LOS ANGELES—The Hollywood Professional Association (HPA) today said futurist Robert Tercek, creative technologist Jessie Hughes from Leonardo.AI and Emmy-winning creator Bernie Su are among the influential voices who will offer their insights during the 2026 HPA Tech Retreat, Feb. 15-19, at the Westin Rancho Mirage (Calif.) Golf Resort & Spa.

This year also marks a milestone for the event as Mark Schubin, the prolific industry veteran who has served as program maestro for nearly three decades, curates his final event. Schubin's legacy of shaping the retreat will be celebrated throughout the week, HPA said.

During the four-day program, the retreat will explore how AI is transforming storytelling, how creator-driven platforms are redefining content strategies and how cloud-based workflows continue to reshape the media supply chain. In addition to Terek, Hughes and Su, leaders from OpenAI and CrunchLabs will be on hand.

The retreat will also shed light on Washington policy developments and conversations that look well beyond the present, it said.

“Our industry is at a critical crossroads, impacted by the challenges and opportunities that technology itself represents,” Leon Silverman, HPA Tech Retreat Planning Committee chair, said.

“For our 2026 Tech Retreat, we are convening an important and timely industry conversation and program filled with some of our industry's most informed voices who are navigating at the edge of this dynamic change and generously sharing their knowledge,” Silverman said. “And since the retreat’s inception, this collection of tech conversation leaders has been pioneered and curated by Mark Schubin, whose name is synonymous with the HPA Tech Retreat. His enduring contributions to this amazing industry innovation conversation, while also serving as the Tech Retreat’s face, brain, chronicler and timekeeper since its earliest days, will be a legacy long celebrated.”

The event’s Tuesday Supersession will look at the forces transforming media creation under the theme “WTF Is Going On in the Media Industry?” The program, curated by Silverman, will dive into AI filmmaking, creator-led economies and next-generation workflows.

Highlights include Ed Ulbrich on the artistry and ethics of generative tools, Hughes of Leonardo.AI exploring the intersection of algorithms and creativity and Su, alongside Chad Nelson of OpenAI and Pojo Riegert of CrunchLabs, unpacking the creator economy.

The day will also tackle the business of the business, as Seth Hallen moderates a conversation with Ethan Jacks, Vince Pizzica and Joe Harkins on how business leaders can navigate—and capitalize on—the massive disruption redefining today’s media supply chain. Other sessions will explore what these shifts mean for traditional film and television workflows, the rise of cloud-based production and how AI is reshaping vendor strategies as a new supply chain emerges, it said.

Monday sets the stage with the TR-X program themed “Imagine No Limits.” A call to rethink workflows and creative possibilities in an era of rapid transformation, the day will feature conversations on future-facing strategies, including a panel on what the next decade holds for media and entertainment and a CG Pro workshop focused on reskilling talent for evolving studio pipelines. Monday concludes with a keynote from futurist Tercek, who will share a provocative perspective on creativity and technology in a boundary-free future.

Other programming includes midweek roundtables and sessions on AI-assisted editing, cloud-era media pipelines, CES 2026 trends and a technology year in review. New features include gHack, a Google Hackathon on Sunday, designed to educate and foster collaboration. Other Sunday activities include the annual HPA Golf Tournament and informal networking, providing a relaxed start to an intensive week of ideas and discovery, it said.

The event schedule is available online.

LOS ANGELES—The Hollywood Professional Association (HPA) has opened the call for proposals for conference sessions and Roundtables at the 2026 HPA Tech Retreat, along with applications for the highly anticipated Innovation Zone.

The event will take place February 15-19, 2026, at the Westin Rancho Mirage Golf Resort & Spa in Rancho Mirage, California. As in past years, the venue will be exclusive to registered attendees for the duration of the event.

Now in its fourth decade, The 2026 HPA Tech Retreat will feature peer-submitted conference sessions, daily Roundtables, keynotes, networking events, and hands-on technology demonstrations. Its single-track format ensures that attendees move through the experience together, promoting meaningful dialogue across disciplines.

"Each year, the HPA Tech Retreat reminds us of the power of shared knowledge and community," said Kari Grubin, President of HPA. "The rapid pace of technological change makes it essential that we come together to exchange ideas, challenge assumptions, and inspire innovation. I encourage anyone with a fresh perspective or bold idea to submit a proposal — your voice can shape the conversations that define the future of our industry."

Proposals can be submitted for the following:

• Conference Session. Proposals may be brief and informal and should be submitted to proposals@hpaonline.com by October 1, 2025.
• Roundtable Proposals. These are first-come, first-served until full. Proposals should be submitted to proposals@hpaonline.com.
• Innovation Zone Applications. The Innovation Zone is a carefully curated showcase of breakthrough technologies. To learn more and apply, visit HPATechRetreat.com.

Capacity is limited, and the event is expected to sell out. Early registration and proposal submissions are strongly encouraged.

More information is available at HPATechRetreat.com.

RANCHO MIRAGE, CALIF.—The movers and shakers of the content production community gathered under the HPA Tech Retreat banner once again here in southern California’s Coachella Valley resort area to hear about the latest industry trends, technological breakthroughs and issues, network, and also “kick back” a bit from winter doldrums.

The year’s event, held Feb. 16-20, marked the 30th anniversary of a gathering that began as a rather small “winter break” and eventually morphed over the years into a consistently sold-out “must attend” conference, with attendance limited to 800. The Hollywood Professional Association serves the professional community of the post-production industry in film, television, and digital media.

As might be expected, the topic of artificial intelligence permeated the 2025 Tech Retreat, with AI either the subject or object of more than a third of the presentations, and managing to creep into a number of other panel discussions and exchanges of information. (AI-related topics even factored into the Retreat’s daily “breakfast roundtable” discussions where attendees could listen to, and join in, timely discussions as they enjoy breakfast.)

The Human Factor In AI-Based Content Creation
“This year’s topic could not be more timely,” said Seth Hallen, HPA past-president, in opening the conference’s initial “Supersession,” which was themed “The Evolving Human Role in AI-Driven Film and TV Production and Post-Production Workflows.”

“A year ago, we sat on this stage and introduced — and maybe in some cases — dragged people into this world of AI,” said Hallen. “Since then, we have marveled at the sheer power of these tools. AI is transforming workflows and long-held processes, and causing more debate than any technology shift that we’ve seen in years. But today, we’re going to shift our focus. Let’s refocus our attention away from the tools themselves and turn, in fact, to the humans, because the real power of AI isn’t about replacing creativity, it’s about amplifying it.

Hallen then turned the program over to Renard Jenkins, president and chief executive officer of I2A2 Technologies, Studios and Labs, who stressed the importance of the human factor in meaningfully creating anything with artificial intelligence.

Jenkins observed that one year ago, AI’s stage of development could be compared to that of an infant or toddler, and in the intervening period, that toddler has now developed into a teenager. “We’re at the stage where AI thinks it knows more than we do,” he said. “We can do nothing right in AI’s eyes. We are not helpful to AI.”

Jenkins noted, however, that whether or not “the teenager” agrees, it still needs guidance.

“The teenager still needs the input from parents. Teenagers — no matter how smart they think they are — can only learn, can only grow [if they have guidance].”

In relating this human analogy to AI, Jenkins stressed that developers of the technology needed to spend plenty of time to be sure that their models “are ethically sourced, responsibly built, and actually have a purpose,” and not to merely “graft off what’s already there.”

He also offered encouragement for anyone who might feel threatened by the incursion of AI into the content creation industry. “If anybody tells you that AI is going to replace the workers, replace the artists, AI is going to replace, replace, replace…, I will theorize that person is extremely misguided as to how these tools and how these systems should be used, and how they can be most impactful to us as a society.”

Jenkins admonished anyone whose work and career path will likely involve AI technology to take advantage of the educational opportunities that now exist in the area of artificial intelligence and get “upskilled.”

“Upskilling” is the way forward for those of you who are concerned about where our industry is going,” he said. “Start now Prepare yourself for where this is going. Get yourself into this space.”

A Fresh Look At AI
Tech Retreat presentations also examined changes in AI evolution during the past year.

In one of these — “Is The Industry Sitting On An AI Goldmine Or A Ticking Timebomb?” — Richard Welsh, SMPTE president and senior vice president of innovation at Deluxe, provided an update on recent legal decisions involving the technology, with one of these providing some amplification on the previously-established rulings on copyrightability involving AI.

“The [U.S. Copyright] Office confirms that the use of AI to assist in the process of creation or the inclusion of AI-generated material in a larger human-generated work does not bar copyrightability,” said Welsh, in citing a very recent (Jan. 29, 2025) U.S. Copyright Office bulletin. He added that this excluded, however, “the mere provision of prompts.”

Welsh said that the European Union is also taking a fresh look at AI, repeating a Feb. 12 dispatch from Reuters that reported that “draft rules that regulated technology patents, AI and consumer privacy to messaging apps had been scrapped.”

He also noted that an EU “Liability Directive” now allows consumers to bring lawsuits based on “harm due to the fault or omission of (the) provider, developer or user of AI technology,” and that new legislation requires generative AI developers to disclose if copyrighted material is used in training data.

Welsh said that the “ticking timebomb” in the title of his presentation referred to legal aspects surrounding content that involved AI in some way. “We in the industry need to spend a lot of time talking about this,” said Welsh.

In looking at some of the items content creators needed to consider when involving AI in their work, Welsh noted that “AI needs to be trained only on your own work, so data from other’s works doesn’t get in there.”

He also stated that traceability of all elements used in creating content was very important. “Rights are going to become more and more important; this is already a big issue,” said Welsh. With the explosion of content originating from dashcams, surveillance cameras, other non-mainstream sources, it’s more important than ever to know where your video clips are coming from.

“Every bit of data that comes into your organization needs to be tagged as to its source,” said Welsh. “Tag everything.”

Can AI Have A Role In Sustainability?
In a slightly different take on the value of AI in the media industry, Barbara Lange, principal and chief executive officer of Kibo121, noted in her presentation — “AI for Good: The Role of Emerging Tech in Sustainability”— that AI was something of a double-edged sword.

Lange observed that AI is a very energy-hungry technology, stating that “by 2030, over 20% of U.S. electricity could be powering data centers for AI,” and noting that in light of this “sustainability is not just a responsibility; it’s a business imperative.”

Lange stated that AI did have a “plus side,” as it is a powerful search tool, and in this application could be used effectively by content creators to reduce the need for re-shoots, which in turn would save time, money, and transportation costs, all of which would go to reducing the M&E industry’s carbon footprint.

“AI is already being deployed in other industries with an eye to sustainability,” she said. “Increasing efficiency in transportation, enhancing indoor climate control, making appliances smarter, optimizing agriculture outcomes, optimizing electricity use, and maximizing resources and utilities.”

Everyone Can Now Be A Content Producer/Distributor
Apart from the main AI theme, a special pre-conference TR-X (“Tech Retreat eXtreme”) program themed “Affordable Production” focused on today’s increasing democratization in the areas of content creation and distribution. “Affordable Production.”

“I don’t know of any other generation in Hollywood that’s been confronted with such a tectonic industry shift in such a small period of time,” stated TR-X co-chair, Mark Chiolis, in describing the disruption created by the emergence of inexpensive devices for capturing content and the pipelines and channels for distributing this content.

In his “Disruptive Pixels: The Big Power of Small Budgets” session keynote, Mike Cioni, founder of several start-up M&E production operations, described the shift in consumer content consumption patterns, citing a survey that revealed “in 2023 the average American purchased only two movie theater tickets, and 84% of podcasts are being viewed on video platforms.”

Cioni blamed this situation on a reluctance by the content production industry to break away from long-established practices and patterns associated with maintaining perhaps an artificially high level of quality, referring to this condition as “friction.”

“In order for us to maintain that quality, we introduced a lot of friction,” he said. “This worked for a long time. If you make a production, you know that it is slow, it is hard, it is expensive. Production and distribution is super complicated and hard. Many companies are now acting on their momentum rather than their propulsion. I believe that there is major trouble on the horizon. I believe that this is why our industry is facing what it’s facing.”

Cioni noted that while breaking away from established practices could be risky, there were rewards for those willing to try something new and different. “If you bet wisely on early adopted technologies, when those inevitably hit as industry standards, your path will be so far ahead that everybody else will be behind.”

Cioni drove home the fact that “the technology gap is shrinking,” by showing video clips illustrating the image quality provided by three very different cameras. The first was captured with an ARRI Alexa, the second with a Fuji GFX 100 camera in the under-$10K price range, and the third was produced by a consumer iPhone. Other than some slight differences in depth of field, the imagery was strikingly identical in quality.

“The difference between a camera costing nearly $100,000 is not that much different than a $1,000 camera,” said Cioni. “It’s all about accessibility to technology.”

In commenting on the shift in content distribution platforms, Cioni noted that “YouTube represented 20.3% of TV viewing in July 2024 according to Nielsen.”

Mark Schubin’s Industry Updates
A regular feature of Tech Retreats is Mark Schubin’s “Technology Year in Review,” in which, in his words, “presents news items involving the cinema and television industry that may have gone unnoticed by many.”

This year, Schubin, a multiple Emmy Award winner and the Retreat’s official “wrangler” or “program maestro,” led off with some good and bad news about movie houses.

“Cinema is still not dead, I’m happy to report,” said Schubin, observing that gross receipts for 2024 were just about what they’d been in 2005. “The problem is that the consumer product index has gone up 65% since 2005, so it’s not the same. It’s comparing apples to oranges.”

Schubin reported that in order to remain in operation, some citizens groups are now buying movie theaters and operating them on a non-profit basis.

Other lesser reported industry news in Schubin’s review included Nielsen figures indicating that streaming now accounts for more than 43% of all viewing, and that while the majority of streaming content a year ago was older TV shows, it’s now mostly new content. Another reversal is the way viewers are consuming content.

“The TV is now a primary viewing device,” he said. “People are not using their phones as much as they’re using their TVs.”

Other factoids from Schubin included a comeback of the videocassette, with a new movie, “Alien: Romulus,” being offered in VHS format in a limited release, genetically-engineered bacteria that can be used as a form of AI in solving a range of problems, the promised availability from Nvidia of a consumer supercomputer for less than $250, and a new satellite constructed entirely from wood.

Looking Forward
The 2026 HPA Tech Retreat will again be held at the Westin Rancho Mirage Golf Resort & Spa. Conference dates are set for Feb. 15-19.

LOS ANGELES — Feb. 3, 2025 — As it heads to its estimable 30th anniversary, the HPA Tech Retreat continues to add one-of-a-kind programming to its schedule. The HPA Tech Retreat committee has announced that the production team behind the most subscribed YouTuber in the world, MrBeast, will join the Retreat. MrBeast Head of Post Production and Executive Producer, Joshua Kulic, and Shawn Hendrix will be presented in a unique conversation, “Behind the Scenes of MrBeast.”

The conversation will offer attendees a rare behind-the-scenes look at MrBeast’s most expensive YouTube video ever made, “2,000 People Fight For $5,000,000,” on the road to the ground-breaking Amazon Prime series “Beast Games.’ The HPA Tech Retreat takes place Feb. 16-20, 2025 at The Westin Rancho Mirage Golf Resort & Spa in Rancho Mirage, California. The panel will be presented on Monday, Feb. 17 during the TR-X sessions.

Jimmy Donaldson, best known by his online alias MrBeast, built his substantial fame as a YouTuber, and then as a businessman and media personality. His YouTube channel has more than 340 million subscribers. MrBeast’s latest production is Amazon Prime “Beast Games”, a large-scale multi-cam reality TV contest series breaking boundaries in the way TV production is recorded, edited, and delivered. He is known for pushing creative and technical boundaries and has merged the fast-paced, highly dynamic world of YouTube with the rigorous demands of broadcast-level television production. In this session, the team will dive deep into ‘Beast Games Episode Zero.’ To manage ingest and fast turnaround for editorial, the show utilized an advanced DIT workflow, 25 on-site editors, deployed on an impressive 2.5 PB solid-state shared storage road case that was backed up and transported across to Greenville, NC for finishing.

Attendees will have uncommon access to a behind-the-scenes look into the technology implemented to meet the unique demands of this fast-moving and large-scale production, with zero downtime and flawless execution.

Kicking off a week of stellar Tech Retreat programming, TRX includes panels and discussions, with a closing recap session with Mark Chiolis and Craig German, followed by a networking and cocktails reception.

For three decades, the HPA Tech Retreat has been recognized for its in-depth and inventive approach to covering the critical topics facing the media creation industry. The Retreat is an uncommon gathering of thought leaders, technology trendsetters and creatives who gather in a non-marketing setting to discuss and explore the most important topics that face the industry during 4-plus days of sessions, roundtable discussions, conversation and technology demonstrations. Monday kicks off with a welcome brunch and the opening of the Innovation Zone.

The HPA Tech Retreat consistently sells out well in advance of the event and registration is expected to reach capacity shortly; securing a spot is highly recommended. Attendance is strictly capped to foster an atmosphere that promotes discussion, debate, and connection.

LOS ANGELES—The 2025 Hollywood Professional Association (HPA) Tech Retreat, which will celebrate its 30th anniversary this year, has released the first program details for the retreat set for Feb. 16-20, 2025, at the Westin Rancho Mirage Golf Resort & Spa in Rancho Mirage, California.

Programming at the event takes on areas of crucial interest to the industry, HPA said, including TR-X on Monday, Feb. 17, which will focus on Affordable Production. The complete schedule is available here.

The HPA Tech Retreat consistently sells out well in advance and registration is expected to reach capacity quickly, HPA said. Attendance is strictly capped to foster an atmosphere that promotes discussion, debate and connection, the group said.

“There are topics that make us pace the floor. As they always do, things in our industry are changing, and there’s concern and interest in that change,” said Mark Schubin, who has been guiding HPA Tech Retreat programming for more than 20 years. “We got more submissions than ever this year and the committee was impressed with not just the number, but the sheer quality of those submissions. Of course, AI is a consistent thread, but there is so much more, voices from the music industry and live events, sports, pure explorations of storytelling, business cases and cloud workflows all showed up. There was an abundance of riches. Reading these proposals is an honest behind-the-curtain view of what is happening in our industry and from those, we’ve come up with what I think is a bang-up program.”

HPA Tech Retreat programming opens on Monday morning, Feb. 17, when doors open for the Innovation Zone and the Welcome Brunch. TR-X follows in the afternoon. Details for the HPA Supersession, set for Tuesday, Feb. 18, will be announced shortly.

Sessions for Wednesday and Thursday’s program include the following:

Wednesday, February 19
What CES 2025 Means for the Media Industry
Speaker: Mark Harrison, DPP

What do CTOs really think? Key findings from the DPP Media CTO Survey
Speakers: Mark Harrison and Rowan de Pomerai, DPP

Deploying an UltraHD Broadcast Experience Through HDR and SDR Infrastructures
Moderator: Michael Zink, LG Electronics and the Ultra HD Forum
Panelists: Bill Baggelaar, UHD Alliance; Annie Chang, Universal Pictures

Joshua Pines Opines
Speaker: Josh Pines, Picture Shop

Is the industry sitting on an AI goldmine or a ticking time bomb?
Speaker: Rich Welsh, Deluxe

How entrepreneurs can successfully launch, fund, and grow a start-up tech company in the M&E sector utilizing advanced technologies including AI
Moderator: Ethan Jacks, MediaBridge Capital Advisors

Behind the Screens: Pushing the Boundaries of Live Entertainment at Sphere
Moderator: Jonathan Martin, WEKA

Live Event Tech: Tours, Festivals & Residencies—IMAG to Streaming
Moderator: Mark Chiolis, Mobile TV Group
Panelists: Jim Toten; Jeff Carman

Olympics Open and Coverage 2024: Advancing Live Production Technology
Speaker: Renard Jenkins, I2A2 Technologies, Studios & Labs

AI in Live Sports Production: IBM and Wimbledon’s Sustainable Tech Revolution
Speaker: Barbara Lange, Kibo121

Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment’s Journey in Adopting Video Foundation Models for Content Creation
Speaker: Ryan Khurana, MLSE; Travis Couture, Twelve Labs

Harnessing Gen AI to Elevate Accessibility, Inclusivity, and Compliance in Media, Entertainment, and Sports
Speaker: Carin Forman, AWS

Rethinking Fast Turnaround Workflows for the Cloud
Speaker: Chris Swan, AWS U.K.

Transforming Archives Into Active Content Libraries: Unlocking the Potential of Legacy Media
Moderator: Soyoung Lee, Twelve Labs
Panelist: Heidi Shakespeare, Memnon Archive Services

Thursday, Feb. 20
Navigating the New Normal: Production Trends and Industry Shifts in TV and Film
Speaker: Alex LoVerde, ProdPro

AI Was Not the Great Disrupter
Moderator: John Footen, Deloitte Consulting
Panelists: Jason Williamson, Deloitte Consulting; Seth Hallen

Love Hurts—But It Doesn’t Have to in the Cloud!
Moderator: Annie Chang, Universal Pictures

Harmonizing Virtual Production and Visual Effects
Speaker: Mathieu Mazerolle, Foundry

Understanding the Threat Landscape of AI Workflows in Localization, Digital Film, and Dubbing
Mathew Gilliat-Smith, ConvergentDS
Panelists: Ben Stanbury, The Walt Disney Studios; Keith Ritlop, ConvergentDS (formerly Disney, NBCU, Fox)

Standards, SMPTE, and ISO
Sally-Ann D’Amato, SMPTE
Panelists: Thomas Bause Mason, SMPTE; Renard Jenkins, I2A2 Technologies, Studios & Labs; Andy Maltz, General Intelligence

From Stone Age to Screen Age: The Epic Tale of Visual Storytelling
Speakers: Seth Hallen and Alan Lasky

AI Applications in Media Workflows
Moderator: Thomas True, NVIDIA

Bridging the Uncanny Valley: Artificial Individual Intelligence (Aii)
Speaker: Dave Ginsberg and Jerry Rees, Artificial Individual Intelligence

Shaping Stories with Media Intelligence: From Search to Storytelling
Speaker: Morgan Prygrocki, Adobe

How Do I Deal With All These Live Streams?
Speaker: Chris Lennon, Ross Video

Media Cyber Security and Trust
Speaker: Hans Hoffmann, European Broadcasting Union

Vid2Vec: The First AI-Driven “Narrative Grammar” for Film & TV
Speaker: Yves Bergquist, Entertainment Technology Center—USC Cinematic Arts

Creative Flow or Friction? Exploring Artists’ Emotional and Cognitive Responses to AI in Media Production
Renard Jenkins, Clayton Moser, I2A2 Technologies, Studios & Labs
Panelist: Holly Beavon, Fielding Graduate University

Post-Retreat Treat: The “Ghost Army” That Fooled Hitler
Speakers: Anne Brooker-Grogan and Ed Grogan

TR-X Affordable Production (Feb. 17)
This year, the popular TR-X session will focus on behind-the-scenes insights from affordable productions. The afternoon includes case studies, panel discussions and keynotes that feature leading creatives and technologists who share experiences and expertise. Panels and speakers will bring their real-world experiences of bringing high-end, sports and lower-budget productions to outstanding results with limited resources. Current panelists include a keynote from Michael Cioni, and discussions with Kathryn Brillhart, Lori H. Schwartz, Angela Victor, Julian Higgins, Christopher Nichols, Alex LoCasale, Renard Jenkins, Erik Weaver, Jason Dachman, Brandin Grams, David Shapiro, Nick Busto, Tahira Foy, Starry H. Focus, Brian Tran, Lina Sanchez, Kiera Williams and more. Full details of the day are forthcoming.

BREAKFAST ROUNDTABLES (Feb. 18, 19 and 20)
The perennially popular HPA Tech Retreat Breakfast Roundtables take place before programming starts, Tuesday through Thursday. On those mornings, expert-led thought tables cover a wide variety of topics of interest to a vibrant group of attendees. With more than 75 tables currently booked and more added daily, the Breakfast Roundtables present an incredible bench of expertise, connection and dialogue. For a list of roundtables, visit HPATechRetreat.com.

INNOVATION ZONE (February 17, 18 and 19)
Registered attendees can explore the latest technologies in The Innovation Zone, the Retreat’s remarkable demo area where more than 60 curated technology companies demonstrate and discuss the most groundbreaking tech available today. For companies interested in exhibiting their tech, limited space remains; contact jcataldo@hpaonline.com for details.

NETWORKING (Every day from Feb. 16-20)
The 2025 HPA Tech Retreat takes place thanks to the generosity of The Studio-B&H, Sohonet, Dell Technologies, Adobe, Signiant, Dolby, and Tech Align Group. For information on sponsoring the 2025 HPA Tech Retreat, contact Joyce Cataldo at jcataldo@hpaonline.com.

For more information about the HPA Tech Retreat, visit www.hpaonline.com.

The 2025 HPA Tech Retreat is now accepting proposals for both conference sessions and their famous breakfast roundtables. The popular tech event, now in its 30th year, takes place Feb. 16-20 at the Westin Rancho Mirage Golf Resort & Spa in Rancho Mirage, Calif.

“If you have insights that could inspire the industry or solve common challenges, we invite you to share your ideas with an audience with open ears,’ the association said. “Conference session presentations are strictly reserved for marketing-free content and can focus on anything within far reaching topics affecting the media tech industry and content creation. Breakfast roundtables may include marketing content and can span the same breadth of topics.

Informal proposals for both can be as short as a few words in length, but must be submitted by the would-be presenter to proposals@hpaonline.com. Submissions for conference sessions will be accepted until October 18; submissions for breakfast roundtables are on a first-come, first-served basis until full.

Click here for more information.

RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif.—Although “Innovation” and the phrase “Let the Sparks Fly” were the themes  of the 2024 HPA Tech Retreat, several of the most perceptive sessions involved looking back— be it for a month, a year or decades into the archives of the moving images industry.  Each presentation offered perspectives and outlooks that will affect the TV and video industries in the years and decades ahead. 

HPA President Seth Hallen summed up the pertinence of these times when he cited the over-arching topic of one day’s sessions. He called artificial intelligence a “fundamental transformative change” which is “different” from other technologies that have affected the media industries. “Don’t fear AI,” said Hallen, who is  co-Managing Director of Light Iron; he urged the Hollywood Professional Association audience to find ways to use AI “to enhance the human touch” and explore the “ability to integrate these tools” into productions.

His support of AI underscored the reflective presentations that chronicled recent industry developments.

For example,  Mark Harrison, CEO of DPP, focused on the dominance of AI at January’s CES (formerly known as the Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas. Digital Maestro Mark Schubin also cited AI in his wrap-up of 2023’s industry-shaping developments. A panel of media archivists examined AI’s value as a tool to safeguard and search content. And Eluvio’s Michelle Munson acknowledged AI’s role in establishing and maintaining trust throughout the production and distribution process.

 Software—Especially AI—Dominated CES
Artificial intelligence is “finally a technology worth shouting about,” said Mark Harrison, CEO of the DPP [Digital Production Partnership], an international network of media and technology developers, as he began his review of January’s CES. After the pandemic downturn, CES is “again reassuringly unpleasant to be at,” Harrison joshed as he plunged into the otherwise predictable roster of top technologies from the mega-show (smart homes, wearables, robotics, automotive) described in the 100+ page CES report his company just published.

He called the market for consumer TV receivers “as flat as its product.”  The global market for such devices is now about $97 billion and will fall to $96 billion by 2028. “Of course, those TVs get incrementally better each year, as the latest technology gets cheaper, and is standardized.”  He pointed out that content providers already struggle to supply media to a technical specification that matches the capability of the TV’s on which that content is consumed.

Harrison, who founded DPP, previously held senior roles at the BBC and in independent production. His over-arching perception of CES was that “software has become more important than hardware”—a stunning reorientation of a trade show long known as the gizmo and gadget bazaar.

 “Software is killing consumer electronics,” Harrison told the HPA audience.

 One prominent factor in DPP’s evaluation was its “heat map,” which tracks the buzz and growth of innovative products in more than two dozen categories over the past 15 years. The line for high-end displays has been chilly for the past few years, and the smart TV trajectory has become almost frozen. 

Harrison explained that DPP has seen its heat scores in video technology as “modest” and determined that, “we were in a period of pragmatism.  The emphasis seemed to be on making existing technology work better for consumers and businesses alike, rather than hyping  up the new.”

DPP’s report summarizes that, “This year our heat scores are the coolest ever” which may indicate “actual maturity.”   But the analysis also cautions that, “The picture is more complicated.”  It suggests that the reason for the “sense of disappointment” at CES stems from the absences of new tech this year, but then asks, “When something isn’t boiling,  is it cooling down or hotting up?”  Harrison contended that something new may be brewing, but he did not speculate about specific forthcoming products or services.

As for AI,—the #1 topic at CES – Harrison called it “a revolution hiding in plain sight,” although now it is “stranded on the shoulders” of giant providers who are “confident about being able to deploy generative AI.”  But he noted the “AI problem”: innovation requires investment, and he expressed concern about the impact of negativism and financiers’ trepidation about the risks (political and otherwise) regarding AI.

Schubin’s Intelligence
Earlier, Mark Schubin, who calls himself the “Program Maestro of the HPA Tech Retreat”—in his summary of 2023’s key developments—also acknowledged the onslaught of AI, although he called 2023 “the year of Intellectual Property.”

Schubin, the Emmy-winning long-time technology overlord of the Metropolitan Opera’s video production, cited the evolving role of Digital Rights Management (DRM) as an emerging barrier to home recording.  He pointed to developments involving ATSC 3.0 that could enable broadcasters to prevent their signals from being recorded. 

Schubin’s broad-ranging summary of last year’s developments included products such as the Sphere 18K Big Sky Camera, Canon’s Metalens, Apple Vision Pro (and the headset Virtual Reality category) plus the emergence of quantum dots as a new image and transmission feature.  

Although he did not elaborate on these products or forecast their successes in the marketplace, Schubin did cite problems he has seen in some streaming content, such as “dark screens.” He also indicated that the many variations of artificial intelligence—with all their benefits, hurdles and hallucinations—will continue to play a larger role in the video production industry.

Digitizing Archives: Do It Now
Looking further back—while emphasizing future values—a panel of media archivists in a coordinated presentation explained “Why Right Now Is the Time to Digitize Your Archive.”  They explained that in 20 years, more than four million hours of TV and movie content has been digitized, but that the pace has picked up so that last year, more than seven million hours was preserved—nearly double the sum of the previous two decades.

The panelists—representing an array of experiences in production and the history of the TV and film industry—included Carin Forman, Global Partner Lead for Media and Entertainment, Amazon Web Services  (moderator); Heidi Shakespeare, CEO, Memnon Archiving Services; Andrea Kalas, SVP-archives, Paramount Pictures and Linda Tadic, Founder/CEO of Digital Bedrock.

“Content Discovery has forever changed,” the panelists concurred, citing tools such as OpenAI CLIP (Contrastive Language-Image Pretraining). They described CLIP’s multimodal AI model that combines knowledge of English-language concepts with semantic knowledge of images to power video semantic search, image classification and other factors.

The panelists cited the burdens of archiving, especially “technology obsolescence” which means that playback devices and preserved files are not available. They pointed out that, for example, most surviving VTRs operate on refurbished heads with parts scavenged from “donor machines,” thus reducing the equipment pool further. Moreover, “Knowledge Obsolescence” is already appearing as engineers “with the requisite skills are nearing retirement and attracting younger generations is a challenge.”  

Their side remarks underscored the often-unexpected values of being able to track digital assets.  For example, Tadic explained that when she worked at HBO during the first season of “The Sopranos,” no one really knew that the show would become such a landmark success. She recalled that the outtakes “reel” from the first shows were deliberately destroyed—footage that could have become valuable after the eventual success of the series.

Finally, they warned that, “Just because it’s digital, doesn’t mean it’s preserved.”

"Digital preservation requires ongoing care and management,” they said. “There is no ‘store and ignore’ medium. Migration is necessary to keep your digital content alive.”

Managed digital preservation involves planning, policies and processes, the archivists insisted in their joint presentation.

Establishing Trust
Michelle Munson, co-founder and CEO of Eluvio, described the security vulnerabilities of digital content, including problems that can develop via the “conflation of storage and rendering”—factors of the AI process.  Berkeley, Calif.-based Eluvio has developed the “content fabric protocol,” an open and decentralized, streaming, content distribution, and storage network built for the third generation Internet.

In her HPA presentation on “Content Authenticity and Provenance: Protocol vs. Workflow,” Munson acknowledged that storage formats can be “very kludgy” and contended that the “claims generator is outside the control loop.”  She supported the use of blockchain (which Eluvio supports) as a way to “take care of distribution over decentralized networks.”

Munson, who has been involved in establishing the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity, explained that C2PA’s specification is intended to codify procedures and to “establish trust” in digital distribution.

RANCHO MIRAGE, CALIF.—Avid CEO Jeff Rosica has warned that the M&E industry is “at the edge of a disastrous time if we aren’t careful.” 

In his closing address at the HPA Tech Retreat last week, Rosica, who is retiring from Avid, said he "can’t think of an industry that’s had this kind of change or transformation going on, and all the pressures at the same time in one industry. It is unprecedented. In my 37-year career, I can’t think of a time where even a fraction of this (was going on)” said Rosica in beginning his 30-minute presentation: “’Unbreaking’ an Industry: Fixing an Industry-Wide Mess.”

“Our industry is facing significant headwinds coming from all directions, and all at the same time,” he declared. “A tremendous technology shift is coming on (and) it’s really reshaping everything that we do.” 

In enumerating the multiple challenges the industry is now facing, he cited uncertain business models, as well as evolving technologies and the way in which they’re being deployed. 

“We have an ecosystem that’s under pressure and we need to look it,” said Rosica. “We must rethink what we do. Technology shifts are changing the way people work. Where the industry gets its revenue is changing, and changing business models mean new ways of doing things.

“Fear, uncertainty, and doubt are creating industry-wide angst. This in itself is creating a lot of concern. We have to do everything faster than we’ve ever done it before. We have to adapt and find new ways of doing this. And to add icing on this, we had Covid, and Covid accelerated a lot of thinking around how people want to work. It’s changing nearly everything about how we work and who we work with.”

Adopting New Technologies and Embracing Them
Rosica termed the industry now in a period where “an exponentially high level of technology shifts are going on,” referring to the adoption of the cloud and its resources, as well as the recent wave of artificial intelligence developments and deployments.  

“Just moving to the cloud or virtualization, or whatever term you want to use—that’s fundamentally changing the way we do things as an industry. I think that’s a good thing, by the way. I don’t think it’s a bad thing. I think that working on a collaborative basis can be a big part of what saves this industry.

“AI is coming in and this is another thing that’s going to reshape our industry,” said Rosica. “And it needs to reshape our industry. 

He noted that there is now a lot of concern among M&E workers about artificial intelligence eliminating their jobs or otherwise affecting their employment.

“I say it has to,” said Rosica. “We have to get more efficient. We don’t have enough people to even keep up with current requirements. We have to find a way to get it done.

“I’m not afraid of (AI) taking anybody’s job away. We have to create better efficiencies so people can do more. Our industry has proven one thing—when you give it new technology it will find ways to use that technology to create more and better storytelling. I don’t think we should fear (AI); I think we should embrace it, because we need it.”

“Workflows are changing. All of this takes a lot of resources and a lot of investment, neither of which this industry has enough of. We have to talk about prioritization. We have talk about how to be reasonable about this. We’ve got to be careful about this.  I really think as an industry we’ve got to be more realistic and think about what it is you have to have today, tomorrow, or next week.”

No More Strikes, Period!
In reflecting on the 2023 strikes by the Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild, and the trickle-down effect work stoppages had on employees in the media and entertainment business, Rosica flatly declared that the industry could not tolerate any more such massive interruptions.

“I understand why labor and management get into difficult discussions,” he said. “But we’ve got to be careful—I’m talking about both sides of the street. 

“As business leaders and organizational leaders, we must find ways to avoid any more strikes. We have to. 

“I know that we need good outcomes for workers, and we need to find a way to get there without work stoppages again. That almost killed our industry, or at least the ecosystem in our industry. It’s still tearing a little bit because of it. We’ve got to be careful because it will damage this business and it will take a decade to rebuild what we spent decades building, if we can even get it done.

“We’ve got to be careful!”

Get Ready for Disintermediation
In looking at other areas of the M&E industry where he thought big changes might be coming, Rosica called out the very intense pressure to curb operating costs, stating this practice may very well inadvertently trigger another shift in an already battered business, that of “disintermediation,” or a reduction or elimination in the use of intermediaries in delivering goods or services between producers and consumers.

“There is an even more intense focus on costs, and that pressure is being applied to the ecosystem,” said Rosica. “Everyone is expected to do more for less. It’s always been that way, but the pressure is more intense today, on top of what’s going on economically for the ecosystem

“We’ve got to be careful!

“And then, we’re asking this same ecosystem to shift business models, change technologies, change operating practices. All of this is impacting us. And this is going to cause disintermediation.  

“Get ready for it!

“I’m not saying this may happen. I’ll take it to the bank. You can call me in five years and call me a liar if it doesn’t happen.

“This industry—because of technology shifts, the business shifts, and the operating shifts that we’re going through—we’re going to have disintermediation. You can count on it, and you need to prepare for it. It is already here to some degree. All players across the industry should be ready for this.”

“When you put it all together, I think we’re standing on the precipice of an industry disaster if we’re not careful.”

'Not Looking at the Big Picture' 
Rosica declared, however, that there was a way out of this current dilemma.   

“I do think there is a way forward,” he said. “I have faith in the people in this room. We have the talent, (but) as an industry, we’re not looking at the big picture. No matter what our role is, we’ve got to live together (and work to fix the problem). 

“We have to collaborate like never before. A lot of team work is needed. 

“We have to realize that change is inevitable, change is needed, and change is indeed good. Our industry is still too indifferent—we must find ways to do thing faster and cheaper. 

“The pandemic was only the beginning—if there’s new normal, we’re not there yet.”

Rosica observed that while new methodologies and practices were good in themselves, the M&E industry should not be two quick to adopt them. 

“Avoid bespoke thinking; we’re too small of an industry for that,” he said. “We need to preserve common workflows,” noting that while the M&E business needed to be open to possibilities that could come with AI and machine learning, it needed to exercise caution in the ways these emerging technologies are adopted. 

“I do think there is a way forward. We can build something better for the future,” he said. “Some things can be more valuable and stronger when they’re broken.

“We need to be brave. All will be fine and shake out favorably in the end. The consumer’s appetite for appealing content will not go away, and streaming is not a bad model. We need to embrace it as it may be the savior.”

Rosica said that the M&E business could learn lessons from other industries that have undergone similar quantum shifts and disruptions, citing in particular the disruption in the music industry caused by the adoption of iPods as media players and the subsequent change in the way in which consumers purchased recordings, shifting from CD albums to the purchase of songs on an à la carte basis.     

“The music industry took 22 years to recover,” said Rosica. “Let’s not make mistakes like this that will cause a 22-year-long falloff in revenues”. 

“We have got to be sure we get this right!”

In conclusion, Rosica reminded the audience of his impending retirement from Avid Technology after more than a decade with that company, and expressed gratitude to those who had been supportive of him in career track. 

“It’s been the absolute pinnacle of my career,” he said. “It’s been terrific. I want to thank a lot of people in this room who gave me input, who gave me advice, who gave me support. I thank you for that. It’s been an honor and I’m grateful.”

This year’s HPA Tech Retreat was held at the Westin Rancho Mirage Golf Resort & Spa here, and once again a “sell-out” event, attracting more than 800 television and motion picture industry players. 

The Hollywood Professional Association (HPA) has issued a call for proposals for the main program and breakfast roundtables for the 2024 HPA Tech Retreat, which will take place February 18-22 at the Westin Rancho Mirage Golf Resort & Spa outside of Palm Springs. The call for submissions will close on October 13.

The Tech Retreat Main Program, curated by Mark Schubin, features timely and topical presentations by working experts whose insights are delivered with unusual candor during the Tech Retreat, which has a “no-marketing presentation” rule, the group said.  

The organizers also reported that the 2024 event will further enhance its immersive nature with the entire resort booked for Tech Retreat attendees. This year, the event begins on Sunday with a variety of social activities and welcome drinks for conference attendees.

Monday will kick off with a networking brunch, the opening of the Innovation Zone and the ever-popular TR-X program. As in the past, Tuesday brings the Supersession, and the Main Program will take place Wednesday and Thursday. Breakfast roundtables, networking events and expanded hours for the Innovation Zone will complement the daily sessions, as well as enriched lounge spaces.  

In terms of the call for proposals for the main program, the group explained that main program presentations are strictly reserved for marketing-free content and can focus on anything within the many far-reaching topics affecting the media tech industry and content creation. 

The informal proposals can be as short as a few words in length, but must be submitted by the would-be presenter to proposals@hpaonline.com, the group said. 

Typically, main program presentations are half an hour in duration, including setup and Q&A. Time limits are strictly enforced. Decisions on the program are expected in November.

Schubin noted that proposals from those new to the event and members of underrepresented groups are encouraged, and their perspectives greatly valued. Anything from a newly discovered obscure system setting to quantum entanglement for zero latency collaboration is worthy of submission, he said. 

Unlike the main program presentations, breakfast roundtables are allowed to include marketing information. They take place Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday mornings of the event.

Breakfast roundtables are popular and always fill quickly.  They are available on a first-come, first-served basis, with no vetting process. Proposals must be submitted directly by their proposed table moderators. Once the maximum number of tables is reached, no more will be accepted. No more than three roundtables will be permitted per organization per day. All breakfast roundtable moderators must be registered for the Retreat and there is no Retreat registration discount conveyed by moderating a breakfast roundtable. Proposals should be submitted to proposals@hpaonline.com.

“Surviving and thriving in this industry depends on sharing what we know. It’s more than collegial; it’s mandatory,” Seth Hallen, president of HPA, said. “The Tech Retreat fuels the best version of knowledge sharing; talking to people who operate in our world and share similar concerns, yet bring unique perspectives that foster the kinds of surprises that launch us in promising new directions and enable us to crack the toughest problems. The Main Program is crucial to starting these conversations, and each attendee brings unique professional wisdom that could be invaluable to someone else in the room. I urge you to consider putting together a proposal for a presentation or a panel discussion. The industry needs you now more than ever.”

The HPA Tech Retreat perennially sells out, with HPA members granted access to early registration, the group said. It is anticipated that the attendance and presentation slots for 2024 will fill particularly quickly. Early registration and proposal submission are highly encouraged. 

More information is available at http://www.hpaonline.com. 

RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif.—This year’s Hollywood Professional Association’s Tech Retreat was held again in its familiar location in Palm Springs at the Westin Mission Hills Golf Resort & Spa, Feb. 27-March 2. The four-day conference was once again sold out and didn't disappoint.

This premiere technology and leadership event brings together a "who’s who" world-class roster of thought leaders in engineering, technology, creativity and business to explore and experience the most timely and important topics around the creation, management, and distribution of media content.  The HPA’s annual Tech Retreat is like no other among our industry's tech events.

The event includes sessions, roundtables and the opportunity to network amongst the thought leaders who regularly attend the event plus an estimated 50-75 new first time attendees.  Current, new, and future ideas are rigorously explored and debated throughout the four-day experience. 

Presentations are some of the most applicable to the media and content industry and occur continuously throughout the entire event, from breakfast roundtables through to nightcaps.

The retreat kicked off with the first day’s TechRetreateXtra (“TRX”) and then continued on day 2 (Tuesday) with the HPA Supersession and then Tech Retreat organizer Mark Schubin's “Technology In Review” followed by a series of discrete presentations from industry leaders and organizations.

TRX, The 'Extra Mile'
The TRX consisted of half-day tutorials, technical lectures on color science topics, and featured numerous discussions (e.g., ML/VR/AR techniques) about the most relevant technologies in the media, content, and broadcast industry.  

Mark Cholis and Craig German moderated the TRX sessions, which included 40 first timers in the audience, all getting familiar with a "post-Covid workforce." Discussions centered around the evolution of working from home as well as a return to the “office” onsite workplace amidst the drastic changes imposed by the pandemic of the past three years and concerns about keeping up with increasing demand.

Where will the workforce come from? That all depends on a number of factors that were discussed at TRX: from supply chain issues to lack of interested newcomers to the phenomenon of “silent quitting.”

Exploring those Tech and Creative Elements
Another TRX panel explored the “marriage of technical and creative elements”—which was demonstrated during  Tuesday's Supersession on the making of "Avatar 2 Way of Water." 

Recognizing that our new and current workflow cultures possess the ability to influence change in the ways production and post in the cloud have responded in capabilities and demand, this is exemplified by the expectation that include the rapid approval of image data only a few moments after the director shouts “cut!” 

The cloud has certainly enabled production personnel to easily and rapidly review materials before the production teams leave (for the day)—resulting in much faster  turnaround and significantly reducing costs or overhead.

'Legendary Mortality'
Panelists expressed concern about preserving the mortality of those “legends of the industry” who founded, created or developed the technologies used in video media production and are explicitly asking how their visions and experiences can progress based on evolving knowledge requirements—including collaborative methodologies and how to use these newer “in real time” capabilities across multiple departments.

In a related topic, Dr. Keizer Khaderi, MD, Clinical Associate Professor at the Byers Eye Institute at Stanford University. Stanford’s Human Perception Lab (“HPL”) addressed the question “What are the pathways into the industry?” Dr. Khaderi offered a biological and neurological perspective and his “Immersion and the Promise” study explored the paths from creation to consumption and how to apply those principles.

Khaderi demonstrated the technology of "Generational Adversarial Networks," a concept that Disney Research Studios has deployed in a tool called the “face-re-aging network,” (or “FRAN”) which reduces the process of aging editing from hours to seconds. This has been used in motion picture segments for such shows as “The Mandalorian” and the most recent “Star Wars” films.

The Stanford Healthcare HPL Program also tests head-mounted displays and the ocular tolerance of contemporary electronic devices. This includes “bridging the gap” in human-machine interfaces with showings of “today” vs. “tomorrow” by merging biological and computation systems by teams of clinicians, scientists and technologists for impactful real-world solutions.

The $225Bn Supply Chain Applied to M&E Industry
Another session offered up three years of supply-chain research with surprising conclusions in the dollar volumes and impacts to the M&E industry. According to researcher Vitrina, global spending in the M&E supply-chain currently stands at $255 billion annually. This encompasses all of  the individuals, organizations, resources, activities, facilities, and technologies involved in the development, production, distribution and sale of content. There are roughly half a million suppliers in the supply-chain, consisting of those outlined in Fig. 1.

Of the nearly 600,000 contributing companies, the Americas account for 300,000 (50%) with EMEA at 180,000 (30%) and APAC at 120,000 (20%). According to the research, at these volumes, it is “difficult to make sense of market moves or predict demand-supply.” Business and commercial models are rapidly changing and the “noisy cacophony” from these companies, suppliers, the inside trade media and events is now “deafening” according to the presenters.

Machine Learning as Computable Everything
Driven by growing demands, machine learning (ML) methods are becoming more sophisticated according to researchers at the University of Southern California’s Entertainment Technology Center. 

“Lots of limitations, ethical questions and confusion persist” as researchers attempt to define “what’s next.” HPA attendees were reminded that current models are still too inaccurate to be fully trusted or integrated into products and questions remain about how to bridge the chasm between sophisticated learning and true intelligence. 

Per USC’s ETC group, traditional media organizations who produce news and information, content for broadcasters, corporate solutions and such, are nowhere near ready to adopt the technology. Those organizations that adopt hybrid methods using “deep neural nets” plus “knowledge graphs” and “human-built symbolic reasoning,” however, can and will, likely accelerate the capabilities of traditional ML systems.

Presenters described the “computable everything” model which showed a series of steps or stages relative to enabling true ML applications in Fig. 3.

The current popularity of AI elements in ChatGPT, for example, are being applied to startups whereby the “smart money” will go where the opportunities are: e.g., content curation, recommendation and personalization using content data and audio data then applied to social media and streaming activities, according to the ETC. 

Highly automated media organizations are crafting and distributing content with growing levels of efficiency by using personalized, highly curated and integrated (metaverse) content. Such levels of ML and AI-based activities are allowing content creators and distributors to connect to audiences previously unreachable using traditional (legacy) approaches.

Avatar WOW Supersession
No one quite expected what Tuesday’s opening Supersession on the production of "Avatar: The Way of the Water" would uncover or show. 

For starters, set up in the main room were three DCI certified full theatre grade screens for the audience to view clips and segments in full 3D (RealD). Each of the Christy, 4K laser projectors produced a proper 14 ft. lamberts on the screens to emulate what would be experienced in a true theater environment. Real 3D glasses were distributed and the audience saw the Avatar clips and show segments almost as though they were in a high-class theater without the cushy seats.

Attendees got a “deep-dive” look at how the film was created—both technically and monetarily. Jon Landau, Avatar’s creative executive and producer, led an inspiring discussion about the production concepts and collaborative efforts need to produce the Avatar sequel.  

Following Landau’s interactive interview, the session focused on how new data pipeline & mastering methods that build DCPs (digital cinema package, a collection of digital files used to store and convey digital cinema (DC) audio, image, and data stream) in the cloud and maintain cloud backups allowed these production to build centralized cloud-centric QC capabilities globally. 

The Avatar session provided a great example of how companies that sometime compete against each other brought about a harmonious set of collaborations which enabled the production to succeed visually, technically, and economically, despite the lengthy period it took to complete the production and release.  Such harmonious collaboration was a theme of the day for all. 

Avatar’s distribution specifications included 15-picture reels (for a total of 3 hours and 12 minutes each) with 6,338 total DCP deliveries supported by 28 dubs for 51 different languages.  There were 1,065 different builds consisting of 175 for “2D” and 691 versions for “3D” builds plus an additional 199 “IMAX 3D” versions.

Focus on the Future
While impractical to cover the myriad of topics addressed at this year’s Tech Retreat, it is easy to see why this event is considered “the place to be” if you’re focusing on where you and your business should be in the next 5 years or so.

MovieLabs’ 2030 Vision—which was a part of the retreat again this year—is a great resource for anticipating and recognizing how changes are being made to the M&E industry, not just for the cinematic and motion picture industry, but across the entire domain we are familiar with (and in some cases, not so familiar with).   

Unveiled in the summer of 2019, the MovieLabs whitepaper “The Evolution of Media Creation” lays out a bold 10-year vision for the adoption of new technologies to aid in content production, post and VFX.

Check out this year’s summary agendas and if you plan to attend HPA 2024. Don’t delay...this event sells out quickly.  Look for the announcements or signup/join the HPA at https://hpaonline.com/.

LOS ANGELES—The Hollywood Professional Association (HPA) Tech Retreat has announced details for the 2023 Supersession, which will present an original, immersive look at the remarkable creative and technical accomplishments of “Avatar: The Way of Water.”

Highlighting the people, companies and workflows that helped create and deliver James Cameron’s brilliant vision to the many screens optimized for this next-generation cinematic experience, the Supersession will take place over a full day on Tuesday, February 21, and will be presented in a theater specifically designed for the event. 

The HPA Tech Retreat is set for February 20-23 at the Westin Mission Hills Golf Resort & Spa in Rancho Mirage, CA. 

The Supersession is designed to deliver an immersive experience, with incredible visuals and unparalleled insights, in a purpose-built theater, featuring 4K, 3D, high frame rate, RGB laser projectors as well as conventional Xenon projectors, designed to meet the filmmakers’ rigorous standards.

The day’s program will include the following: 

Introducing Avatar: The Way of Water. The audience will experience filmmaker-selected scenes from the film in 3D that will provide context for the discussions that follow.

Welcome: HPA Supersession Chair Loren Nielsen will set the stage for the day.

Making Avatar: The Way of Water: Attendees will get a look at the breakthrough live-action cinematographic process used for the film, including 48 and 24 fps, 3D capture and astounding underwater cinematography. Panelists include:

• Russell Carpenter, ASC, Director of Photography (via live remote) 
• Robin Charters, 3D Camera Systems Workflow Engineer
• Simon Marsh, Sony Venice Product Director 
• Tashi Trieu, Colorist
• Moderator: Joachim Zell, HPA Board Member and HPA Engineering Awards Committee Chair

Planning and Supporting the Vision:  The Studio Perspective. Studios are accustomed to delivering tentpole films, but Avatar: The Way of Water is no ordinary tentpole. This session will explore how the studio teams worked with filmmakers to understand the timeframes, logistics and planning process that delivered one of the most complex films ever made. The conversation will include: 

• Kim Beresford, Vice President, Integrated Planning & Motion Pictures Operations, The Walt Disney Studios
• Leon Silverman, HPA Board Member and Past President

 “From the very outset of planning the Supersession, there was no film or topic as compelling as the creative technology and innovation behind Avatar: The Way of Water,"  said Nielsen, who leads the 2023 Supersession committee. "Understanding how this gargantuan project was planned, managed and executed its creative vision is the sort of topic we love to get our heads around at the HPA Tech Retreat. It’s complex, beautiful, challenging and revolutionary. It’s an absolute honor to work with the team behind the scenes of delivering this movie.”

The HPA Tech Retreat benefits from the generous support of diamond title sponsor Adobe; platinum sponsors AMD, AWS, and NetApp Berkeley Communications; after party sponsor Ateliere; connectivity sponsor Sohonet; gold sponsor Blackmagic Design; silver sponsors 6P Color, Unreal Engine, NTC, HammerSpace, Keycode Media, and Puget Systems; event sponsors ARRI, Dell Technologies, Like Minded Media Ventures, Panavision, and Signiant; bronze sponsor ZEISS; and star sponsor Avid. Sponsors of the Supersession are Barco, Christie, GDC, and RealD 3D. 

More information about the event can be found here. 

LOS ANGELES—The future of content localization, the ambiguity of being “green” and the transformation of broadcasters into media companies with the assistance of advanced technologies are three of the topics the Hollywood Professional Association (HPA) will explore during its 2023 HPA Tech Retreat main conference in February 2023 at the Westin Mission Hills Golf Resort & Spa in Rancho Mirage, Calif., the association said this week.

Composed of the TR-X (Monday, Feb. 20), the Supersession (Tuesday, Feb.21), and the main conference program (Wednesday and Thursday, Feb. 22-24), the HPA Retreat will feature curated presentations focused on the issues confronting the media industry.

“We received a true abundance of riches this year.  Not only were there more proposals than ever, but they were of exceptionally high quality,” said Mark Schubin, who has steered the retreat for 25 years. “Look for presentations from four major studios talking about some of the most important projects. You will see presentations on immersive entertainment like MSG Dome, as well as virtual production, security, and cloud technologies.”

The Innovation Zone and the HPA Tech Retreat demo room have grown and will include presentations and demos beyond the walls of the traditional Innovation Zone space, it said.

Three of the four days of the Tech Retreat also feature breakfast roundtables with company representatives and experts speaking and leading discussions on a variety of topics.

Registration for this limited-attendance gathering is open and available online. 

The full schedule is now available on the HPA website.

The Hollywood Professional Association has opened registration for the HPA Tech Retreat, Feb. 20-23, 2023, at the Westin Mission Hills Golf Resort & Spas in Rancho Mirage, Calif.

HPA has issued a call for proposals for presentations and panels to be held during the tech retreat. Topics may include anything related to the field. No formal proposal is required, simply a sentence or two from the presenter. “Anything from scene to seen and gear to ear is fair game,” HPA says.

The retreat will once again feature breakfast roundtables in addition to the main program. The hour-long roundtables will be held on Feb. 21, 22 and 23.

The HPA Awards program is sold out, but the organization has a waiting list for those wishing to see if space becomes available.

The registration fee for the entire event is $1,995 for HPA members and $2,395 for non-members. One-day registration is $995 for HPA members and $1,175 for non-members. Fees do not include hotel accommodations.

Exhibition space in the Innovation Zone is available.

More information is available online.

BURBANK, Calif.—The Hollywood Professional Association (HPA) has issued a call for proposals for the main program and breakfast roundtables for the 2023 HPA Tech Retreat. The event, which draws the full complement of innovative thinkers working at the intersection of artistry and technology, will take place Feb. 20-23 at the Westin Mission Hills Golf Resort & Spa in Rancho Mirage, Calif.

The main program of the Tech Retreat, curated by Mark Schubin, culminates the 4-day event. The program offers a broad and deep view of important issues and advances in media technology that sets the agenda for the year ahead. The call for submissions will close Oct. 14.

ThE 2023 HPA Tech Retreat's schedule will begin with the retreat's popular "TR-X"—a one-day deep dive into a new topic— and continues with the Supersession and ends with the main conference program.  As in the past, breakfast roundtables, networking events and the Innovation Zone will complement the daily sessions. 

The HPA Tech Retreat attracts a dazzling spectrum of distinguished participants, both attendees and speakers, and engages leaders from myriad contexts and roles to inform the conversation.

Call for Proposals: Main Program
Main program presentations are strictly reserved for marketing-free content and can focus on anything within a wide range of topics affecting the media tech industry and content creation. The informal proposals can be as short as a few words in length, but must be submitted by the would-be presenter to proposals@hpaonline.com. Typically, main program presentations are half an hour in duration, including setup and Q&A. Time limits are strictly enforced. Decisions on the program are expected in November.

Schubin has noted that proposals from those new to the event and members of underrepresented groups are encouraged, and their perspectives greatly valued.

Call for Proposals: Breakfast Roundtables
Breakfast roundtables, unlike the main program presentations, are permitted to include marketing information. They take place Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday mornings of the event.

Breakfast roundtables always fill quickly and are available on a first-come, first-served basis, with no vetting process. Proposals must be submitted directly by their proposed table moderators. Once the maximum number of tables is reached, no more will be accepted. New this year, no more than three roundtables will be permitted per organization per day. All breakfast roundtable moderators must be registered for the Retreat and there is no Retreat registration discount conveyed by moderating a breakfast roundtable. Proposals should be submitted to proposals@hpaonline.com.

Seth Hallen, President of HPA, said, “The velocity of technological advancement in our industry demands that that we benefit from one another’s wisdom. Last year’s incredible HPA Tech Retreat was an indelible reminder of how much wisdom and critical knowledge is available in our community and the impact that can spring from one short week—we have seen ripples from our Tech Retreat conversations across the industry through the months since the last event . I urge you to consider putting together a proposal for a presentation or a panel discussion. We need your thought leadership, and we are excited to connect.”

The HPA Tech Retreat perennially sells out, with HPA members granted access to early registration. It is anticipated that the attendance and presentation slots for 2023 will fill particularly quickly. Early registration and proposal submission are highly encouraged.

For more information about the 2023 HPA Tech Retreat, visit http://www.hpaonline.com.

Palm Springs welcomed back some 700+ industry influencers for the annual Hollywood Professional Association (“HPA”) Tech Retreat, with a “who’s who” of M&E tech professionals gathering in person to discuss new advances and  networking with colleagues on the future of media and entertainment.  

In strict compliance with governmental guidelines and with proper COVID protocols in place, HPA’s TR 2022 resumed its intensive program Feb 21st with three sessions that centered on current and evolving production technologies.  

Often considered “the premium conference” for M&E, HPA’s Tech Retreat had been "physically dormant" since its last gathering in February 2020. Returning to Palm Springs’ Westin Mission Hills resort, topics of interest included Extended Reality (XR), Volume production experiences, AI/ML, optimization of virtual production (VP) techniques, and emerging workflows for broadcast and cinematic motion picture and live production.  

Accompanying the conference was HPA’s “Innovation Zone” where equipment representatives and services providers demonstrated technologies associated with the topics presented throughout the conference.

TR Extra
Open the conference was HPA’s Tech Retreat eXtra (“TR-X”), a half-day session titled “Blending Cine Cameras in Today’s Multi-Camera Live Production Environment.” TR-X focused on the "harmonization" of both broadcast and cinematic workflows centering on multicamera technologies described as the “meshing of cinema and broadcast,” according to the NAB Cine Consortium’s chair, Kristin Petrovich.

On-set production sound challenges were visually demonstrated using high-speed, acoustic-camera 3D technology. Ambient sound reflections from a single source were tracked onto a virtual set allowing VR-programmers to place sound in a VR-space which could be tracked and properly oriented during VR-postproduction and game creation processes.   

Session presenters included Renard Jenkins, SVP, Production Integration & Creative Technology Services for Warner Bros. Entertainment, who correlated the differences between broadcast 2/3-inch camera technologies against Super 35mm digital cinema cameras. Jenkins explained how systems are being transformed and how image capturing has moved from single-camera approaches to multicamera composition.  

Interleaved with optical imaging principles and color science were tutorial presentations on how 23.98 fps resolved to 29.97 fps video.  

Case Studies Explained
HPA TR-X always brings out the best in well-known case studies.  Setups, workflows and configurations for Fox Entertainment Group’s “Field of Dreams” were explained by Tim Walker; and Ron Williams presented the equipment and challenges involved with the “Coachella and Billie Eilish” concert production.

Cine-Live, a case-study about producing the Super Bowl LVI halftime show was chock full of "behind the scenes" shots of setups, rehearsals, and equipment applications.  Panelists explained how the entire show was "rolled into place" in under 8 minutes (during the commercial break at half time) and included rehearsals which individually mapped every cinema-type camera, via fiber, into the new NFL Media control rooms next to SoFi Stadium. 

For the first time, the Super Bowl LVI halftime show employed a director of photography (DP) who crafted the show using 14 cinematic cameras with 23.98 production approaches for a 29.97 release format.

Cinematic Broadcast
Obvious to many were the ongoing references that “we are changing the landscapes we’ve been accustomed to for decades.”  The paradigm shift toward "Cinematic Style Broadcast" was evident and accompanied the “importance of communications, the gear and technology, and how new skill sets (i.e., 'education') will be paramount to the LIVE35 and Cine/Broadcast migrations.” 

Presenters further expounded on how to find that “killer workflow,” which still needs to be found. Coupling production into a "360-degree coverage" model was exemplified and will move toward a developing concept whereby “all [the] action happens in real time,” that is, a "no-post" environment, which, in the end may become the elusive new killer workflow.

HPA TR day 2 included a Supersession, focusing on Virtual Production with an entire day dedicated to Virtual Art Direction (VAD); production beyond the "just the wall" as in LED screens which form the Volume; innovations in remote-mobile-live workflows; and AI-assisted artistry which covered procedural version ML (machine learning) including the value of scan-based workflows.

Image Ownership
Tuesday afternoon featured a discussion on “who owns the image” from the perspective of directors, cinematographers, and key creatives. Greater depth with regard to “In-Camera Visual Effects” (ICVFX), the process of capturing visual effects live and in-camera on set (as within an "LED Volume"), discussed the technical requirements behind tracking, lighting, colorimetry, and staging for the Volume (see Fig. 1 and workflow diagram for one of three Volumes demonstrated).

Heavy duty topics centering on ML/AI, automation, and the requirements for addressing change in the industry had presenters expressing some frank points on developing software, such as “should you build or buy?” and “because you should, not because you can.” 

Risk assessment and readiness were statistically represented with analysis pointing out that “66% of [all] software development projects end in partial or total failure.” Furthering that topic, Rich Welsh from Deluxe, stated that “over half of all software development will cost 189% of the original budget” followed by “85% of A.I. projects fail.”

Enter the Metaverse
In addition to HPA Tech Retreat Chair Mark Schubin's annual technology review and the unusual updates from an almost absent CES 2022 by Pete Putman, attendees also got a look into the "media metaverse."

Via the exploration of dvLED (direct view LED) production and the migration of game development techniques into film production, this "near-return-to-normal" HPA Tech Retreat had several topics illustrated by examples, demonstrations and experiences which cast media and entertainment into an evolving "metaverse."  

Described as a “unified space that integrates multiple virtual worlds into a single, interoperable location that can be accessed by many concurrent users,” attendees learned how the "metaverse" includes everything from gaming to multiple-camera productions on a single-stage (the Volume) and beyond. Opening a much broader dimension for creativity, in its earliest iterations, the "media-metaverse" might be seen as an entertainment experience unto itself.  

Virtual Humans
HPA opened the door even wider to "virtual humans" and the concept of "Hub Not Home," (aka "why new ways about working aren't about COVID"), further exemplifying a multitude of changes collectively associated with live production, studio production, and a new space for postproduction. 

Beyond those topics, MovieLabs provided an update to their 10-year "2030 Vision for Media Creation" and the American Society of Cinematographers Motion Imaging Technology Council (ASC MITC) revealed The Mission, its new 17-minute next generation version of the Standard Evaluation Material (StEM2) for digital cinema test and evaluation. 

This year's HPA Tech Retreat exemplified the idea that virtual is “no longer a futuristic notion,” showing that immersive surroundings are changing the how, why, and for what purpose next generation experiences in the motion-picture production are expected. HPA’s Tech Retreat is always an eye opener, with one interesting and concluding perception initiated from COVID-19’s impact that “…home-based work will reduce and become the exception rather than the rule [or the norm].”

 Let’s see if this prediction remains as HPA resumes again, next year!

Click here for a photo recap of the event. 

LONDON—Mo-Sys Engineering will work together with Moxion, QTAKE and OVIDE at the HPA Tech Retreat, Feb. 21-24, in Rancho Mirage, Calif., to show a collaborative virtual production workflow in the event’s Innovation Zone.

At the companies’ combined stand, they will show a Sony Crystal LED wall and a Sony Venice camera on a curved rail. The camera will be equipped with a Mo-Sys StarTracker camera tracking system. The company’s VP Pro XR LED content server will drive the LED wall.

Takes will be captured with QTAKE’s on-set capture tool while the VP Pro XR, which will capture the camera and lens-tracking data, will drive the LED wall. Mo-Sys’ new NearTime service will solve the growing problem of increasing real-time Unreal image quality while maintaining real-time frame rates, Mo-Sys said.

NearTime uses cloud processing from AWS to address the issue. Once processed in the cloud, higher-quality re-rendered images will automatically be delivered to a Moxion Immediates solution for review and signoff, it said.

Using NearTime in an LED volume with a Mo-Sys enabled halo green frustum for separating talent from the LED content, the background Unreal scenes can be re-rendered automatically with higher quality or resolution using captured camera and lens tracking data. They can then be used to replace the original lower-quality background Unreal scenes, the company said. 

This process avoids the need for large quantities of on-set rendering nodes, minimizes post-production costs and completely eliminates moiré effects. This unique approach enables far more efficient workflows than those that exist today, the company said.  

“We believe there is a better way to bring virtual productions to life cost-effectively and without compromising on image quality,” said Mo-Sys CEO Michael Geissler. “We are excited to meet with customers face-to-face once more at the HPA Tech Retreat and to show them workflows that can take their virtual productions to the next level while allowing them to work with other tools that they are already familiar with.”  

The retreat has scheduled the “Immerse Yourself in Virtual Production” Supersession for Feb. 22. Attendees will walk through virtual production from concept to delivery. Emphasis will be placed on planning and preparation. Three LED walls—one each from AOTO, Planar and Sony—will be featured. Two will use the Mo-Sys StarTracker camera and lens tracking system. One will be driven by Mo-Sys’ VP Pro XR LED content server, showcasing Cinematic XR Focus feature.

More information on the retreat is available on the event’s website.

More information about the Mo-Sys VR solutions are available on its website.

LOS ANGELES—HPA has outlined its current health and safety COOVID-19 protocols to potential attendees of its upcoming 2022 HPA Tech Retreat, noting that “so much has happened in the past year to make [an in-person event] possible: vaccines, boosters, accessible testing, and greater knowledge about how to gather safely.”

“Our first priority for planning the Tech Retreat is safety,” the organization said. “[W]e have been planning carefully and leaning on expert advice to ensure the event is safe and comfortable for everyone. California currently has some of the most stringent COVID policies in the U.S. in place and the greater Palm Springs vaccination rate has been consistently among the top in the state, with Rancho Mirage reporting 94% of residents vaccinated as of the end of 2021.”

More specific plans to keep the event safe include:  

• Requiring proof of full vaccination for all participants.
• All Tech Retreat events will take place in a designated “Safe Zone” for the exclusive use of Tech Retreat attendees - no outside guests permitted.
• Separate outdoor hotel check-in and registration for Tech Retreat attendees only.
• Masks required indoors when not eating or drinking.
• Outdoor sessions, meals, and breaks when possible.
• State of the art HVAC with MERV 13 filtration.
• Continuous fresh air circulated into all event and conference space.
• COVID Compliance Officers on site.
• Electrostatic sanitizing of entire conference and event spaces, nightly.
• Complimentary COVID testing available to attendees if needed.
• Hand sanitizing stations throughout venue.

More information on the HPA Tech Retreat, which will be held between February 21 to 24, and the latest Tech Retreat Health and Safety measures is available here.  

BURBANK, Calif.—The Hollywood Professional Association (HPA) has issued the call for proposals for the 2022 HPA Tech Retreat. 

The 2022 HPA Tech Retreat will take place February 21-24 at the Westin Mission Hills Golf Resort & Spa in Rancho Mirage, CA.

The proposals selected in this process make up the main program, a series of short panels and presentations that set the agenda for the year ahead in creative technology. Past presenters’ affiliations have included government agencies, academic institutions, and companies large and small. Proposals will be accepted through October 29.  

This year’s HPA Tech Retreat will return to its in-person format which launches with TR-X (Tech Retreat Extra) and continues with the Supersession and main conference program hosted by Mark Schubin.  As in the past, breakfast roundtables, networking events and the Innovation Zone will complement the daily session.  

Call for Proposals: Main Program

Main program presentations are strictly reserved for marketing-free content. The HPA Tech Retreat’s Mark Schubin notes that main program sessions can include a wide range of topics: “Anything involving motion imaging or associated technologies (such as sound) is fair game. Got a new way of solving a problem? Found fault with an old way? Thought of something no one has considered before? We’re interested, and you’ll get feedback from the best.”

Proposals are informal in nature and can be as short as a few words in length (typically a few sentences) and must be submitted directly by the would-be presenter. Submitters will be contacted if the topic is of interest. Presentations in the main program are typically of half-hour duration (though other time slots will be considered, and shorter ones are preferred), including set-up and Q&A. Time limits are enforced. The deadline to submit main program proposals is end of day, October 29. Submissions should be sent to tvmark@earthlink.net.  All submissions are acknowledged soon after receipt. 

Schubin also noted that "We are always interested in hearing from those new to the event, particularly members of underrepresented groups; we greatly value their perspectives."  

Call for Proposals: Breakfast Roundtables

Breakfast roundtables are set for Tuesday, February 22, Wednesday, February 23 and Thursday, February 24. Unlike the main program presentations, breakfast roundtable moderators are permitted to include marketing information. 

Breakfast roundtables always fill quickly and are available on a first-come, first-served basis, with no vetting process. Proposals must be submitted in the same way, directly by their proposed table moderators. Once the maximum number of tables is reached, no more will be accepted. All breakfast roundtable moderators must be registered for the Retreat and there is no Retreat registration discount conveyed by moderating a breakfast roundtable. 

Seth Hallen, president of HPA explained that “It’s no secret that our industry has changed dramatically. The accompanying leaps in technology that have come to fruition since we last met in the desert have been nothing short of extraordinary. The HPA Tech Retreat – which will return to its deeply engaged, conversational, exploration-oriented roots – remains the place where problems and developments are put forth, explored and understood. Vital and important at its core, the Tech Retreat continues to evolve to speak to a changing industry of many different disciplines. We eagerly await the proposals for this year’s program, which promise to demand an even higher level of attention from our attendees. I sincerely hope for first time presenters and submissions from a broad spectrum of thought, with the goal of new approaches and paradigms being presented by speakers representative of our entire diverse community. With Mark’s program, and the plans we are putting in place for the supersession and TRX, the content will, as ever, be out of this world.” 

The HPA Tech Retreat perennially sells out, the organizers said. As the event returns to the in-person format, which may require some limitations to develop a safe and healthy event, it is anticipated that the attendance and presentation slots for 2022 will fill particularly quickly. Early registration and proposal submission are highly encouraged. Tech Retreat registration will open in October. 

For more information about the 2022 HPA Tech Retreat, visit www.hpaonline.com. 

WASHINGTON—Broadcast television is no longer unique, and that will open up new and exciting doors over the next few years. More specifically, the broadcast industry’s transition to IP technology allows them to operate and compete in streaming markets, which will be a boost as the industry looks to transition to ATSC 3.0, embrace remote production and explore new opportunities to engage with viewers.

This was the focus of last week’s two-part Broadcasters Panel during HPA Tech Retreat 2021. The panel was moderated by industry pundit Matthew Goldman and featured Del Parks of Sinclair Broadcast Group, Dave Folsom of Pearl TV, Ken Fuller of CBS and Richard Friedel of Fox as panelists.

IP FOR ATSC

With IP a critical feature of the ATSC 3.0 standard, traditional video media systems can now move into new areas, according to Parks.

“Having an IP backbone does a couple of things: It gets us into a different operating environment globally, but it also gives us to a large degree some interoperability with 5G, with LT, with existing telecommunications,” Parks said. “We have in our labs at CES and NAB demonstrated switching back and forth between 5G and ATSC 3.0 seamlessly.”

Friedel cited the field experience of many Fox Sports broadcasters, who are now using 5G to transport video from venues to broadcast centers instead of fiber or other newsgathering technology.

“We are essentially wireless broadband,” Friedel said. “That’s really exciting, you can just imagine the business models and the business ideas that our people can come up with to find ways to monetize it, of course, but also to build exciting things for consumers.”

IP also helps lower the cost of entry for NextGen TV, as off-the-shelf equipment can now be used, Folsom noted.

REDFINING TV SERVICE

ATSC 3.0 will change how TV is delivered and what can be delivered over broadcast, but what is provided to viewers is also changing because of the rise of streaming services.

With the recent launches of Disney+, HBO Max and Peacock, content that previously would have debuted on traditional broadcast networks is being specifically created and exclusively shown on these streaming services. That is bringing broadcast TV full circle, according to Parks, who believes that over-the-air content will become more localized, like it was in the early days of television.

Local news and other live, locally-focused content will become key to fill out daily broadcast schedules as there is less original and syndicated content available; moved to fill out the library of these streaming services.

Broadcasters aren’t standing still, though. They’re launching their own OTT and other digital channels, Friedel explained, with nearly every broadcaster streaming their signal. But broadcasters need to be aware of how their content is viewed.

“At first, you were watching content on your phone, but now it has moved to the TV, so the level of expectation has changed among consumers,” said Fuller.

Broadcasters will not only be limited to sharing over-the-air content, however. Combining broadcast with IP gives broadcasters opportunities like data distribution, mobile phones—Parks mentioned ONE Media’s Mark One phone—and infotainment.

“Television is just one service inside of an IP broadcast,” said Parks. “An important service, but it’s one. There can be others.”

The full Broadcaster Panels are available to view on-demand via the HPA Tech Retreat Website. 

BURBANK, Calif.—The 2021 HPA Tech Retreat is just a little more than a month away, and HPA is providing more details on not only what will be discussed during the conference, but how its attendees will access it with the new HPA Engage content portal.

The HPA Tech Retreat will be conducted virtually because of the ongoing pandemic, but HPA has crafted the HPA Engage to make it different from a typical Zoom conference.

“We began from the ground up to design an experience that is different from the many back-to-back video conferences that are now a routine part of our workdays,” said Seth Hallen, HPA president. “HPA Engage is designed to be an elegant access point to all of the events and content from the Retreat, and will continue after the event to be a vibrant, content rich, educational hub of information for our members.

HPA Director Phil Kubel and HPA Digital Projects Coordinator Max Ma developed HPA Engage.

In addition, HPA has announced a more detailed agenda for the HPA Tech Retreat, crafted by Tech Retreat maestro March Schubin.

Schedule highlights include thought Hallen’s welcome on March 15; Schubin’s Technology year in review also on March 15; leadership content drops throughout the retreat; HPA Produced Documentaries; Critical Conversations on virtual production, including a case study of producing opera on March 16; breakfast roundtables on March 16, 23 and 24; the main program, featuring industry leaders discussing critical trends and technologies; the Tech Retreat Innovation Zone; the HPA Tech Retreat Supersession from March 23-24; and the HPA Tech Retreat Quiz.

For more information, visit www.hpaonline.com.  

BURBANK, Calif.—Registration is now open for HPA Tech Retreat 2021, set for March 15-26. The annual conference, which will take place virtually this year because of the COVID-19 pandemic, will offer two weeks of knowledge exchange, community and preparation for attendees.

Despite a virtual setting, the HPA Tech Retreat will still strive to provide compelling content that illustrates technology and storytelling, with a program curated by Mark Schubin, including an OTT Supersession. Network opportunities, the Innovation Zone and roundtables are also still on the docket.

HPA has provided a more in-depth preview of what the virtual retreat will look like.

Registration is now open for HPA members and non-members. For more information, or to register, visit HPA’s website. 

BURBANK, Calif.—While the 2021 HPA Tech Retreat won’t technically be a retreat, as the annual conference is forced to go virtual because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Hollywood Professional Association is aiming to put on an event that offers its well-known features and content, as well as some new additions.

“The focus of this year’s event—aptly described as ‘exactly the same, completely different and over the top’—brings the key elements of the HPA Tech Retreat directly to our audience,” said Seth Hallen, HPA president. “The critical parts of the Retreat: top flight knowledge, the latest technological and product news and reviews, debate and discussion as well as the nearly legendary social networking, have a value that cannot be overstated. With that in mind, we are building an event that will exceed expectations on all of those fronts. It may not be the same physical event, but it will have all of the verve of the retreat in a different setting.”

Still serving as the central focus of the HPA Tech Retreat will be the main program presentations, which will be curated by HPA Tech Retreat Maestro Mark Schubin. HPA shared that it received a record number of proposals for its main program (110) that will take place from 9 a.m.-noon throughout the conference. 

The Supersession builds off the 2020 Supersession “The Lost Lederhose” with “Found Lederhosen,” a global series of productions and a behind-the-scenes documentary that brings the worlds of virtual production, far-flung locations, and remote collaboration to the HPA Tech Retreat in real time. 

The breakfast and lunch roundtables, while not sharing meals, will still have up to 12 participants discussing different topics.

The Innovation Zone, led by Eliot Sakhartov, will provide access to new technologies and products

Networking events, meanwhile, will be available through in-platform video chatting, LinkedIn networking, group chats or direct messaging. Networking hours and cocktail hours are in development.

In addition, a new event will debut during the 2021 HPA Tech Retreat, HPA Engage. Taking place each day, Schubin will introduce a piece of content and contextualize its value, per HPA, including viewpoints from thought leaders, industry voices, award winners and member companies. HPA Engage will continue to add content after the HPA Tech Retreat that members can access.

The 2021 HPA Tech Retreat is taking place from March 15-26 and is open to HPA members and non-members. For more information, or to register, visit www.hpaonline.com.  

BURBANK, Calif.—The Hollywood Professional Association’s annual February gathering is adapting to the global pandemic, announcing that the HPA Tech Retreat will be a virtual event in 2021.

The move, like nearly all other major conferences since March, is a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. HPA Tech Retreat plans to take on the subject directly, saying that a key component of the virtual event will be tackling the impact of the global pandemic on the media landscape.

HPA has also announced the opening of its Call for Proposals that will make up its main program and breakfast roundtables.

Main program proposals can cover a variety of topics, but HPA’s program lead Mark Schubin is stressing a focus on how technology has helped the industry overcome the impact of COVID-19 and the role it will play in adapting to new industry challenges and opportunities. Schubin also notes new rules to the presentations, including any presentation or panel lasting a maximum of 20 minutes (bigger topics could be split into multiple presentations) and that any selected presentation is to be prerecorded and delivered before the event. Main program presentations must be marketing-free content.

Breakfast roundtables, meanwhile, can be on just about anything, including marketing content. There is no vetting process for breakfast roundtables, per HPA, and will be available until the maximum number of tables is reached.

HPA is accepting proposals from now until 5 p.m. PT on Nov. 20. Proposal submissions should be sent to media.mark.schubin@gmail.com.

“Despite the challenges presented by the COVID pandemic, we are going to make sure that this HPA Tech Retreat continues to engage, inform and connect in its usual jaw dropping way,” said Seth Hallen, president of HPA. “This year, more than ever, the discussion and deep knowledge is exactly what our community needs and seeks. Your input is what has always made the HPA Tech Retreat program unlike any other event, and I encourage you to submit for this year’s program—the industry needs to hear from you.”

For more information on HPA Tech Retreat 2021, visit www.hpaonline.com. 

The recent HPA Tech Retreat was a gathering of industry professionals to discuss many different aspects of the broadcast and video industries, including NextGen TV and how new technologies are assisting with productions.

Mark Schubin, the HPA program maestro, took time during the retreat to look back at the last year in technology. Take a look at Schubin's presentation in the video below, courtesy of HPA.

For more information about HPA or HPA Tech Retreat, please visit www.hpaonline.com.

RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif.—A “Broadcasters’ Panel” has been a fixture at the HPA Tech Retreat program for years, with representatives from networks, station groups and industry organizations sharing their thoughts on contemporary TV industry developments and issues. This year was no exception, with Dave Folsom from Pearl TV; Fox TV’s Richard Friedel; Del Parks from the Sinclair Broadcast Group; and the NAB’s Skip Pizzi assembling to field questions from moderator Matthew Goldman of MediaKind in a Wednesday morning session.

Topics this time ranged from the Phoenix Model Market project to the evolution of IP and cloud for broadcasters.

Goldman kicked off the discussion by asking Folsom to describe the Phoenix Model Market and explain why it was important in the effort to rollout NextGen TV.

“It’s the result of the FCC in the late fall of 2017 coming out with a Report and Order allowing broadcasters to make use of the newly-developed ATSC 3.0 standard,” replied Folsom. “How do you make that [initiation of 3.0 service] happen? Pearl, which is made up of nine large station groups, decided to create a model market, or model station, in Phoenix to see how this transition could be done without adding spectrum. We also provide a forum for manufacturers of technical equipment for the new standard to test their equipment, as well as for receiver manufacturers to test their products.”

Goldman asked how NextGen TV would be implemented, as TV broadcast spectrum space is at a premium now with the loss of channels in connection with the current repack.

“When we went from analog to ATSC 1.0, this was mandated by the government,” said Goldman. “That’s not happening now. Without the aid of additional channels and bandwidth, how will the transition to the new service be possible without negatively impacting over-the-air service?”

“It’s going to take a little bit of legerdemain,” said Folsom. “There is a little bit of extra bandwidth in [the ATSC 1.0] signal that we have now. If we can, by market, essentially clear one channel at a time of those individual services and move them and share them on other channels, to the viewer there will not be any difference.

“This will free up a channel, and this channel can carry up to five services because new codecs are much more efficient,” Folsom continued. “This will provide the mechanism—on a rolling basis—to clear spectrum for new services without losing your ATSC 1 audience.”

With so many options for video delivery available now, why should consumers even care about a new over the air broadcast standard, Goldman asked the panel. 

“For the consumer, one of the largest impacts that [NextGen TV] will have is that it finally addresses the idea of broadcast and broadband convergence,” Pizzi said. “Today, smart TV’s are already connected to the internet and a conventional television source, but you’re switching between the two. ATSC 3.0 puts those two together in a continuously variable way.”

“It’s about better pictures and sound,” Friedel added. “This is really going to impact the industry. There will also be a bunch of new business opportunities to capitalize on.”

Sinclair’s Parks thought that NextGen TV would return television broadcasting to a more local and live presence.

“When you look at where entertainment—syndicated television—is going, it’s really not going anywhere,” said Parks. “Much of the shows produced are for streaming services. Linear TV is migrating to live broadcast … very local and very live sports, news and local programming. It’s just not viable for Hollywood to produce syndicated programs like they used to. It just doesn’t work.”

“OTT is anything but live and local,” said. Pizzi. “This live, local-focused service [brought about by NextGen TV] can co-exist on a more even parity in terms of quality and interactivity with those other services” said Pizzi. “NextGen TV really gives broadcasters a level playing field going forward.”

THE MOVE TO DATA

The discussion then shifted to the relationship of NextGen TV to cloud and its relevance to broadcasting.

“I think the cloud is very important,” replied Sinclair’s Parks. “I don’t believe we’ll get to a NextGen TV distribution system without moving to the cloud. NextGen is not just about delivering pictures, but about delivering data. The cloud is extremely important to our operation.”

Pizzi added that NextGen TV was about delivering data both to and from the consumer and he saw the cloud serving as a collection point for this data, which could be used for rating programs and other functions. 

The panel then turned to the difficulty in finding qualified broadcast engineering personnel, as stations and production facilities alike move further and further into IP.

“They aren’t making broadcast engineers anymore,” said Friedel. “The truth is that we’re really building our own, and I think everyone else is too. We try to find bright young people and we teach them. We don’t have much of a choice. 

“The good news is that it’s allowing us to change the diversity of our employment too,” he continued. “A lot more women are attracted to the IP industry [than to broadcasting]; the same is true of minorities too. This will help us create better programming and better serve our communities.”

The discussion ended with Goldman asking how broadcasters were faring in light of the move to streaming and away from conventional television.

“Business is still pretty strong,” said Friedel, citing viewership for the recent Super Bowl. “The economics are there. We’re still delivering an audience. I hate to bring up politics, but Bloomberg is spending a lot of money in targeting his advertising, and you see his poll numbers are just skyrocketing. I don’t think this business is quite dead yet.” 

RANCHO MIRAGE, CALIF.—The 25th anniversary edition of the Hollywood Professional Association (HPA) Tech Retreat got underway here with a “first”—a complete motion picture “short” that was shot, assembled and “premiered” all in a single day.

Although some of the production’s scenes had been recorded earlier, a large portion of the action was captured during the Feb. 18 conference’s opening day program that interspersed the filmmaking with presentations about the various technologies that were used to put the 11-minute comedy together. 

Shooting took place at the Westin Mission Hills Golf Resort & Spa—where the four-day HPA Tech Retreat is taking place—as well as on the hotel grounds, and some additional action being captured by drone in a nearby southern California desert. The interior scenes featured action both on stage and off, with conference attendees interacting with actors at one point in the script.

“The Lost Lederhosen” was the brainchild of Joachim “JZ” Zell, vice president of technology at EFILM, a Los Angeles-based company specializing in digital imaging. Zell developed the movie’s storyline and served as the project’s host and producer. He explained that this “instant movie” was all about demonstrating technologies now available to moviemakers—including the use of cloud storage and playout—that make it possible to greatly shorten production time for cinematic productions, allowing operations that formerly took days and weeks of post-production effort to be done in near-real time.

The HPA cinematic production featured a mix of professional and volunteer actors, including SMPTE’s executive director, Barbara Lange. It was directed by Hollywood veteran Steven Shaw, with another television and motion picture notable, Roy Wagner, serving as director of photography.

To achieve the extremely quick turnaround time, the production utilized “virtual production stage” technology, in which prepared video backgrounds and scenery are inserted into the live action in real time through the use of large LED video display screens, rather than being done in post-production via the more conventional, but time-consuming, greenscreen process for montaging such footage.

As explained by conference presenter and chief executive officer at Stargate Studios, Sam Nicholson, a large degree of realism is achieved in virtual production stage scenes through the use of on-camera “trackers,” which allow computers to precisely follow camera movement and adjust the video being inserted into the scene accordingly to mimic what would be experienced in a real-world situation. Even the brightness and color temperature of the background display screens can automatically track changes to match what would happen in a real-world environment.

“If you kill all of the lights on the set, everything will adjust day-to-night,” said Nicholson. “So you save a tremendous amount of time on set because all lights are slaved to a virtual environment. If you go into a tunnel the lights go out. As daylight changes, lights track these changes. Again, everything comes back to what we’ve learned in post-production. That expertise is now being applied to photography.”

The short incorporated all elements of a “real” Hollywood production, including an ACES workflow; color correction; even delivery of “dailies” and an “outtake” reel. Editing was done on three Avid Media Composers located in a Hollywood facility, all cloud-connected to the previously ingested footage. Sound effects and audio “sweetening” operations were performed by Skywalker Sound at the Skywalker Ranch in northern California. The services of a number of other companies were employed, ranging from Amazon Web Services to Frame.io and Red Bee, to handle such production tasks as color grading and even minimizing the appearance of facial blemishes on some cast members. 

In addition to demonstrating how cinematic production time can be drastically reduced by performing tasks on set as the shooting occurs—instead of in post-production—the HPA “Lederhosen” project illustrated how cloud technology can allow multiple entities operating from a number of widely spread geographic locations to collaborate on post-production.

Five loaned cameras were used in the shooting of “The Lost Lederhosen:” an ARRI Alexa, a Sony Venice, a RED Monstro2, Blackmagic Design URSA mini pro and a Panavision DXL2.  

Reaction to the full day of movie production interwoven with technical presentations about various aspects of the project was very positive as judged by applause and cheers that followed the screening of the short. HPA organizers are promising similar events at future Tech Retreats.

A “Lost Lederhosen” trailer is available for viewing at https://vimeo.com/387515173. 

PALM SPRINGS, CALIF.—The HPA Tech Retreat turns 25 this year, though there is an asterisk or two when it comes to nailing down its age. The industry-gathering event started in 1995 with the International Teleproduction Society serving as the headlining sponsor until 2001, when the Hollywood Professional Association took up the mantle. There was also a missed year following a schedule change.

However it arrived, the 2020 HPA Tech Retreat rolls along once again in the Palm Springs desert, Feb. 17–20, and there appears to be no quarter-life crisis, even as the broadcast industry heads into a new decade and is on the edge of revolutionary changes.

AN ACCELERATING WORLD

It’s not just one thing about the industry that is currently evolving; all of the new technology designed to move broadcasting forward is on its way or already here and the Tech Retreat will try to address the challenges of technology adoption in its kick-off session, TR-X.

Titled “Stop the Technology World, I Want to Get Off!,” produced by Mark Chiolis, director of business development, Mobile TV Group, and Craig German, head of post management of series at Amazon Studios, the half-day session taking place on Monday, Feb. 17, takes a close examination at some of the most disruptive changes and how it will directly impact industry practices.

The session will be bookended with what Chiolis describes as “two different viewpoints” on just where the future is going from Mark Turner of MovieLabs and Josh Stinehour of Devoncroft. In between, it will offer specific looks at topics such as video over IP, the introduction of betting (and how it could gamify entertainment), artificial intelligence, augmented reality and a session from NASA’s Rodney Grubbs, who will explain how the agency plans to have UHD imaging live from the Moon by 2024.

With things changing so fast, Chiolis and German said they took a personal approach to planning this TR-X program, the third one they’ve organized.

“We build it for us and then we share it with the rest of the audience,” Chiolis said. “Because it’s really of interest to us, and we’re part of the larger media and entertainment industry over multiple aspects of it, we believe that by doing that it’s going to be of interest to everybody and everybody is going to benefit; everybody is going to participate.”

THE NEXTGEN ASPECT

While there are many elements pushing broadcast forward, likely nothing is as important in 2020 than the planned launch of NextGen TV, which will be a huge point of focus during the Broadcasters Panel on Wednesday.

“We’ve been talking about the coming of ATSC 3.0 on the panel over the last decade,” said Matthew Goldman, senior vice president of technology at MediaKind and the producer of the Broadcasters Panel. “And this year, wham, we’re going to air. This is the big, big launch this year.”

Despite the initial plans regarding NextGen TV from those in the industry—ATSC has said it intends to rollout to at least 40 markets by the end of the year, and TV manufacturers have announced that they are developing up to 20 TV models that will be able to receive NextGen TV (see cover story)—one of the most interesting aspects Goldman intends to dive into is the fact that, unlike the switch from analog to digital, transitioning to ATSC 3.0 will be voluntary. “How successful is it going to be given that it’s all voluntary?” he mused.

Other broadcast issues will also be on the table, including the rise of OTT, bandwidth, next-generation audio and 8K, with a number of industry experts participating as panelists, including Del Parks, Sinclair Broadcast Group’s senior vice president and CTO, Richard Friedel, executive vice president of engineering, operations and technology at Fox Television Stations Group and NAB’s Skip Pizzi.

MAKING MOVIES

Those are just a taste of what the 2020 HPA Tech Retreat has planned for its attendees from the schedule organized by HPA “program maestro” Mark Schubin.

Some of the other highlights include the full-day Supersession on Tuesday, “HPA Makes a Movie.” In a single day, HPA will shoot, edit and show a short-film with the help of HPA Engineering Award winners and a number of Hollywood professionals to highlight new techniques and technology.

There will also be a heavy focus on cloud technology at this year’s show, which Schubin said was the most submitted topic with HPA’s open call for presentations. As a result, most of the sessions on Thursday morning will explain how the cloud impacts things like production, security and distribution.

The jam-packed four-day slate is a testament of how the HPA Tech Retreat has grown over the years.

“The first one that I attended, which I was not in charge of but I did some presentations at, we had about 60 people and it was maybe 30% tech stuff and 60% what was considered important at the time, like team-building exercises,” said Schubin. It has since turned into a massive gathering featuring the latest technology, he said.

But even after all these years, Schubin believes it has stayed true to what has been its biggest success. “The one thing that we’ve always had since the very beginning is what I say is the unofficial motto of the Tech Retreat: Someone will be there who knows the answer, no matter what your question is.”

The 2020 HPA Tech Retreat takes place from Feb. 17–20 at the Westin Mission Hills Golf Resort & Spa in Rancho Mirage, Calif. For more information, visit hpaonline.com.

PALM DESERT, Calif.—A standard feature of the annual Hollywood Professional Association (HPA) Tech Retreat being held here is the Wednesday Broadcasters’ Panel. At this year’s conference, four representatives from the broadcasting industry—Del Parks, senior vice president/CTO for Sinclair Broadcast Group; Cox Media’s Dave Siegler, vice president of technical operations for Cox Media Group; Richard Friedel, executive vice president and general manager of engineering and operations for Fox Network; and Skip Pizzi, vice president of technology education and outreach for NAB—were quizzed about current broadcasting issues by MediaKind Senior Vice President of Technology Matthew Goldman, who placed the rollout of ATSC 3.0 service at the top of his list.

All panelists agreed that moving to this advanced television service would be neither simple nor easy, as a number of factors are in play that make it anything but easy. The foremost of these is lack of the expansion spectrum that broadcasters were provided with in the analog-to-digital transition in 2009. With the shortage of spectrum that now exists, a change by one station in an individual market involves all of the TV broadcast operations there.

“It’s not a single station matter; it’s a market exercise,” said Parks. “There are five, seven, or maybe 10 stations in a given market and there has to be a high degree of technical coordination within that market in order to clear spectrum for 3.0 services. [Once this is done] it’s essentially the installation of a different exciter and possibly some different transmitter plumbing.”

Asked about the NAB’s involvement in helping to initiate ATSC 3.0 broadcasting in the United States, Pizzi stated that his organization is now actively working on a program to assist broadcasters in combining their efforts to launch 3.0 on the air in their markets.

“This has to be a team effort, and that’s a little unusual,” said Pizzi, noting the competitive nature of the broadcasting business. He stated that NAB is developing a “best practices” guide to assist stations in transitioning to next-generation broadcasting, as well as offering guidance to state broadcasting organizations and providing information to local media organizations to help educate viewers as to the changes that will be occurring with television service in their markets.

TIMELINES FOR 3.0 LAUNCHES

Asked about Fox’s plans to transition to 3.0, Friedel stated that there was an initiative to launch service in a number of the larger markets served by Fox, with a goal of completion by Christmas 2020. Parks said that his group had committed to establishing next-gen service in 25 to 30 markets by the end of 2019.

However, when Goldman mentioned the absence of 3.0 capable receivers at January’s CES, all panelists agreed that this could also be a handicapping factor in rolling out the new service.

“I understand that there won’t be that many sets out there capable of 3.0 in the first year,” said Parks.

Pizzi agreed, likening the situation as it exists now to a classic case of “chicken and egg,” with set manufacturers reluctant to offer 3.0 sets for sale when few, if any broadcasters, are broadcasting in 3.0, and broadcasters being equally reluctant to commit to transmitting next-gen TV signals when there are no viewers.

“I think broadcasters, in general, realize that we‘ve got to be the chicken," Pizzi said. “We’ve got to be out there first and put the services up on the air proactively and hope the manufacturers will build the receivers.”

Goldman suggested that lack of a government mandate to move to 3.0 operation was also possible stumbling block. Pizzi agreed.

“In Korea where there is a mandate, they have a roadmap,” he said. “And even there they’re going to take until 2027 before they have everything turned on in 3.0 and then start turning off 1.0 services. So, we shouldn’t expect with a voluntary transition—particularly where we have to do it with market-by-market cooperation—for it not to take a good 10 years to happen.”

For a comprehensive source of TV Technology’s ATSC 3.0 coverage, see our ATSC3 silo.

PALM SPRINGS, CALIF.—This year’s HPA Tech Retreat will once again see a gathering of industry-leading thinkers who will discuss the latest trends in the creation, management and dissemination of video content. The weeklong Palm Springs event, which is capped at just 700 attendees and begins Monday, Feb. 11, will feature a main conference program, the “TR-X Tech Retreat Xtra” focused on eSports, as well as breakfast roundtables and a curated innovation zone, along with other opportunities for industry leaders to meet and exchange ideas.

The event officially gets underway with the Tuesday Supersession, which will highlight Next-Gen Workflows and Infrastructure, featuring insight from Tom Graham of Dolby on Dolby Vision from set to consumer; Tina Eckman of Dolby on Dolby Atmos from set to consumer; and Scott Kramer of Netflix on immersive sound from capture through post production.

HDR AND THE MOVE TO 8K

Numerous sessions on Wednesday including an HDR “Mini” Session, will address the importance of HDR in video production. There will be an introduction to HDR, how it is being used in anime and how it can push the limits of motion in video production. These sessions should highlight how 4K and UHD are not interchangeable terms, and that resolution is just part of the picture with HDR playing an important role in UHD, according to HPA president Seth Hallen, who will host the “Intro to HDR” session.

“UHD implies not only resolution, but other things such as HDR and its wider color gamut,” said Hallen, who is also head of global strategy and business development at Pixelogic. “Studies have shown that the human brain can detect a greater range of light to dark than it can picture resolution. HDR thus is a massive improvement for overall picture quality. But it can also ensure that the content is delivered as closely as possible to the filmmaker’s intent. Hopefully the consumer will appreciate that.”

None of that is to say that resolution isn’t important, and even as 4K content is only now starting to pick up steam the industry is clearly looking ahead to what the next generation—8K—can offer. Pete Putman of ROAM Consulting will host two sessions, as well as take part in a breakfast roundtable—firstly offering his thoughts on HDMI 2.1 and Display-Port before providing an overview of products in the world of consumer electronics that were introduced at the recent 2019 CES in Las Vegas. Putman will then dive into what we can expect in 8K in 2019 and beyond in the session, “8K: Whoa! How’d We Get There So Quickly?”

“The 8K talk will be an overview of everything from cameras to displays, based on current information,” said Putman, who will discuss various aspects of the technology including appropriate codecs for compression and data transfer rates. “It should bring people up to speed on just how fast 8K is coming to market.”

TAKING IT ON THE ROAD AND BRINGING IT HOME

Mark Chiolis, director of business development for the Mobile TV Group will host Thursday’s “Remote and Mobile Production Panel,” which will discuss the changing world of remote production that now includes not only live sports and concerts for broadcasters, but addresses how this is fitting into the world of streaming services and the growing eGames/eSports market.

“With so many live events you start out with a blank canvas and the set up for a production crew is very tight,” said Chiolis. “We’ll discuss the whole gamut of what is involved in preparing for a live production and what we’ve seen come out in 2018 and what we expect to help with productions in the next couple of years. Part of the discussion will include the role of REMI applications [REMote Integration], IP workflows, virtual productions and of course, eSports. It should be an exciting time for live production.”

Thanks to larger TV screens with greater resolution joined by surround sound systems, seeing movies at home has gotten closer to what filmmakers have intended, and this aspect of what the viewer actually sees will be discussed in “Downstream Image Presentation Management for Consumer Displays.” Moderated by Michael Chambliss of International Cinematographers Guild, the session will feature Steven Poster of the American Society of Cinematographers as a panelist.

“We, as the ASC, started participating at the HPA Tech Retreat seven years ago, and at the time we were asked why we were here,” said Poster. “Now they have asked us to give our presentation, which we see as important as it discusses the importance of the creative intent of the filmmaker.”

That intent of what the director and cinematographer has improved a lot from the days when movies were in essence “butchered” via pan and scan, but today even with HDR and greater picture resolution, there still needs to be more progress. Poster, who first formed a technology committee when he was ASC president 20 years ago, had a vision whereby the TV set could ensure that the picture is up to the standards of the filmmaker. However, he admitted that the technology wasn’t quite there at the time.

Now two and a half decades later that is finally becoming a reality.

“Our TV set technology has become quite good,” said Chambliss. “So why can’t we have a little bit of metadata that is used in the production making it way to the sets. So far Netflix and Sony have implemented what is called calibrated modes so that the set closely mirrors the monitors we used in the production. Instead of leaving this in a 1950s ‘it is up to the viewer to adjust the set,’ the smart TVs could optimize the picture. The sets are capable of doing this, so let’s automate the process.”

CAPTIONING AND SUBTITLES

Subtitling and captioning will get its moment in the spotlight at the Retreat with “IMSC 1.1: A Single Subtitle and Caption Format for the Entertainment Chain,” hosted by Pierre-Anthony Lemieux of Sandflow Consulting.

Lemieux will highlight IMSC, the W3C standard for worldwide subtitles/captions, which came about as the result of an international collaboration—the initial version of which was published in 2016.

“Technology has made it possible, along with flexible delivery for subtitles and captions to be provided in so much more content,” said Lemieux. “It has been in the broadcast world where the United States was the exception for providing subtitles for the hearing impaired, but worldwide there have been little mandates for accessibility. But that is changing.”

In addition, thanks to streaming services—notably Netflix, which provides content from international markets—as well as changing viewing habits, subtitles and captions are becoming much more important.

“Even people that aren’t hard of hearing are enjoying content in bed late at night or on buses and airplanes and having the sound on isn’t an option, so captions are necessary for the message to be conveyed,” added Lemieux. “It is easy to forget that just 10 years ago subtitles were literally burned on a film with a laser in France, and that was an expensive and difficult process. Today technology—notably IMSC—has made it easy for subtitles to be added to the content. Subtitles and captions were an afterthought, but now in the world of audio/video production these will be first class citizens.”

Predicting everything that attendees will see would be akin to looking into the future, said Mark Schubin, program chair at the HPA. “There’s a wild array of possibilities on both the acquisition and presentation ends. How do we deal with the new world?”

For more information, visithpaonline.

PALM DESERT, CALIF.—Broadcasters at this week’s HPA Tech Retreat discussed two timely television technical topics: the introduction of the ATSC 3.0 DTV transmission standard and the on-going TV spectrum repack initiative.

The “Broadcasters Panel” included Dave Siegler, vice president of technical operations for the Cox Media Group; Del Parks, senior vice president and chief technology officer for the Sinclair Broadcast Group; Skip Pizzi, vice president of technology education and outreach at the NAB; and Fox Network’s Rich Friedel, who also chairs the Advanced Television Systems Committee’s board of directors.

Matthew Goldman, Ericsson senior vice president of technology at Ericsson and SMPTE president, moderated the Wednesday afternoon session and kicked off the discussion by asking the group to talk about the current status of ATSC 3.0.

“The good news is that the standard has been released and the government has allowed us, on a voluntary basis, to broadcast [ATSC 3.0],” said Friedel. “Things are very exciting in ‘ATSC land.’ It’s really real and you’re going to see it on the air.”

THE ADVANTAGES OF MOVING TO ATSC 3.0

Goldman also quizzed the group about what they considered to be the single best feature of the new standard and if its implementation was related to the on-going TV spectrum repacking operation.

“There are so many features associated with ATSC 3.0, so it’s hard to pick out just one,” said Pizzi. “But in the early term I would say greater transmission efficiency combined with more robustness. It’s going to allow broadcasters to do more in the same amount of spectrum and at the same time provide higher quality.”

“I would say it’s the marriage of broadband and over-the-air broadcasting,” said Friedel. “Consumers will be able to get an internet type of experience combined with television.”

[HPA Tech Retreat Plays to Sold-Out Crowd]

As for the tie-in between ATSC 3.0 and the repack, the panel agreed that while there was no direct connection, the timing of events was such that they could be coordinated in such a way as to provide introduction of 3.0 signals in a market as the channel changing is taking place.

“They’re not really related,” said Siegler. “But the coincidence of the timing is a good opportunity for broadcasters to make changes, including addition of 3.0,” noting that coordination and cooperation between broadcasters would be important elements in making both transitions happen. “It’s really an aggressive plan, but you have to start somewhere.”

MAKING THE TRANSITION HAPPEN

Parks acknowledged the challenges in store for broadcasters in achieving the joint goal of shifting channels and rolling out ATSC 3.0, but observed that there has been a long-standing spirit of technical cooperation among broadcasters, even those who are business competitors.

“The engineering departments in broadcasting have had a traditional role in cooperation,” he said. “Many of us are on the same towers and sometimes there are opportunities to use common antennas.”

He added that as the repack and its relatively short deadline for completion was occupying a lot of engineering time and vendor resources at stations and within station groups, it may be challenging to make the move to ATSC 3.0 at the same time.

“There are a lot of engineering ramifications to the repack,” said Parks. “Sinclair has some 95 stations to repack and this is a really significant effort on-going with the introduction of ATSC 3.0 at the same time. A lot of resources within our group are being expended to run both projects at the same time.

“It is very tricky. The government is taking spectrum away and has sold it, so we’re being repacked in a smaller amount of spectrum and at the same time we’re talking about how to deploy 3.0. The most popular approach put forward is to use channel sharing on one or two ATSC 1.0 sticks. So broadcasters have to cooperate or there will be no service.”

Goldman then asked the panel to comment on new services that ATSC 3.0 would enable for the consumer.

“I’m most excited about interactivity that comes with the broadband connection,” said Siegler. “This allows so much to be done.”

[Redefining Television]

“ATSC 3.0 is based on OFDM, rather than VSB and the associated fragility which 1.0 is based on,” said Parks. “With 3.0 and OFDM, you now have this ability for reception in a car while it’s while traveling at 70, 80, 90 miles-per-hour,” said Parks. The vehicle now is really a big computer and you need to have some way to get broadband to it,” noting ATSC 3.0 would be a big enabler in this regard due to its IP nature.”

“ATSC 3.0 is the first and, so far, the only IP-based TV transmission standard,” said Pizzi. “This could become a real advantage at the end of the day once the transition takes place.”

For a comprehensive list of TV Technology’s ATSC 3.0 coverage, see our ATSC3 silo.

For more information on the repack, visit TV Technology's repack silo.   

PALM DESERT, CALIF.—The annual Hollywood Production Association Tech Retreat convened on Feb. 19, bringing together television and cinema engineering and production professionals to participate in five days of presentations and discussions covering the latest developments in technologies and practices in content production and distribution.

Artificial Intelligence, HDR preparation, live event streaming, cutting-edge display technologies, intellectual property law, IMF technology and applications for content storage and exchange, VR, blockchain applications in content production and distribution processes and much more made up the agenda this year. The conference attracted some 680 attendees, making it once again a fully sold-out event.

The Retreat got underway on Monday, Feb. 19, with a half-day “Focus on Artificial Intelligence” session that explored the many sides and implications of this rapidly growing technology that promises to bring many benefits to content production and other areas, but at the same time by its very nature appears threatening to some. The session examined the current uses of AI, such as speech recognition and automatic captioning, as well as new implementations in taskings previously assigned to human operators. The session not only drilled down into AI’s technological side, but also considered ethical implications as well. A working AI implementation in the form of a virtual version of conference “maestro,” Mark Schubin, was demonstrated with a Q&A session, in which the flesh-and-blood Schubin quizzed his synthetic entity about such things as where Shubin had spent his youth (“I grew up in Hoboken, N.J., a city in which New York is merely a suburb”) and favorite movie (“A Night At the Opera”).

THE CLOUD, AND THE WAY IT’S CHANGING WORKFLOWS

The emergence of the cloud as a valuable tool in video production was explored in a Tuesday panel discussion—“Cloud Production and Tools”—moderated by Sundog Media Toolkit’s Rich Welsh, and featuring panelists Dave Benson, Chris Clarke, Chuck Parker, Matt Thomas and Roy Trosh.

“The cloud is real, viable, and we’re using it,” said Trosh, an engineer with The Mill post-production firm, remarking that handling their part of the Super Bowl-generated workload would not have been possible without tapping cloud technology.

“Our job is to create content; not preserve workflows,” said Benson, chief technology officer and co-founder of the BeBop Technology, a firm specializing in cloud-based workflow solutions. “There’s a place for individual designers to do certain things in a certain way. This is also a challenge. We try to develop our technology in the least intrusive way.”

The group discussed such cloud utilization issues as content security, latency, dropped frames, bandwidth limitations and cost control, as well as workarounds for post-production functions that don’t really work well in the cloud.

ECLIPSING VR TECHNOLOGY

Virtual Reality was in the limelight, with a Wednesday session devoted to what is billed as “the biggest live VR event to date,” the coverage of the Aug. 21, 2017 solar eclipse. Alx Klive, CEO and founder of 360 Designs, a production company that specializes in virtual reality, described the technology used to capture the eclipse, as well as some of the difficulties experienced in producing this VR first from multiple locations along the totality path of the eclipse.

The coverage involved seven observation locations, 21 cameras linked via an equal number of satellite circuits, motion-tracking jibs, moving-car and helicopter shooting platforms. Technical challenges included developing a system for remotely controlling camera iris settings and other parameters from thousands of miles away and overcoming synchronization issues with the multiplicity of cameras.

“Back in July last year, CNN approached us about covering the eclipse in live VR,” Klive said. “The challenges of doing this were immense. 360-cameras by their nature really work best with [close] proximity to their subject and there isn’t really anything further away than the sun, and you can’t really rehearse an eclipse either.”

Klive noted that the whole project had to be accomplished in just four weeks, and that as satellite trucks weren’t available until the day before the event, testing of the complete system couldn’t be performed any earlier. Backup methodologies and workarounds were prepared, but fortunately weren’t needed.

“The CNN eclipse broadcast was done right,” said Klive. “It was incredibly challenging and obviously ambitious, but it was also incredibly rewarding for everybody involved, so a true win-win.”

This year’s Retreat featured more than 40 mainstream presentations, as well as special “breakfast roundtable” discussion groups which provided attendees with the opportunity to delve into other areas of television and cinema technology. They could join any of the 20 or so specialized discussion groups offered on three consecutive days at the conference. “Roundtable” topics included light field cinematography, selection of the best media for long-term content storage, how to properly interface HDR displays, and thwarting cybercrime.

The Tech Retreat’s “Innovation Zone” hosted more than 60 exhibitors this year, with demonstrations of equipment and technologies ranging from video test and measurement gear to light field image capture.

The 2019 HPA Tech Retreat returns to the JW Marriott Desert Springs Resort & Spa here in Palm Desert, Calif., Feb. 11-15.

LEXINGTON, MASS.—Signiant isn’t heading out to Palm Desert just to get some R&R, the company will be there to take part in the 2018 HPA Tech Retreat and showcase updates to its SaaS platform designed for media and entertainment companies.

Ian Hamilton

Signiant will take up a spot at HPA’s Innovation Zone, where it will demonstrate technology enhancements to its SaaS platform that allows professional media assets to be viewed in an adaptive bitrate format without generating a proxy in advance of the play request. Using transfer acceleration technology and cloud-native design, the technology aims to ensure a responsive end user experience without additional customer-deployed hardware or software.

Ian Hamilton, Signiant’s CTO, will be present at the HPA Tech Retreat to demonstrate these technological advancments, as well as talk about Signiant’s entire product line.

The 2018 HPA Tech Retreat will take place from Feb. 19-23 at the JW Marriott Desert Resort & Spa in Palm Desert, Calif.

PALM DESERT, CALIF.—The Interoperable Master Format (IMF), direct-view cinema and a frank discussion about the technology consumers adopt versus what experts at industry trade shows say they will do are among the hot topics to be explored at the HPA Tech Retreat, Feb. 19-23.

“We always offer a well-curated, authentic program,” said Seth Hallen, president of the Hollywood Professional Association (HPA) and senior vice president of business development and strategy at Pixelogic.

The retreat, to be held at the JW Marriott Resort, will host some 700 media professionals involved in engineering, technology, creative and business.

The JW Marriott Desert Springs Resort & Spa will host the 2018 HPA Tech Retreat.

SOMETHING EXTRA
While the retreat officially opens Feb. 20, the event actually gets underway on Monday, Feb. 19, with the half-day HPA TR-X, or Tech Retreat eXtra.

This year’s TR-X is devoted to AI and machine learning. Among the scheduled TR-X sessions are: “A.I. Impact on Media & Entertainment: What is Changing and Why,” “Novel A.I. Implementations: Real World A.I. Case Studies,” “Content Intelligence: A.I. & Marketing,” and “Bleeding Edge M&E Research.”

TR-X will take attendees out of their seats to demonstrate what AI in media can make possible. For instance, an AI avatar of HPA Tech Retreat conference organizer Mark Schubin will be on hand to answer any questions attendees might have, he said.

In its second year, the TR-X requires those wishing to attend to register separately from the HPA Tech Retreat.

The following day, Tuesday, Feb. 20, the retreat officially opens with the supersession “It’s Still Snowing and We’re Just Making Bigger and Better Snowmen,” which will examine the waterfront of content production workflows, including sports, blockbusters, fully synthetic films and streaming.

On Wednesday, Feb. 21, Thursday, Feb. 22, and Friday, Feb. 23, the retreat kicks off with its popular breakfast roundtables, where various topics, ranging from OBID (Open Binding IDs) and their impact on audience measurement and the 2018 Winter Olympics to IP/PTP in real-time production and distribution and the application of AI to video recognition, will be discussed. Attendees are invited to circulate to the tables where topics that interest them are being discussed.

Seth Hallen, HPA president

Following the Wednesday roundtable, Schubin will present a review of the technology of 2017, which will be followed by Jim Burger, partner at the D.C. law firm of Thompson Coburn, who will look at the latest regulatory happenings in Washington affecting media and entertainment.

One retreat highlight, a “mini supersession” devoted to the Interoperable Master Format (IMF), will take place Wednesday, said Schubin.

With input from IMF experts from the North American Broadcasters Association (NABA), the Digital Production Partnership and Hollywood studios, the mini supersession will explore every part of the IMF ecosystem and what it can be used for, said Schubin. Other sessions, including a presentation on versioning content with different languages and subtitles, will touch on IMF as well, he added.

An IMF exhibit area will give attendees a chance to see the format being used in different parts of the content creation workflow, said Schubin. The day also will offer sessions on the latest tech issues impacting broadcasters and a review of the 2018 International CES.

DRAMATIC CHANGES IN CINEMA
Wednesday will wrap up with a look at the latest developments in advanced cinema. “We are possibly looking at the greatest change in cinema since the first projections in the 1890s,” said Schubin. “That change is no more projection, but rather, direct-view cinema.”

No matter how advanced a cinema screen is, at its core it is designed to reflect light, whether that light comes from the projector or ambient light sources in a theater, such as an exit sign, he said.

“A direct view screen does not have to reflect light, which gives you tremendously more contrast, and because they are LED-based you can get tremendously higher brightness,” said Schubin. The retreat also will offer a presentation comparing and contrasting direct-view and projection cinema.

The advanced cinema session also will explore high dynamic range, black level and variable frame rates, said Schubin.

“You might want to have a movie where a sequence suddenly goes to a higher frame rate,” he said. With today’s new projection and direct-view display technologies, a frame rate that varies depending on the sequence is possible.

After the tech roundtables on Thursday, Feb. 22, the retreat will dive deeper into HDR with an examination of various techniques and technologies being offered, as well as a look at metadata guidelines for downstream image presentation management on consumer displays, an update on ACES (the Academy Color Encoding System) and a panel discussion of remote and mobile production.

ECLIPSING VR
The Great American Eclipse and extreme localized content versioning will be among the Thursday topics of particular interest, said Schubin.

Alx Klive, CEO and founder of 360 Designs, will discuss what was involved in bringing live VR coverage of the total solar eclipse that blanketed much of the continental United States to 6 million CNN viewers.

The session will be followed by a presentation from Eric Pearson, home entertainment supervisor at Pixar, on the steps the studio takes to version movies with subtle nuances tailored for the culture and customs of where various versions will be released.

“The way they create a movie allows Pixar to do that because they have the elements so well defined,” said Schubin.

The day closes out with sessions on understanding blockchain and its uses in the media and entertainment business, leveraging decentralized ledgers and machine learning to reinvent digital content storage and interchange and project budgets.

The sessions on the final day of the retreat, Friday, Feb. 23, begin with “Predicting Trends: Why We Get It Wrong and How to Get It Right,” by Mark Harrison, managing director of Digital Production Partnership. “Mark will be looking into what consumers really do adopt versus what we see at NAB Shows and CES Shows about what they are supposedly going to adopt,” said Schubin.

For example, one year at an NAB Show, 3D—or going back a few years, teletext—was predicted to be the “next big thing” with reality proving to be quite different, he said.

The final day of the retreat also will offer a session by Ed Grogan from the National Security Agency on detecting modified video, the fusion of AI, social, advertising and entertainment, virtual cinematography and storytelling engines and perceptual fatigue in film, broadcast and VR.

The official program will wrap up with a presentation by Steve Lampen, consultant for Belden, on where the industry is headed. However, Schubin will present a retreat denouement of sorts with an examination of the history of voice synthesis.

According to Hallen, the relevancy and genuine nature of the program offered at the HPA Tech Retreat is what got him involved with the organization in the first place. “I am proud that HPA has maintained its authenticity throughout the years and continued to deliver compelling and useful programming. The 2018 event will be no different,” said Hallen.

For more information, visit the HPA Tech Retreat registration page.

INDIAN WELLS, CALIF.—People are watching YouTube videos on TV, the Super Bowl online, and movies where you’d never guess—in theaters. Day No. 2 of the HPA Tech Retreat was an overview of what’s new, what’s old and what��s new again in the way of media content creation and distribution.

“All our money is going to recliner seating, because the ROI is great. It’s the best thing that’s been invented in my career,” said Neil Campbell of Landmark Cinemas Canada, the second largest theater chain in that country with 333 screens.

Campbell talked about being in an industry that’s been “going out of business forever,” yet domestic box office actually increased 2 percent last year and slightly fewer tickets than in 2015, in part because theaters are installing recliners. That, and there were new releases all 12 months of the year, Campbell said. “People will come out for a good movie.”

Reserved seating is another boost for the picture-show people. Folks can attend in larger groups and be assured of sitting together. Adult beverages are another plus. Theaters increasingly are serving alcohol. Other factors—advanced audio, for example; Landmark’s minimum is 7.1 Then there’s product.

$LEEPER$
“I need a new film every Friday; two new films every Friday,” Campbell said. “No one can guarantee quality, but if you have enough quantity, quality’s going to be in there.”

The resurgence is also due in part to the butterfly effect of digital cinema technology. No more delivery of films in cans. Theaters can now offer live content. Campbell called the Metropolitan Opera Live in HD cinemacasts “the biggest chunk of gold we’ve found out there.”

With regard to 3D, Campbell said it “has to earn it’s weekly hole, because the 2D will outperform again and again.” He raved about virtual reality content, but said it was too “labor intensive right now for what we’re doing.” He said the best venue for it appears to be a booth.

And finally—customer service—is bringing folks into theaters. At Landmark concession stands across Canada, staff members are instructed to swap out the Milk Duds for Dots in the No. 2 combo if that’s what a customer wants. Another aspect of customer service is knowing what will get them to plunk down $8.65 for a ticket. In the case of seniors, the fastest growing theater demo, “Straight Outta Compton.”

COLOR ME CONTRASTY
Disney’s Leon Silverman also addressed the changes in the theater industry, driven in part by competition from home cinema. Silverman said 3D is making a bit of a comeback with the use of laser projectors, which amp up the brightness. He talked about the necessity of having consistent production metrics for things like high dynamic range, perhaps measured in “Jobloves,” a nod to last year’s Tech Retreat presentation by George Joblove, who suggested scaling HDR from a gray point.

Same with color versioning, Silverman said.

“We need to have more predictable color pipelines in Hollywood, like the ACES effort,” and more consistent color across a variety of displays, he said, referring to the Academy Color Encoding System launched in 2015.

NEW TRICKS
In an afternoon panel discussion on new content models, Renard Jenkins of PBS said 4Kis the new tote bag. He said the network is now shooting most of its content in 4Kand developing a delivery spec for contributors, to offer it to donors as a “thank you” gift, of sorts.

“PBS has ‘Passport,’” which offers earlier debut times, for example, he said. “Right now, we can’t send 4K over the air, but we can send it via streaming and offer it to ‘Passport’ donors. It’s sort of the new version of us giving you that mug, or that tote bag.

Albert Lai of online video hoster Brightcove said there is still market uncertainty about 4K.

“In the last 18 to 24 months, 4K’s been something folks want to talk about, but no one’s demanded it. Right now, it’s just added cost with no assurance of ROI,” he said. Add that to potential technical problems—Will it cause buffering issues? Will it cause problems with devices? Will it delivery quality of experience?

“Not just 4K, but higher frame rate, wider color gamut.
How can you deliver those in a cost-effective manner?
Our intent is to deliver content for our customers in a cost-effective way,” he said.

4K: OK BUT NOT EZ
Curt Marvis of QYOU said 4K comprised is the third most requested content genre on his company’s platform. QYOU “curates the best of YouTube,” licenses the content from he creators, and packages it in a “variety of forms,” he said. That includes a 24/7 network called “Q-You,” as well as TBD, a network QYOU launched with Sinclair Broadcast that went live last week.

“The No. 1 genre we get asked for is sports programming, then kids, then 4K,” he said, and 4K’s no cake walk to deliver.

“After you receive that content in 4K, that’s where it breaks down for us,” he said. “To keep it natively in 4K, the problems that come up with shipping and editing—without moving it in a moving van on a hard drive.

“I’d almost say it’s like a marketing thing. There’s this quest for 4K. I’m not sure what’s driving up, but the distribution system doesn’t seem to be set up yet.”

SUPER DDOS ME
Adventures in distribution are something Devin Poole of Fox Sports knows a thing or two about. He and his team were responsible for the most-streamed live event ever—Super Bowl LI.

The streaming Super Bowl audience is on the rise, he noted, growing 350,000 for NBC in 2012, to 1.4 million for CBS in 2016, and 1.72 million for Fox earlier this month. Along with the sunshine, there’s going to be a few distributed denial of service attacks sometimes.

For the 2014 Super Bowl, for example, more than 10 percent of traffic was related to DDOS attacks, from multiple sources with multiple targets, Poole said. Fox Sports added a third content delivery network this year just in case, to provide additional fallback and to better handle scale.

That didn’t prevent a seven-minute outage due to an encoder software bug. Something involving convergence of PTS rollover and manual ad logging. Poole said 2 million-plus playback requests were handled on resumption. Imagine all those people clicking “refresh” on their browsers, he said.

Overall, however, the failure rate in digital ad insertion was less than one percent, and over all buffering was right around 1 percent.

PRINCETON, N.J.—The 2017 HPA Tech Retreat is scheduled to host a panel on the interactive layer of ATSC 3.0, which according to a recent press release will be led by Triveni Digital’s Mark Corl, senior vice president of emergent technology development.

Mark Corl

The panel will feature participants discussing how ATSC 3.0 provides an expansive environment for W3C-based interactive content delivered over broadcast or from the internet, as well as how content providers can enhance their offerings for a more engaging and personalized experience for consumers. The panelists will include Guy Hadland, CTO at UniSoft; Azita Manson, president of OpenZNet; Pete Van Peenen, senior consultant for Pearl TV; and Joe Winograd, EVP, CTO and founder of Verance.

Corl, in addition to his work at Triveni Digital, is the chair of the ATSC 3.0 Ad-Hoc Group on Interactive Content (S34-4) and the vice chair of the ATSC Personalization and Interactivity Implementation Team.

The ATSC 3.0 panel is scheduled to take place on Feb. 20 at 2:50 p.m. The 2017 HPA Tech Retreat runs from Feb. 20-24 in Indian Wells, Calif.

INDIAN WELLS, CALIF.—The 2017 HPA Tech Retreat will take place Feb. 20–24, at the Hyatt Regency Indian Wells near Palm Springs, Calif. As in past years, a sold-out crowd of almost 700 high-level film and TV engineers and executives is expected to attend the multi-day conference that includes panels, breakfast roundtables, presentations and a product “Innovation Zone,” as well as plenty of time for networking.

“We are at work against a backdrop of constant change and challenges in our industry, and the HPA Tech Retreat is where we go for discussion, collaboration and clarity,” said HPA President Seth Hallen. “It’s important to note that the Tech Retreat itself continues to evolve to encompass a range of new attendees as we serve its long-time audience,” he added, crediting [program maestro] Mark Schubin, Leon Silverman, Jerry Pierce and the HPA Program Committee with keeping the event “flexible and incredibly relevant for a broad spectrum of participants.”

FOCUS ON VR/AR AND AI

This year’s Tech Retreat will feature two first-ever events, according to Schubin. The first pre-Tech Retreat event will focus on virtual reality, in a half-day session organized by SuperSphere founder/executive producer Lucas Wilson and Technicolor senior vice president, immersive media, Marcie Jastrow.

This year’s HPA Tech Retreat will be the first under the leadership of Seth Hallen, who succeeded Leon Silverman as president of HPA. Jastrow and Wilson have brought together an impressive line-up of panels and presentations encompassing acquisitions technology, audio, deliverables with a number of case studies from RSA Films, Digital Domain, The Mill and others. Wilson reports that the VR “demo area” will feature VR pioneer Jaunt and other VR camera/rig companies. “AR and VR are moving to something that looks like they’ll become mainstream, so more facilities and post professionals have gotten involved,” Wilson said. “We’ve put together an end-to-end day that will give attendees a quick but deep dive into the VR landscape.”

Schubin points out another “first” for the HPA Tech Retreat, a panel (moderated by the author) on artificial intelligence, and including participation by industry manufacturers incorporating AI into products, SAP National Security Service, a private national company that protects government entities, and the IEEE Standards Association, which has introduced a Global Initiative for Ethical Considerations in Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Systems.

Clyde Smith, senior vice president, advanced technology for Fox Network Engineering and Operations, will lead a panel on IMF and Automated Mastering, which will explore “current and emerging IMF-based workflows.” “Presentations from 20th Century Fox, Netflix and Avid will explore the benefits of IMF-based workflows, their existing workflows as well as the use of primitive constructs and reusing IMF constructs to create cloud scale collaboration workflows that also provide the opportunities to bridge IMF based production archive with distribution,” Smith said. Smith will also give a presentation on “Standards, Specifications and the NABA DPP Library Master Format.”

Marcie Jastrow, senior vice president, immersive media for TechnicolorTHE CLOUD & HDR

Wendy Aylsworth, former Warner Bros. executive and now CEO of entertainment technology consulting firm Walden Pond will moderate the panel “Production in the Cloud: Pitfalls and Epiphanies.” “The concept of the panel was to bring together reps from popular cloud production tools and production managers to discuss areas of successful cloud production growth,” she said. “It will have some concrete case studies to show how the cloud provides production improvements, and will also cover how cloud hinders production, thereby forecasting short-term and long-term features for future cloud tools.” Panelists include Pixvana’s Scot Squires, Avalanche’s Joshua Kolden, Sundog Media’ Richasrd Welsh, Avid’s Gurpy Saini, and SyncOnSet’s Alex LoVerde.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Science and Technology Council will also play a role at the Tech Retreat. Managing Director Andy Maltz reports that, in a Thursday afternoon presentation and in the Innovation Zone, AMPAS will bring “the latest information” on how ACES (Academy Color Encoding System) is addressing the developing needs for HDR and UHDTV production. Also to be discussed is the Spectral Similarity Index, a new stage lighting quality measurement index that helps cinematographers get predictable color reproduction with solid state (LED) lighting devices.

Other highlights include NEC’s Masayuki Sugawara’s presentation on “The World’s First 8K/4K Regular Broadcasting,” Barco’s Goran Stojmenovik talk on “HDR in a Cinema: Achievable Contrast,” Image Essence’s Gary Demos’ talk on “Single-Master HDR,” and isovideo’s Keith Slavin’s presentation on “Automatic SDR/HDR Conversions.” With regard to Stojmenovik’s presentation, Schubin points out that it will address the practical issues behind our ability to view HDR as intended. “It’s a pet peeve of mine,” says Schubin. “With HDR, everyone talks about the camera and the display and no one talks about the environment the display is in. A light on in the living room or in the cinema—even light reflecting off the audience—wipes out HDR. Stojmenovik will address what HDR can actually achieve in a cinema.”

Every HPA Tech Retreat has a post-retreat “treat,” and this year is no exception. Schubin says this year he plans to examine the received history of Hollywood, proving many of our long-cherished stories about its founding are false. “If you delve into them, they are incredibly bogus,” he said. One hint: There’s an interesting connection to Pittsburgh, which was spelled without an “h” in 1911. We’ll leave it at that.

To dig deep into Hollywood’s most knotty technical challenges, and learn some history while you’re at it, the 2017 HPA Tech Retreat is again the premiere destination. To get the full experience, prepare to arrive at the beginning and stay until the very end.

To register for the event, visit www.hpaonline.com.

LOS ANGELES—The Hollywood Professional Association will get the ball rolling on its annual HPA Tech Retreat a day early this year, as the organization has announced the first ever HPA TR-X sessions, which will be held the day before the Retreat is set to begin. TR-X will focus specifically on virtual and augmented reality.

Co-Chairs Lucas Wilson, founder and executive producer for SuperSphereVR, and Marcie Jastrow, senior vice president of immersive media at the Technical Experience Center, will lead a discussion on the changing VR/AR landscape and its integration into entertainment and applications. A series of case studies and creative explorations will be offered, including “A VR/AR Market Discussion,” “Acquisition Technology: Cameras, Lightfield, and More,” “Live 360 Production Case Studies: UMG Livestream, The Mill,” “Immersive Audio Production Case Study: Paul McCartney,” and “The Future.”

HPA TR-X will take place on Feb. 20 at the Hyatt Regency in Indian Wells, Calif. Registration is now open.

LONDON—After announcing that it would be expanding its Tech Retreat across the pond to the U.K., the Hollywood Professional Association is now gearing up for the event by opening the Call for Proposals for presentations at the 2016 HPA Tech Retreat U.K. Interested parties can submit proposals for either a panel or for hosting a breakfast roundtable.

According to the HPA, proposed panel topics may include anything related to moving images and associated sound. Panel ideas must be submitted by the moderator. Formal submissions are not required; a sentence or two describing the proposal is considered sufficient by HPA. Breakfast roundtable proposals must be submitted by the proposed presenter.

All proposals must be submitted to Richard Welsh at cfp@hpaonline.com by the end of day (GMT) on April 30.

Welsh, co-chair of the event, says that the U.K. version of the Tech Retreat will take many of the same qualities of its U.S. predecessor, including seminars, a SuperSession, a curated Innovation Zone, and social and networking events. “Whilst having a familiar feel for HPA regulars, this event will also have its own U.K. flare and identity and will highlight the many U.K.-Hollywood productions currently underway using the latest technologies and techniques,” said Jerry Price, HPA vice president and co-chair of the Tech Retreat.

The 2016 HPA Tech Retreat U.K. will take place from July 13-14 in Oxfordshire, England. For more information, visit www.hpaonline.com.

LOS ANGELES—Records are meant to be broken, and the HPA Tech Retreat has obliged that mantra. The Hollywood Professional Association—formerly known as the Hollywood Post Alliance—has announced that it broke attendance records at the 2016 edition of its annual Tech Retreat.

The HPA Tech Retreat measures its attendance a little differently than most conferences. The Tech Retreat limits its attendance to 650 people every year with the goal of setting a tone of connection and helping keep the information exchange lively, according to HPA. So the record is not that the event sold out, but rather that it sold out in advance of the event taking place.

The conference also made a number of other announcements that TV Technology previously covered, including the appointment of Seth Hallen as the new president of the organization; the announcement of a regional version of the Tech Retreat, with one scheduled to be held in the U.K. in July; and announcing the official transition from Hollywood Post Alliance to Hollywood Professional Association.

The organization has also unveiled the dates for the 2017 HPA Tech Retreat, which will take place from Feb. 20-24, 2017.

To read more of TV Tech’s coverage from the 2016 Tech Retreat, see below:

Feb. 17, 2016
HPA 2016: Silverman Steps Down, U.K. Tech Retreat Added
Lots of changes are going on in the desert this year.

Feb. 18, 2016

HPA 2016: Broadcasters—HDR Yea, 4K Meh

High dynamic range or Ultra HD? That was the first question put to the annual broadcasters panel at the HPA Tech Retreat Wednesday.

Feb. 18, 2016

HPA 2016: Virtually Real is no Video Cakewalk
Debra Kaufman led a virtual reality panel that launched with a look at Nokia’s Ozo 360-degree camera, a device that resembles a multi-eyed, softball-sized guppy. 

WASHINGTON—It’s hard to believe we are already well into 2016. Since my last report, ATSC has seen important industry activities relating to ATSC 3.0—including some very impressive technology demonstrations at the Consumer Electronics Show and an ATSC-sponsored half-day seminar on “Content Creation and Distribution” just prior to the HPA Tech Retreat last month.

The CES demos were a warm-up for implementation demonstrations that promise to be even more impressive at the NAB Show next month. Two major exhibit areas are planned:

ATSC 3.0 Consumer Experience. Located in the Las Vegas Convention Center South Hall Upper Lobby, this area will include demonstrations of ATSC 3.0 consumer services and products.

ATSC 3.0 Broadcast Pavilion. Located in the LVCC South Upper Hall, this area will be part of the NAB Futures Park. More than 15 ATSC member companies will demonstrate broadcast equipment and systems to facilitate implementation of ATSC 3.0 services.

These events will show broadcasters and other media executives what ATSC 3.0 can do. And it’s not just technologies, but also new business plans that are enabled by the advanced capabilities being built into ATSC 3.0.

ATSC AT THE HPA TECH RETREAT

The broadcast industry has, of course, been aware of and following work on ATSC 3.0 for several years now. It is expected that 2016 will mark the point at which related media industries also take note of what is possible, and what business opportunities ATSC 3.0 may facilitate. One key industry is the production/post-production and content-creation community.

ATSC 3.0 will offer content creators an impressive collection of new ways to inform and entertain audiences. Those tools include (but are certainly not limited to):

Video – Advanced, high-efficiency video coding, plus significant image enhancements such as high dynamic range (HDR), wide color gamut (WCG), high frame rate (HFR), and extended bit depth.

Audio – Advanced, high-efficiency object-based audio coding, immersive audio, and services that can be personalized to user preferences.

Accessibility – New tools to serve the visually impaired (video description) and hearing impaired (closed caption, closed signing, and dialog intelligibility).

Service Types – Enhanced linear services, (including multiple, alternative components and interactive application enhancements), application-based services (e.g., OnDemand), audio-only services, and data-only services.

Hybrid Delivery – Delivery of programs and program elements via broadcast (over-the-air) and broadband (over the Internet). Possible use cases include: 1) Main audio/video components delivered via broadcast and alternate components (such as alternate languages) delivered via broadband. 2) Main program delivered via broadcast and alternate interstitials delivered via broadband (targeted ad insertion). 3) Temporary “hand-off” from broadcast to broadband and back for brief fades in reception.

Real-Time and Non-Real-Time Delivery – Content can be streamed in real-time (i.e., linear or streaming on-demand content) via both broadcast and broadband. Content can also be delivered in non-real-time and cached locally via both broadcast and broadband.

Security – Security-enabled business models such as subscription services, “freemium” services (i.e., if the user registers and then the content is provided free), subscription for alternate components, and pay-per-view programs.

Interactivity – The interactive application environment for ATSC 3.0 will enable interoperability between the receiver runtime environment and apps that producers and broadcasters author, based on WC3 technologies. The goal is to align with the web as much as possible.

Robust Physical Layer – A completely new physical layer with unprecedented flexibility and reach.

The content creation community is a key part of the broadcast chain, and a group that can help move the transition to ATSC 3.0 forward through production of content specifically designed to take advantage of the new services that ATSC 3.0 can provide. For that reason, ATSC organized the “Content Creation and Distribution” seminar at HPA. ATSC has been privileged to be a part of the HPA Tech Retreat for most of the past 15 years. This time, we wanted to focus our program on a core constituency of the event—content creators.

The program began with an overview of ATSC 3.0 and then branched into key elements of the content ecosystem, including next‐generation audio and video, workflow, distribution, interactivity, and the consumer. (For a detailed report on the event see Deborah’s McAdam’s story HPA 2016: ATSC 3.0 Update).

WHAT’S NEXT

The critical next step for ATSC 3.0 is clear: complete the standard! ATSC 3.0 is actually a suite of standards, with one or more standards per functional layer. A top level “parent” standard (A/300) will describe the overall system and state what must be included to create an ATSC 3.0 system. A/300 will point to a group of about 20 standards for all of the core building blocks that make up ATSC 3.0.

Each standard moves through the process independently. Most have already moved to the Candidate Standard (CS) phase; more will follow in the coming months. At this point, twelve CS documents have already been published. This is phase where industry feedback is solicited and implementation experience is collected. The CS documents are listed in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1

Updated CS documents are expected to move forward to Proposed Standard, and then finally Standard. Final approval of most documents are expected this year, with completion of all in the first or second quarter of 2017.

GET INVOLVED

Work in ATSC is open to all with a direct and material interest in the work. If you are interested in participating in any of the ongoing work of the organization, please contact the author.

All ATSC Standards, Candidate Standards, and Recommended Practices can be downloaded at no charge from the ATSC Web site. 

Jerry Whitaker is Vice President for Standards Development at the Advanced Television Systems Committee.

Click here to access TV Technology's comprehensive coverage of ATSC 3.0.

I always look forward to attending the HPA Technology Retreat (Feb. 15-19 at the Hyatt Regency in Indian Wells, Calif.). One of the best things about the event is the eclectic nature of the topics covered, which could vary from the most esoteric technical element of a connector to the business case of delivering a new service; and anything in between, in the nature of content creation, post production or broadcasting. The talent attracted to present tutorials or participate on a panel is matched by the talent in the audience, which at times generates very lively debates because audience participation is encouraged.

The broadcasters panel is one of the most popular sessions of the five-day event.

Which brings me to the Broadcaster’s Panel, one of the highlights of the Tech Retreat that garners extensive audience involvement. For the past nine years, I have had the honor of moderating the panel, an hour-long, free-flowing discussion about anything related to broadcasting. Panelists include senior executives from both traditional and new media broadcasting. I will ask some questions, but I mostly will engage the audience to ask questions and debate with the panelists, who of course, will often debate with each other (and me!). This year I will attempt to institute a new “policy”: I will interrupt a panelist if I believe they pontificate for too long; I will borrow the famous “Schubin clown horn” (aka the timekeeper) for this purpose. We are all known for our loquaciousness, but I wish to keep responses pithy to keep the session flowing.

HIGH INTEREST IN HIGH DYNAMIC RANGE
new hot topic this year will be high dynamic range. The interest in understanding this topic is so high that the Tech Retreat has devoted a special half-day “HDR Power Session” that will include a tutorial on what HDR is and discussions about production workflows and consumer displays.

All very interesting stuff, of course, but what about special issues and concerns related to broadcasting live content in HDR in real-time? This will be covered in the Broadcasters Panel. Bringing the live, real-time element into the equation has always been a major challenge to broadcasters; there is no time for a “do over;” what’s done is done. In addition, with broadcasters’ interest in supporting backwards compatibility to existing contemporary “standard dynamic range” (SDR) TVs and set-top boxes— without having to simulcast both formats due to bandwidth constraint—there is even more of a challenge to support both existing SDR and new HDR devices if either dual layers or single layer plus metadata is required.

And speaking about bandwidth constraints, even in the compressed domain, the transmission/delivery of Ultra HD signals to the consumer is significantly higher than that for HD. Even with the bandwidth savings of the new ATSC 3.0 draft standards (still a work-in-progress, but potentially ready for 2017 broadcasts), providing new services and supporting 4K Ultra HD (2160p) resolution will be a challenge. What are broadcasters’ views for delivering 4K UHD services? With spectrum being a premium, will there be enough bandwidth to add new services (for fixed and mobile devices), support legacy HDTV and new 4K UHDTV services?

While new TVs that support HDR are all 4K resolution, a significant amount of bandwidth may be saved by transmitting in “enhanced HD” (1080p60 + HDR) and having the display up-convert to 4K (2160p) resolution. With the visual “punch” of HDR—which, because of its modest increase in bitrate over SDR, many consider the “best bang for the bit” —will most consumers really notice the difference between up-converted 1080p HDR and native 2160p HDR? Will there be a marketing impact to the service provider? This should turn out to be a very spirited discussion!

I am sure we’ll also touch upon the state of migrating to an all-IP infrastructure: what’s the state of conversion? If we’re already migrating, what’s working and what’s not, and what are some of the major issues? Spectrum issues—including the upcoming FCC Incentive auction—are usually a big topic as well, although we may be a bit stifled to discuss that topic this year as we are currently in what the FCC calls the “quiet period” for the reverse auction and they have published prohibited communications rules that impact broadcasters, whether or not they are participating in the auction.

Hope to see you at the Retreat.

For more information on the HPA Tech Retreat, visit www.hpaonline.com.

Matthew Goldman is senior vice president of technology, TV and Media Strategy, for Ericsson.

INDIAN WELLS, CALIF.—The 2016 HPA Tech Retreat, Feb. 15–19 at the Hyatt Regency in Indian Wells, Calif., will be the first since HPA merged with SMPTE last year. Although SMPTE Executive Director Barbara Lange was announced as the HPA executive director last year, the merger, according to HPA Tech Retreat “program maestro” Mark Schubin, was completed in October and the name—Hollywood Post Alliance—was changed to “Hollywood Professional Alliance.” The event, which accommodates approximately 650 people, has been sold out for the last four years.

The annual HPA Tech Retreat is one of the premier events covering the latest in television and film technology.

Other than that, the HPA Tech Retreat will be unchanged in its focus on the technical issues facing Hollywood production and post production executives, artists and companies. Schubin reports that this year has seen a record number of submissions—152—for panels, which he attributes in part to the fact that the SMPTE Advanced TV Conference couldn’t accommodate all of the proposed panels.

HIGH ON HDR

One of the dominant themes at the 2016 Retreat is high dynamic range, says Schubin. “I was one of the first champions of HDR at the Tech Retreat, presenting studies showing it gives the ‘biggest bang for the bit,’” he said. “People watching it see a more significant improvement than with higher frame rate or more pixels.” Renown Color Scientist Charles Poynton, who conducts an annual seminar at the retreat, will devote a half-day to practical applications of HDR, and Annie Chang, vice president of post-production technology at The Walt Disney Company, is organizing a three-hour session on the topic for Thursday morning.

“With the experience I’ve had so far with HDR, I feel there’s a lot of misinformation, from shooting through distribution,” notes Chang. “What I’m going to attempt to do in this session is dispel myths and educate, relying on people who have actually been doing it. The devil is in the details.”

The session begins with OneRiver Media Owner/Filmmaker Marco Solorio who will provide an HDR primer. Next, an International Cinematographers Guild-sponsored panel will focus on HDR production workflows, with DIT/colorist Stephen Latty, director of photography Eduardo Mayen and Canon USA senior fellow Larry Thorpe discussing the impact of HDR on the choices that cinematographers make, the additional tasks that DITs perform, the challenge of on-set monitoring, the details of HDR color science, and other relevant topics. A panel organized by Colorfront and moderated by “British Cinematographer” magazine Editor Ron Prince will focus on HDR post production, as well as how to deal with legacy SDR content. Colorfront CTO Bill Feightner, who will sit on the panel, reports that panelists from several different post-production facilities will focus on their companies’ solutions for handling HDR.

The show’s popular “demo room” has been rebranded the “Innovation Zone.”

Chang says the three-hour session will also focus on the two major video encoding functions currently used for HDR: Hybrid Log Gamma and PQ, to discuss pros and cons, as well as a section on consumer displays. “HDR is a big topic,” she says. “The questions that arise should be compelling. I want to create a balanced viewpoint so people can make their own decisions.”

The popular “demo room” which focuses on new technologies and services has been rebranded the “Innovation Zone” and will serve as a showcase of collaboration among exhibiting vendors.

BROADCASTERS PANEL

The broadcasters panel has been rated highly by HPA Tech Retreat attendees, says moderator Matthew Goldman, senior vice president of technology, TV and media strategy at Ericsson and an executive vice president on the SMPTE Board. This year’s panel will address the transition from HD to Ultra HD among other topics.

“The transition from analog to digital and SD to HD was pretty exciting back in the early 2000s,” says Goldman. “I think the transition to Ultra HD is happening at a more rapid pace. Now we’re going from a digital broadcaster-centric plant to an all-IP infrastructure. It’s broadcast vying with non-traditional competitors: media streaming and over-the-top.

The broadcasters panel is one of the most popular sessions of the five-day event.

“With the transition from HD to UHD, spectrum allocation, the mobility of video and the conversion of industry-specific infrastructure to IP, the word ‘TV’ doesn’t mean what it used to,” he adds. “It used to be a communal viewing screen. Now, it’s a ‘viewing experience.’”

ATSC 3.0, he notes, is a chance for broadcasters to stay relevant, as the industry transforms. The panel will include a mix of experts from broadcasting and media streaming, and the format will focus on questions from the audience. “There are no taboo topics,” he says. “The hour-long panel, according to Goldman, will be “a whirlwind of interactive conversation.” “I encourage panelists and the audience to react and respond,” he adds.

IN REVIEW

The rest of the HPA Tech Retreat will be no less interesting, with panels on creative frame rates, NASA’s deep space photography, the cloud, virtual reality, big data, OLED displays, ACES 1.0, and remote live production, among other topics. In his annual “Technology Year in Review” on Wednesday morning, Schubin plans to describe a new development with regard to frame rate. “High frame rate is an advanced TV feature,” he notes. “But people don’t see in frames. In increasing frame rate, we are trying to solve the problem of low frame rate. But what if we could produce imagery the way our eyes see it—sensitive to change? It turns out a lab in Germany has been working on a sensor that captures moving images the way our eyes work, and we’ll see images from that retinal sensor.”

Disney will make a couple of interesting appearances at the Tech Retreat, first with a presentation by Disney Research Zürich, and lastly with the annual “Post-Retreat Treat.” Presented by The Walt Disney Company’s manager/library film archivist Jayson Wall, attendees will have a chance to learn about and enjoy “The History, Production, and Restoration of Dateline Disneyland,” the live coast-to-coast broadcast of the opening of the park in 1955.

For more information on the HPA Tech Retreat, visit www.hpaonline.com.

LOS ANGELES—If you’re looking for the Demo Room at the upcoming HPA Tech Retreat, don’t be alarmed when you can’t find it, as the HPA has announced that it has rebranded the Demo Room to the Innovation Zone. Designed for learning and discovery, the Innovation Zone focuses on new products and technologies in the market.

The Innovation Zone is a curated educational area where companies can work individually or with others to present workflow systems, including content distribution processes, experimental and conceptual products. Startups are also encouraged to apply. Applications are reviewed to determine eligibility to participate. To see a list of current participants, click here.

The HPA Tech Retreat is a gathering of engineering, technical and creative talent, as well as strategic business leaders that focuses on technology for the broadcast and related technology areas. It is set to take place from Feb. 15-19 in Indian Wells, Calif. For more information, visit www.hpaonline.com.