the highlights. In film, you don’t even think twice.”

D.p. Rodney Taylor (”That Evening Sun”) says film is faster. “There’s nothing to power up,” he says. “You just do the lighting, set up the camera, look through it and shoot. The advantage is that I can be on the set the entire day and don’t have to sit in a black tent monitoring the image.

“I can more effectively tell a story if I’m close to the director and the actors.”

Other cinematographers see it differently. For some, the ability to view the image on a high-def monitor is a huge improvement. “Digital offers the opportunity to see what your tonalities will be,” Primes says. “Film doesn’t. That’s a very valuable tool.”

Yet that advantage comes with a price. On-set color monitoring often requires a person to do just that, and digital production has spawned the rise of digital imaging technicians as a profession. “It’s a new cost,” Romanoff says. “If you’re going out of town, you may have to pay that person’s expenses for weeks.”

D.p. John Leonetti (”I Know Who Killed Me”), who has shot with three digital cameras — the Genesis, Sony’s F23 and the Red One — is an advocate for film: “It has more dynamic range, and it’s still an economical option for making movies and even TV shows,” he says.

On the other hand, Mark Chiolis, a marketing exec at Grass Valley, maker of the digital Viper camera favored by helmers Michael Mann and David Fincher, says “there are ways to save money with digital, and a potential for better quality, depending on what you’re shooting.”

As the ongoing debate continues to reveal the complexities factoring into the choice between film and digital, producers might turn to d.p.’s rather than bean counters to make the right decision.

“Three or four years ago you would have a meeting and the producers would say, ‘We’re going to do a feature and we’re shooting digitally,’ Taylor says. “Now, even on low-budget features, the producers will often ask me what I think about shooting on film or digital.”

In the end, a lot depends on the filmmaker’s goals.

“You can flip a coin between film and digital,” says d.p. and vfx supervisor David Stump (”Flightplan”). Digital is especially useful, he believes, for cash-strapped indie producers who need to get an early version of a film into a festival in hopes of picking up financing to finish it.

“With digital, you can do more with less during the shooting portion, but ultimately the costs are going to be fairly similar,” Stump says, because the unpolished footage will require more post-production handling. “Digital allows you to transfer costs from an early stage to a later one.”

Source: Variety