BURBANK, Calif.—The Hollywood Professional Association has announced that Paul Chapman, Kari Grubin and Joachim Zell have joined the HPA Board of Directors, while Michael DeValue will join the Board as the SMPTE representative.

Chapman, Grubin and Zell’s will serve three-year terms on the board that officially began on Jan. 1, 2020. All three have worked previously with HPA. Grubin chaired Women in post and helped launch the Young Entertainment Professionals program. Chapman was previously the liaison to SMPTE. Zell is an active member of the HPA Awards committee.

DeValue, who is taking over as the SMPTE rep from Chapman, will serve a one-year term.

“There are many exciting developments that will be announced in the coming months, and it is more important than ever that a talented Board is in place,” said Seth Hallen, HPA president. “Now with the additions of Paul, Kari, JZ and Michael, we are ready to continue our  forward motion.”

All of the additions were announced at the recent HPA Tech Retreat.

For more information,visit www.hpaonline.com. 

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. 

LOS ANGELES — The Hollywood Professional Association (HPA) has announced that its 2018 Engineering Excellence Awards will go to Blackmagic Design, Cinnafilm, Canon, IBM Aspera and Telestream, with Samsung receiving an honorable mention. The awards are peer-judged and considered highly competitive.

The HPA Awards Engineering Committee evaluated prospective candidates at a blue ribbon judging session held at IMAX on June 16. Awards will be formally presented at the 13th Annual HPA Awards Gala, set to take place Nov. 15, at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles.

[Read: HPA Panel Examines Road To ATSC 3.0 And Repack]

With the Engineering Excellence award the HPA recognizes the following companies for outstanding technical and creative achievement in media, content production, finishing, distribution and archive:

• Blackmagic Design for DaVinci Resolve 15, a new platform integrating creative and technical tools streamlining tasks from ingest to delivery, while improving quality, functionality, and time to delivery for feature film, episodic TV and short-form productions.

• Canon for Visual and Technical Monitoring of HDR images, including engineering tools for determining exact values of HDR image pixels, comparing SDR and HDR images, utilizing camera metadata, and other key quality control capabilities.

• Cinnafilm Inc. for PixelStrings, a cloud-based video conversion service focused on media playback quality by employing framerate conversion, retiming, artifact/noise/telecine correction, transcoding and other toolsets available on a predictable, platform-as-a-service OpEx model.

• Telestream’s Vantage and Lightspeed Live integrated with Aspera’s FASPStream streaming technology, which enables high-speed capture and production of live, broadcast quality video feeds — and open file workflows — from remote locations for faster production turnaround.

• Samsung for its Samsung Onyx LED technology with DCI certification for cinema and post production, available in 2K resolution 5-meter screen and 4K-resolution 10.3-meter screen models.

“Once again, the Engineering Excellence judging sessions brought us outstanding presentations from a variety of companies at work in different parts of the media and entertainment ecosystem,” said Joachim Zell, chair of the HPA Awards Engineering Committee as well as EFILM’s vice president of technology.

“The presenters are representative of the amazing work that great companies and brilliant individuals are bringing to the marketplace. The judges had a strong field of excellent technologies to evaluate, and the results were extremely close,” Zell added.

In coming weeks, the HPA will announce the recipients of the Judges Award for Creativity and Innovation, among other special awards, as well as recognize excellence in 12 craft categories, including color grading, editing, sound and visual effects.

Tickets for the 13th Annual HPA Awards Gala will be available for purchase later this summer. Visit www.hpaonline.com for more information. The HPA is a partner of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers.

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LOS ANGELES — The Hollywood Professional Association is now accepting entries for the Engineering Excellence Award. Now in its 13th year, the HPA Engineering Excellence Award spotlights companies and individuals who draw upon technical and creative ingenuity to develop breakthrough technologies. Submissions will close on May 25.

Joachim Zell, vice president of Technology for EFILM and chair of the HPA Engineering Excellence Award Committee, said, “Artistic vision is what drives the technical and engineering processes that bring that vision to life. Ultimately, our work is fundamentally about helping filmmakers realize their vision. The companies and individuals supporting creative storytellers face constant pressure to evolve to expand the creative palette. Their contribution to the entertainment industry cannot be overstated. The Engineering Excellence Award is a highly competitive honor, and the past winners have changed the course of entertainment technology. We encourage the submission of your significant technological achievements.”

[Read: ‘Stranger Things,’ ‘The Crown’ Win 2017 HPA Awards]

Entrants for this peer-judged award may include products or processes, and must represent a significant step forward for its industry beneficiaries. Past winners have included Aspera, Canon, Colorfront, Dolby, The Foundry/Sony Pictures Imageworks, MACOM, NVIDIA, Panasonic, Quantel, and RED Digital Cinema. Rules and procedures can be found at hpaonline.com.

Applicants present to a blue-ribbon industry panel is required of applicants. Presentations will take place on a Saturday in June in Los Angeles, California. More information about the presentation dates and location will be announced soon.

Winners will be announced in advance, and honors presented during the HPA Awards gala on the evening of November 15, 2018 at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles.

In addition, the HPA Awards will again honor important craft categories including Outstanding Color Grading, Editing, Sound and Visual Effects for feature film, television and commercials. The call for entries in these creative categories will be announced in May.

For more information about the HPA Awards, including complete rules, guidelines and entry information, please visit www.hpaonline.com.