BURBANK, Calif.—HPA has announced that the call for entries is now open for the HPA Engineering Excellence Award, which recognizes the companies and individuals who have created breakthrough technologies in media, content production, finishing, distribution, and archive. 

The 2022 submission period runs from April 13 to June 24. Judging will again take place online, in July.  

2021 HPA Engineering Excellence Award recipients were ArchPlatform by ArchPlatform Technologies, OpenColorIO v2 by AutoDesk, Nuke by Foundry, and NearTime by Mo-Sys Engineering.

“I look forward to the opening of the call for entries every year because that’s when we hear what our community has been working on,” said Joachim Zell, chair of the HPA Engineering Excellence Award Committee and HPA Board member. “The ingenuity of the brilliant people in our industry is endless, and every year there is an exciting balance between submissions from familiar faces and faces that are new on the scene. I can’t wait to hear from the people working at the vanguard.” 

As in previous years, entrants will engage in a two-step process: submission of written elements and a brief pre-recorded presentation, followed by a live, virtual Q&A with a blue-ribbon panel of judges. 

Seth Hallen, president of HPA, added that “it is exhilarating to witness the prodigious talent at work in our industry, taking us ever closer to the perfect realization of creative vision. I can’t wait to applaud the Engineering Excellence award winners and, as always, reflect on the new possibilities opened up by their work. It’s here we learn about and explore the future.” 

Annual HPA Awards Gala will return to the Hollywood Legion on November 17, after a sold-out in-person celebration in 2021. The recipients of the Engineering Excellence Award will be announced in advance, and the awards will be presented during the live gala. Detailed information about the creative categories, which will be opening soon, is forthcoming.

The HPA Awards take place thanks to the generosity of sponsors, including Diamond Title Sponsor Blackmagic Design. 

For information about sponsoring the HPA Awards, please contact Joyce Cataldo at jcataldo@hpaonline.com.

For more information about the HPA Awards, including the latest and most complete rules and procedures, fees, guidelines and entry information, please visit www.hpaawards.com. 

BURBANK, Calif.—The Hollywood Professional Association (HPA) Awards Committee announced EIZO, Eluvio, Moxion and Carl Zeiss SBE are the winners of the 2020 HPA Awards for Engineering Excellence.  

The HPA Engineering Excellence Award honors outstanding technical and creative ingenuity in media, content production, finishing, distribution and archive.

EIZO is being recognized for its Prominence CG3146 31.1-inch HDR monitor with built-in calibration sensor. New technologies were invented to include advanced brightness and color uniformity correction that allows calibration to occur at the top of the monitor and a stable XYZ glass type sensor that resists temperature. 

New algorithms were needed for one sensor in both low brightness areas with higher noise and high bright areas with more light saturation. Machine learning display stabilization and custom ASIC technologies were implemented to improve image stability and increase the available colors of the LCD panel by more than 22%.

Eluvio is being honored for its pioneering work on a novel video distribution platform to service content providers around the globe. The Eluvio Content Fabric provides an efficient, secure and cost-effective means to deliver ultra-low latency video globally just-in-time without CDNs, cloud transcoding or databases. 

As a single backend for distribution, the platform links media, metadata and programmable code and serves high quality streaming video to the viewer without intermediaries, separate file copies or static versions. Content is personalized dynamically and rights-controlled via software blockchain contracts. 

Moxion is being recognized for its Immediates, the result of multiple innovations enabling post and production to share and review each other’s footage securely within minutes of creation.

Immediates footage, complete with camera, action and VFX wranglers’ metadata, flows from the QTAKE video assist into the Moxion cloud, where it can be reviewed and logged before flowing into editorial or VFX workflows. Conversely, footage created in post can be sent via the Moxion Cloud back to the set, security, the video assist for playback on on-set monitors or to any on-set iOS device.

Carl Zeiss SBE is being honored for its eXtended Data lens metadata technology that amplifies and increases the accuracy of the image capture and processing workflow. Zeiss eXtended Data unifies two data sets: key lens data based on the Cooke and i-Technology and the ZEISS distortion and shading lens data.

After recording on set together with the video files, the data can be applied in post-production for more accurate compositing and editing by using the suite of Zeiss-developed lens plugins.

Frame.io and Sohonet received honorable mention for their Camera-to-Cloud and ClearView Flex technologies, respectively.

This year’s judging was adapted to adhere to restrictions imposed on the industry by the COVID-19 pandemic, HPA said.

Now in their 15th year, the HPA Awards, including the HPA Award for Engineering Excellence, will be bestowed Nov. 19 during a virtual gala.

More information is available on the HPA website. 

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y.—Companies and individuals are now able to submit their entries for the 2017 HPA Awards Engineering Excellence Award. The award is designed to recognize breakthrough technologies in the production, post production, distribution and/or archiving industry.

All entries must include a completed submission form, a written description of the development application, marketing materials and a submission fee of $595. For more information on the submission process, click here.

 All entrants will have the opportunity to then showcase their entries at Engineering Judging Day on June 17 in Los Angeles. This will allow the entrants to present detailed information on their products prior to the winners being announced.

The deadline for submission is set for May 26. Winners are expected to be announced in August and then recognized at the HPA Awards Gala on Nov. 16 at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles.