Hollywood Post Alliance Calls for Awards Entries

HOLLYWOOD, CALIF.: The Hollywood Post Alliance is calling for entries for its fourth annual HPA Awards. Categories focus on various aspects of post production. The period of eligibility is from Sept. 4, 2008 through Sept. 7, 2009. Entrants are not required to be members of HPA to be considered, and work may have debuted domestically or internationally. Categories include:

-- Color Grading with a digital intermediate process-Feature Film
-- Color Grading-Television
-- Color Grading-Commercial
-- Editing-Feature Film
-- Editing-Television
-- Editing-Commercial
-- Audio Post-Feature Film
-- Audio Post-Television
-- Audio Post-Commercial
-- Compositing-Feature Film
-- Compositing-Television
-- Compositing-Commercial

Additional special categories include the HPA Judges Award for Creativity and Innovation in Post Production, which debuted last year and returns this year. It recognizes new applications, appreciations, tools, workflows, etc. An Engineering Excellence Award will be given for “advances post-production technology,” HPA said.

The Charles S. Swartz Award for Outstanding Contribution in the Field of Post Production will be given to “a person, group, company or technology that has made a significant artistic, technological, business or educational impact on Post Production.”

The Lifetime Achievement Award recognizes a post-production professional for his or her service and commitment to the field.

Nominees and winners will be chosen by judging panels drawn from the production and post-production communities later this summer. Nominees will be announced in the fall and recognized at HPA’s annual dinner event Nov. 12 in Los Angeles. Entries will be accepted from now through July 31. Nominations for the Engineering Excellence Award are due July 1. HPA has rules and entry information at its awards Web site.

Last year’s winners include Steven J. Scott for the DI color grading of “Iron Man” and the audio team from “Wall-E.” The Outstanding Feature Film Editor went to Lee Smith, A.C.E. for “The Dark Knight.” Commercial spots for Jaguar, “XF Hush,” and Audi RS6, “Gymnast” were recognized.

Engineering Awards went to Quantel, Panasonic and FastSoft. The first Judges Award for Creativity and Innovation were awarded to LaserPacific for the accurateIMAGE system; Sony Pictures Imageworks for the “Beowulf 3D” stereoscopic post-production pipeline; and jointly to Digital Film Tree and CBS/Paramount for the development of a datacentric post network and workflow for “Everybody Hates Chris.”

Long-time Hollywood post-production executive Ronald Burdett was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award for Contribution to Post Production and Dean Elizabeth M. Daley, of the USC school of Cinema was last year’s recipient of the Charles S. Swartz Award. – Deborah D. McAdams