The restructuring of the post-production industry ...

[Neil W. Smith]

Great feedback and some excellent questions ... this is why I like posting on RedUser .... some very smart cookies once we get past the Kool-Aid brigade ... let me try and address some of the concerns and issues you raise:

1) why now? it is true that powerful mobile computing solutions have been available for a while ... however, there are two pieces of software that are only just coming onto the market that will have a major impact on our industry .... Express Dailies from ColorFront and Resolve 9 from Blackmagic ... for the processing of digital dailies, these two pieces of software offer unparalleled price performance ... they really are game-changers ... at the DGA Digital Day we had Technicolor next to us and LightIron across the lobby BOTH demoing Express Dailies .... if young Mr. Cioni and old Mr. Technicolor are both adopting Express Dailies as their dailies software you know there has to be something special about it .... if it was just our little boutique, then yer, so what? ... but Tech and Li as well? .... in England there's an expression we use to describe something special ... believe me when I say, Express Dailies is the dog's bollocks!

2) as well as Express Dailies we've been beta testing Resolve 9 for the last month or so ... we use Resolve in all our color suites now as our main final coloring tool .... with the introduction of audio and video syncing plus many new cool features as well as the new GUI and a 64 bit code re-write you now have an extremely elegant and powerful piece of software that every one can afford ... Resolve 9 Lite is FREE and full Resolve 9 is $999 ... we demoed Resolve 9 to 400 editors at the LAFCPUG meeting last week ... as many of you know, Editors are a tight fisted bunch of SOBs .... but even they can afford Resolve 9 Lite .... actually some of them wanted to know if there was a special discount for editors if they downloaded the Lite version ... and you think I'm joking ... if you already own Resolve 8, the upgrade to Resolve 9 is totally free ... it'll be available on the Blackmagic site pretty soon ... Peter will let you know when it's available for download.

3) at the DGA Digital Day, as well as a ton of Directors visit our booth we also had some very senior ASC and Local 600 DPs visit (many experienced ASC DPs are also Directors) .... we showed them both Express Dailies and Resolve 9 and what those two apps could do for them on-set ... they all got it ... so much so, that they've now asked us to organize a private training season for their members ... why is this significant? ... which group of professionals is at the forefront of technological change and the adoption of new digital technology on set? ... you guessed right... ASC DPs and Local 600 camera operators and DITs ... hell, Jim and Ted have just spent real money on advertising the EPIC in the ASC magazine .... something they said they'd never do a couple of years ago! If ASC and Local 600 ICG members are interested in learning a powerful piece of software like Resolve 9 for them to be able to personally use it, there has to be a reason ... these are smart people who want to stay abreast of the digital revolution.

4) in terms of hardware, sure we've had mobile computing platforms for donkey's years ... but this new Retina Display Macbook Pro laptop from Apple is another game-changer for our industry ... two GPUs - one with CUDA cores plus Thunderbolt I/O plus USB3 plus a screen to die for .... what do you think the ASC chaps said when they saw Resolve 9 on the Retina Display screen and the 27 inch Thunderbolt display .... there's another English expression which I won't repeat here which totally captures their amazement ... answers on a postcard please :-)

5) the other driver behind this dramatic sea-change to on-set and near-set post has nothing directly to do with the technology i describe above .... there's another bunch of people involved in TV and movie production that have some say on the choices people make ... they're called PRODUCERS ... you know, those beastly people who sign the checks (cheques in real English) and hand out the dosh (dough in American English) .... these Producer types don't give a tinker's cuss about technology ... they happen to be focussed on something a little more old fashioned .... you know, that funny stuff called CASH and THE BUDGET .... so why are they interested in the ramifications of Moore's Law, I hear you ask? .... well, we've been demoing on-set and near-set post to these guys over the last month and for TV Episodic shows, at least, there are considerable cost-savings to be had by implementing on-set and near-set post solutions ... so though producers have no idea who Gordon Moore was or why Moore's Law is disrupting their lives every eighteen months, they sure as hell can count the beans that Mr. Moore is saving them .... Michael Cioni moderated a fascinating panel in the DGA main hall called the 'Pros and Cons of Near-set Post ' .... it was one of the best session I've attended (and I've been going to the DGA Digital Day for seven years) ... the guys he had on his panel are all at the cutting edge of implementing these new working practices and workflows .... the financial savings PLUS the increased creative control they all described were mind-blowing .... where these guys have been, many will follow ... if Michael is around, it would be great to hear from him on his thoughts and insights on the panel discussion ... it really was a session that every in our industry should try and watch if the recording becomes public.

So, if you combine the mixture of hardware and software innovation described above with the potential cost savings and increased creativity for Producers, Directors and DPs you start to get a feel of why things are about to change rapidly ... the DGA Digital Day may not be totally representative of what's going on in other parts of the world and the content creation industry in general, but it surely is a a harbinger of things to come .... strap on your sea-buckles and hold on tight ... Moore's Law driven technology change is about to tear down the walls of production and post!

Neil

[Björn Benckert]

I Agree with Toia,
A few years back I could sit alone and charge 10k USD a day in my Inferno conforming and grading some 35mm material that arrived from the telecine on a D6 tape... Today is a different game, we do not charge for the conforming bit, grading is still considered an paid artform but now we tend to do it while doing the VFX / compositing work. Just about every project we do does not only involve several 3D and compositing heads, we also have programer on staff that makes project specific plugins for hair, shadings, lightmaching etc. So just because your PC premiere setup can handle some 5K material you should not think that you are even close... you need a SAN network, a wast number of workstations, a huge server, just about every program in the field... etc. if you do not have all that then you are just another guy with a laptop and that is extremely hard to bank on. It makes me laugh when I hear that people now thinks that they can compete for the bigger jobs just because they downloaded the free version of smoke.... It's more like that would have worked if they got it 10 years back in time.

[Frank Cueto]

I fail to understand how this is so radically different to what has been available for the last couple of years. I have this feeling that as more is posible on set, the more is expected as well. So its always a cat & mouse game kind of thing. I have heard this argument about new technology majorly changing everything (sure, moore's law is great, but data generation on set is growing faster than moore's law) so many times now (Editdroid/AVID/DDR's/DAW/FLAME comes to mind) and indeed all this things have moved us forward, but nothing has been a true "Paradigm shift". Closest thing to being such a huge shift has been this transition to digital acquisition, and in all honestly, it hasn't been nearly as disruptive as everyone made it out to be. We still struggle, its just the problems/challenges which have changed ;)


Heck, if you want an example of mobile processing, check out the technicolor train cart they had in the early 20th century ;-) Its kinda interesting to take THAT example into consideration when making very forward looking statements.

[Hrvoje Simic]

5) the other driver behind this dramatic sea-change to on-set and near-set post has nothing directly to do with the technology i describe above .... there's another bunch of people involved in TV and movie production that have some say on the choices people make ... they're called PRODUCERS ... you know, those beastly people who sign the checks (cheques in real English) and hand out the dosh (dough in American English) .... these Producer types don't give a tinker's cuss about technology ... they happen to be focussed on something a little more old fashioned .... you know, that funny stuff called CASH and THE BUDGET

So, if you combine the mixture of hardware and software innovation described above with the potential cost savings and increased creativity for Producers, Directors and DPs you start to get a feel of why things are about to change rapidly ... the DGA Digital Day may not be totally representative of what's going on in other parts of the world and the content creation industry in general, but it surely is a a harbinger of things to come .... strap on your sea-buckles and hold on tight ... Moore's Law driven technology change is about to tear down the walls of production and post!

Neil

Neil,

If we step away from the fast paced TV shows and "I want creative work this second" type of mentality...and if we look from a wider perspective and other types of production, please consider the following:

I noticed none of your points addressed the "quality" factor. Usually, the faster the pace is, the less time and energy is invested into a quality product and the more chances emerge for mistakes. Lack of time may be partially substituted with a higher strain and pressure on the whole team, which often is under high pressure as is...and by filtering the best of the best, who may keep up with the pace which money instead of reason dictates...but constant upping the pace in everything is simply taking away something on the other, less perceivable side.

I'd recommend doing picture post work on set just as doing audio mastering on set.
"First light" and a rough ballpark for the DP to rely on - yes. Final look and typical post work - no.

I'm sure you can relate to some of these factors:

- Grading work depends on healthy, clear eyesight
- Grading work requires focusing on work, the picture and the context without interruptions
- Grading work requires time for resting the eyes and letting the colour numbness/blindness developed over hours of work fade away naturally
- Before locking down the "look" often it takes time for it to "sink in"

No Moore's Law in sight. ;)

These ones may be less obvious, due to specialized domain of your work, but please consider them as well:

- Directors have a lot to focus on, watch over, visualize, interact with, create, develop...on set as is...to add another factor to control and ponder over and multitask about
- Fast paced, crowded sets have very little potential for optimal post work environment, whether it's visual or auditive pollution or just plain disturbances
- If a producer, or a director, or assistant, etc...have a chance of interfering/"having ideas"/last second changes/etc...they will. At the cost of a post guy. In a less then optimal workplace, in a far from optimal work pace and in a totally unacceptable working hours for quality colour work.

Many other factors exist, but the point should be clear.

[Hans von Sonntag]

I'm directing TVCs and such. I often do the camera as well. I don't have time to evaluate shots on set apart from content, timing and focus. Grading on set is a nightmare. Too many clients around, and obviously no time available to make meaningful decisions. Set is set and post is post. Of course every director is different but I prefer rather to shoot another take, to rehearse a new idea than to sit behind the screen and discuss.

Although we had a massive shift from 35mm to digital the principal workflow did not change at all. Shoot, develop/telecine, edit, CG and finishing. Now you do telecine while you shoot. Nice. One day saved. Is this a revolution?

We do HAVE a revolution in post production regarding the ceasing of big iron systems and the availability of a zero dollar grading software. But for proper post I still need to have my Smoke on a big box with a big screen, tablet, big array and some guys assisting me. I still need my aeron chair and a proper coffee machine (at least my clients).

I've done edits in my hotel room off dv-taped 35mm video-tap footage back in 1998 with FCP1 on my laptop. Clients found that interesting. In the end I did not find it worth the time and hassle. Now I can do hat in online quality. That's a big lap for sure but not a revolution. And I take very rarely the opportunity. I prefer a beer after the wrap, a shower and a nice dinner.

Hans

[Frank Cueto]

This begs the question. "Does the fact that you can do it mean that you should do it?"

[Bruce Allen]

I Agree with Toia,
A few years back I could sit alone and charge 10k USD a day in my Inferno conforming and grading some 35mm material that arrived from the telecine on a D6 tape... Today is a different game, we do not charge for the conforming bit, grading is still considered an paid artform but now we tend to do it while doing the VFX / compositing work. Just about every project we do does not only involve several 3D and compositing heads, we also have programer on staff that makes project specific plugins for hair, shadings, lightmaching etc. So just because your PC premiere setup can handle some 5K material you should not think that you are even close... you need a SAN network, a wast number of workstations, a huge server, just about every program in the field... etc. if you do not have all that then you are just another guy with a laptop and that is extremely hard to bank on. It makes me laugh when I hear that people now thinks that they can compete for the bigger jobs just because they downloaded the free version of smoke.... It's more like that would have worked if they got it 10 years back in time.

On one hand I agree... on the other hand:

1. Look at what Avid is doing with cloud-based collaborative editing for their news divisions. Surely the same thing will happen with Media Composer?

2. For VFX & 3D rendering... I think that the days of local render farms are coming to an end. There's a lot you can do with a couple of skilled guys on laptops, plus another 10 guys working remotely, plus 1000+ CPUs rentable on-demand on the cloud. I'm working on a solution for this myself but very likely others will have a nicely-implemented systems before me.

We're not there just yet - but the future is pretty close. My 2c.

Of course there is always a place for darkened rooms etc. And for our work, studio security rules mean no internet connection whatsoever for workstations... so I see the other side. The new wave is exciting though!

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

[Marc Wielage]

I noticed none of your points addressed the "quality" factor. Usually, the faster the pace is, the less time and energy is invested into a quality product and the more chances emerge for mistakes. Lack of time may be partially substituted with a higher strain and pressure on the whole team, which often is under high pressure as is...and by filtering the best of the best, who may keep up with the pace which money instead of reason dictates...but constant upping the pace in everything is simply taking away something on the other, less perceivable side.

I believe this is a very thoughtful comment. From my perspective, I think the DP and director are already challenged and stressed just keeping up with actor's demands, telling a story, dealing with producers, logistical problems, technical issues, and the myriad of other things that have been part of movie-making for 100 years. I think beyond setting a basic, reasonable "best light" look on set (or near-set), as long as the DP is comfortable that they have the range to correct the picture in the final, there's no issue. Make it look reasonable, don't waste time, and move on.

I would also emphasize that you still need talent and experience to do the color correction, whether on-set, near-set, in dailies, or the final. I would no more expect a DP to do their own color correction than I would having them reinstall the plumbing in their house or give themselves a root canal. Sure, you could theoretically do it... but isn't it a better idea to hire a pro to do it better than you can? And it always pays to have an extra pair of eyes, someone to say, "instead of doing X, what do you think of Y?" Ideally, collaboration between DP and an experienced colorist will yield a far better result than if either worked without the other.

I've lost count of the number of on-set dailies systems now being offered around LA. To me, the three meaningful questions are, a) can you believe the monitors on the set [and will they match the monitors used for the final], b) does the DP want to take the time every day to supervise the dailies, and c) can the temporary color corrections applied on set be used as reference for the final? To me, the best-light corrections on set are still just that, and it's not worth the time for a DP to spend minutes away from lighting to worry about tweaking every shot. Just because the knob moves doesn't mean you have to move it every time.

At the same time, I agree 100% that the editor and director need to see something in dailies that approaches what they need to see in the final. Even if the look is completely thrown out in the end, it's a nice starting place to have. We were doing many, many DI's in the early 2000s where we still had to use a temporary HD dailies version as reference, simply because the studio, the director, the producer, and the editor had gotten so used to that look. In some cases, it was a help; in others, it was a hindrance. And I know of a few very messy cases where DPs wanted one look and the director wanted another. These things can get very contentious, because it boils down to "who has final say on color?"

As for me, it's whoever's paying the bill. We all work in service of the film, and ultimately the director is in charge. (But then, I've worked on some projects where the director got canned and the studio execs took over, so...)

[Björn Benckert]

But there is big change going on in the post houses at the moment. The thing is that just a few years back you needed quite expansive tools just to get around. A post house was no post house without a 1000k USD telecine, a 250k USD inferno, Stacks of tape decks for about 100k USD each, huge machine rooms costy cooling gear... also to be a bit more posh you needed a film printer costing around 800k USD and fancy Barco monitors projectors, HD video routers, Avids, additional software for milions of dollars....

And the above was just for an ordinary post house... Then ofcourse you needed talented staff aswell.

Today it's different:
The telecine is now resolve for free.
The costy film printer is just about to be tossed out the window... digital files for cinema is not a future dream any more.
Video routing is... no longer the way to go, a SAN netowork is more likely the thing to have.
Avids.... I think premiere will replace the once that survived the FCP storm.
Infernos and SGI machines are gone, the new smoke will retail for about 3k USD.

So now post all of a sudden is not so much of an investment driven industry it's way more leaning to become much more talent based.

This means that we will see much more of the small groups breaking free from the bigger houses, starting their own, not having the old leasing contracts from the telecine and all that to carry. These new smaller houses, not having film labs and all that will eat on the dinosaurs legs until most of them fall if they do not manage to adapt, and from what I'm seing the major part of the big houses does not seam to make all the right moves at all...

I like to see Syndicate as one of these little guys, killing the old beasts :)

[Neil W. Smith]

Great set of feedback, guys .... really making me think through what I said in my opening thesis statement and subsequent observations ... please keep your feedback and thoughts coming ... this discussion has implicatins for all of us in post.

Some points of clarification:

1) difference between on-set and near-set .... definitely not saying that everything we now do back at the facility will be done on-set ... far from it ... the hurly-burly of production is no place for many of the challenging things we do in post ... but near-set? ... that's a different matter. With the powerful mobile computing platforms we now have at our disposal, there are indeed many "post" processes that can be done across the corridor from the sound stage or up on the same floor where editorial lives.

2) difference between TV, Feature and TVC .... absolutely agree that the time pressures on each of these different content creation fishbowls exerts different dynamics on the production and post flow .... again, the activity split between on-set and near-set based "post" processes will shift depending upon the requirements of each style of production .... none-the-less, many activities that are now done back in the comfort of our facilities can be done outside of our facilities ... nearer the production either physically or virtually though big-speed networking.

3) talent ... absolutely the most important part of this discussion .... I have every application imaginable running on my RetDisplay laptop, but please, please, DON'T ever let me edit your feature, or process your dailies, or grade your commercial ... or comp your effects .... or mix your audio ... just don't let me do it! .... but my guys? .... absolutely! ... one of my roles as a facilty owner is to make sure my highly skilled and talented artists have the best tools at their fingertip .... and provide the most conducive environment for them to work their magic .... it used to be my 33 seat DI theater ... then my plasma based grading suites with 18% grey walls .... all on the comfort of a movie lot in West Hollywood .... and now? ... it's a production office on third floor of a sound stage in sweaty Burbank .... would I rather we did everything back at our place where we can "hide" things behind the curtain and not let producers and post-supers ever see the craziness that is post? ... you bet ... but more and more, we take our systems and our talent to where the content is being forged in the furnace of production ... and by the way, a large chunk of our creative work still gets done in the confines of our DI theater and plasma room ... but more and more, the action is happening "out there".

What I'm pointing out in this thread is that the post-industry (at least here in sunny LA) is undergoing a process of re-structuring .... things that only a couple of season ago would only be done within the walls of a large post-facility are now being down outside those walls .... typically nearer production or on the studio lots.

4) hardware ... i'm not just advocating that everything is done on the latest and greatest laptop form Apple or Wintel .... i was using the new Retina Display MBP as a of what Moore's Law can do in the hands of some very smart engineers who know how to extract every ounce of price/performance out of a very small from factor. Having started my business career many moons ago (probably before most of you were even a twinkle in your parent's eyes) selling mainframes as big as houses for a shit load of money, and watched the computing platforms evolve from mainframes to minis to workstations to PCs to laptops to tablets to smart-phones, i can honestly say that the Apple RetDisp MBP completely surprised me .... the more I use it, the more impressed I am with the form and function that those smart dudes in Cupertino have come up with (and I'm an ex Microsfot Exec).

If Apple releases the next generation of MacPro Towers sometime in 2013 with half the "goodness" of the RD MBP, we are all in for a rare treat ... in the meantime, when I talk about mobile systems, I'm also referring to the latest Z820 from HP as well as the towers from Apple ... we augment our MacPros with PCIe expansion boxes .... yesterday, I upgraded one of our Macs to Mountain Lion and stuck a couple of GTX 680s in the expansion chassis ... holy crap! ... Moore's Law doesn't just apply to CPU based power .... for us in visual post, it applies equally (and in my mind, more importantly) to GPU power .... nVIDIA and ATI are supplying crack cocaine to a bunch of ne'er-do-wells called gamers ... these speed junkies are driving the GPU industry at a much faster rate of knots than our slow plodding post industry .... none-the-less, we all benefit from their addiction to pixel pushing.

5) VFX ... this is a trickier question ... there still seems to be some financial and productivity advantages to having a VFX factory where everyone does one little piece of the assembly line and no one person crafts the whole product .... maybe, VFX will continue to be done in cubicle farms for the foreseeable future ... the only thing I would say is that those VFX factories are now located in parts of the globe where you would never have thought they would end up .... amongst the sheep-shaggers of New Zealand and the brainy boffins of India .... I would also add that these new VFX factories are typically linked to the rest of the world through the fattest data-pipes you can buy ... sure there are a lot of VFX houses in Santa Monica but there are also a ton of talented artists in Eastern Europe and Asia who are able to successfully bid for large VFX jobs all over the globe.

Maybe we need an extra category to describe the disintermediation of post .... on-set, near-set and far-set .... if you haven't heard of disintermediation before, here's a useful and concise explanation:

"... Disintermediation is a process in which a middle player poised between service or product providers and their consumers is weakened or removed from the value chain. Disintermediation is driven by the fact that middle players consume resources and in removing them from the chain, these resources are recovered to enable either lower cost for the consumer, better value from the provider, or both. Disintermediation can be total, in which case a middle player is removed entirely. It can also be partial, in which case an intermediary is carved up and the different ways in which they formerly added value are segmented, replaced, or done away with as circumstances permit." .... taken from Rob Tucker's brilliant article on the O'Reilly Radar website: http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/05/dis...ks-trends.html

6) why is this happening now and why should we care? ... the combination of Moore's Law driven technolgy change and disintermediation driven business change will continue to impact production and post .... producers will do it because it saves them money .... Directors and DPs will do it because it gives them more creative control over their art .... post will do it because of Mr. Darwin .... if we don't adapt and "fit in" to the new demands of our production colleagues we will all surely go the way of a certain company based in Rochester, New York, who didn't see the writing on the wall and thought that they had a monopoly on image processing .... here's a couple of lines from their CEO's Chapter 11 filing press release of Jan 2012:

" ... Antonio M. Perez, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. “At the same time as we have created our digital business, we have also already effectively exited certain traditional operations, closing 13 manufacturing plants and 130 processing labs, and reducing our workforce by 47,000 since 2003. Now we must complete the transformation by further addressing our cost structure and effectively monetizing non-core IP assets. We look forward to working with our stakeholders to emerge a lean, world-class, digital imaging and materials science company.”

Ironically, the is same company that started life ... "With the slogan "you press the button, we do the rest," George Eastman put the first simple camera into the hands of a world of consumers in 1888. In so doing, he made a cumbersome and complicated process easy to use and accessible by nearly everyone."

If Mr. Eastman was to return to the world now, I wonder what he'd make of the current state of production and post? ... it would be also interesting to hear his views on how his once great company managed to get themselves into the mess they're in now ... I'm pretty sure that Mr. Eastman would have something to say about Mr. Moore's and Mr. Darwin's legacy.

Neil