The most expensive TV series ever produced made its worldwide debut last night on Amazon Prime and while there wasn’t a unanimous consensus over its quality and impact (as if there ever would be), the majority of reviewers gushed over it. 

“This is TV that is made for big screens, although surely destined to be watched on smaller ones,” said The Guardian. “It is so cinematic and grand that it makes 'House of the Dragon' look as if it has been cobbled together on Minecraft.”

The first two episodes of the Tolkien tales,  a "prequel" of sorts to the original “Lord of the Rings” cinematic trilogy, revolve around the second age of Middle Earth and premiered at the same time around the globe (9 p.m. ET in the U.S.), an unusual tactic for an on-demand, nonlinear streaming service, but somehow appropriate considering its anticipated cultural impact.  

The much-hyped series, which reportedly cost more than $1 billion to produce over five seasons, cut no corners when it came to special effects, which, according to Variety, involved 20 VFX studios and 1,500 artists creating more than 9,500 visual effects. Studios and vendors involved included Industrial Light and Magic, Weta, Ncam, Blackmagic Design, ARRI and DNEG.

In its own review, Variety acknowledged the influence that that load of cash had on the series production values. 

“It may take some time yet to fully absorb the fact that Amazon literally dropped $1 billion on its 'Lord of the Rings' show, but at least you can see where the money went,” Variety said. “It’s difficult to think of a single television production not named ‘Game of Thrones’ that has ever felt quite so vast and, yes, epic. ‘The Rings of Power' doesn’t feel small compared to the movies, nor does it feel unworthy of them. We can bemoan the fact that seemingly everything has to be an expanded universe these days, but we can also be happy when they’re good.”

The New York Times was a bit more cagey, noting that the series was a bit predictable but praising its production values. 

“If the ambitious first season does not reinvent the ring, it is a breathtaking reproduction that adds a few new filigrees,” it said.

Entertainment Weekly was less charitable, calling it a "catastrophe." 

“There are ways to do a prequel, and 'The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power' does them all wrong,” it said. “It takes six or seven things everyone remembers from the famous movie trilogy, adds a water tank, makes nobody fun, teases mysteries that aren't mysteries, and sends the best character on a pointless detour.” 

There was also criticism over casting for Middle Earth, with some pushing back against hiring minorities (one Twitter critic even suggesting that the series was more “token” than Tolkien). A piece on NBC’s Think website pushed back against such criticisms, pointing to producers’ attempts to balance the elements of subtle racism in Tolkiens' original writings with the realities of today’s culture.

“The new Amazon Prime series, 'The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,' which is based on Tolkien’s work, makes a deliberate effort to quietly confront that uncomfortable legacy through its casting choices. It’s an admirable decision, but it’s limited by the deeply ingrained ideas of racial difference and racial determinism in Tolkien’s world,” said Noah Berlatsky, cultural critic, who goes on to say that the series “does an admirable job of rejecting the animosity toward Black and Asian people found in Tolkien’s work. But like so many fantasy (and nonfantasy stories), it still ties adventure, virtue and empowerment to the righteous genocidal slaughter of some other hated race.”

Over at Rotten Tomatoes, seen as one of the most influential arbiters of media taste, there is a huge discrepancy between critics and viewers, with the overall current Tomatometer at 83% and viewer score at 37%.  On Metacritic, the series has received a middling 3 out of 5 score and iMDB rating it 6.3 out of 10.

As for ratings, it could take awhile before Amazon releases the numbers. Unlike traditional broadcasters who have to provide immediate gratification to its advertisers, streaming services are less transparent in releasing viewer numbers. 

“It’s likely that Amazon will send out a press release after the weekend touting the show’s global reach and possibly about how it sparked additional demand for Prime Video,” said The Hollywood Reporter. “It’s just as likely that any such release will contain little to no supporting data.”  

WASHINGTON—Having helped bring deep space to viewers, Emmy-award winning cinematographer and visual effects director Sam Nicholson will serve as a special keynote speaker during the Post|Production World Conference taking place at the 2020 NAB Show.

P|PW is a training event for content creators and designers, including TV, film and video editors; producers; directors; graphic artists; motion graphics designers; and online video specialists.

This year, P|PW’s keynote session is “Virtual Production: On Set Visual Effects in Real Time,” offering a discussion on the advances in modern visual effects. Nicholson will provide personal insights in the advances of creating real-time effects using Stargate Studios’ new real-time VFX process, ThruView. The keynote is sponsored by Blackmagic Design.

Nicholson, ASC, is the CEO and founder of the visual effects production company Stargate Studios. He also has credits in film and television that include “Star Trek: The Motion Picture,” “The Walking Dead,” “Grey’s Anatomy” and “CSI.”

The NAB, which partners with Future Media Conferences to produce P|PW, has also announced that this year’s event will feature the new “P|PW Hands On Studio Experience.” This will be an interactive training opportunity taking place Friday through Sunday where attendees can go into the field in real-world locations with experts to see the workflows and gear in action.

More information and registration options for P|PW are available on the NAB Show website.

The 2020 NAB Show will take place at the Las Vegas Convention Center from April 17 to April 22.

BURBANK, Calif.—Creatives in the feature film, episodic and commercial arenas are now able to submit entries for consideration for the 14th HPA Awards presented by the Hollywood Professional Association. The awards are recognition for the behind-the-scenes work of industry professionals who support and collaborate with the vision of filmmakers.

Awards will be handed recognizing Outstanding Color Grading for theatrical feature, episode or non-theatrical feature and commercial; Outstanding editing for theatrical feature, episode or non-theatrical feature (30 minutes and under) and episode or non-theatrical feature (over 30 minutes); Outstanding Sound (Design, Editing, Mixing) for theatrical feature, episode or non-theatrical feature and commercial; and Outstanding Visual Effects for theatrical feature, episode or non-theatrical (13 episodes and fewers) and episode or non-theatrical (over 13 episodes).

Submissions will be accepted from now until July 12. Early bird entries, which offer a reduced entry fee, are open until June 10. For work to be eligible it must have debuted domestically and/or internationally between Sept. 5, 2018, to Sept. 3, 2019. Entrants do not need to be members of the HPA or working in the U.S. The complete guidelines for submitting an entry are available at www.hpaawards.net.

The 14th HPA Awards will take place at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles on Nov. 21.

The Hollywood Professional Association (HPA) has opened its call for entries in creative categories for the HPA Awards. The Awards, now in their 14 year, are considered important recognition for groundbreaking work and artistic excellence, acknowledging creative artistry in color grading, editing, sound, and visual effects in feature film, episodic, and commercials. The 14th HPA Awards gala will be returning to the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, California on the evening of Thursday, November 21, 2019.

The HPA Awards were conceived to draw attention to the talent and innovation that fuels the professional media content industry. Celebrating the behind the scene collaborators who support the vision of filmmakers remains the focus of the HPA Awards.

Submissions are now being accepted in the following competitive categories:

• Outstanding Color Grading - Theatrical Feature
• Outstanding Color Grading - Episode or Non-theatrical Feature
• Outstanding Color Grading - Commercial
• Outstanding Editing - Theatrical Feature
• Outstanding Editing - Episode or Non-Theatrical Feature (30 Minutes and Under)
• Outstanding Editing - Episode or Non-Theatrical Feature (Over 30 minutes)
• Outstanding Sound (Design, Editing, Mixing) - Theatrical Feature
• Outstanding Sound (Design, Editing, Mixing) - Episode or Non-Theatrical Feature
• Outstanding Sound (Design, Editing, Mixing) - Commercial
• Outstanding Visual Effects - Theatrical Feature
• Outstanding Visual Effects - Episode or Non-Theatrical Feature (13 Episodes and Fewer)
• Outstanding Visual Effects - Episode (Over 13 Episodes)

Complete rules, guidelines and entry information for the creative categories and all of the HPA Awards are available at: www.hpaawards.net.

Submissions for consideration in the creative categories will be accepted between May 13 and July 12, 2019. Early Bird entries (at a reduced entry fee for the creative categories) will be accepted through June 10, 2019. To be considered eligible, work must have debuted domestically and/or internationally during the eligibility period, September 5, 2018 through September 3, 2019. Entrants do not need to be members of the Hollywood Professional Association or working in the U.S.

Seth Hallen, president of the HPA and a founding member of the HPA Awards Committee, commented, “The HPA Awards represent so much of what the HPA itself is about, which is giving well-deserved recognition to the artistry, ingenuity, and flat-out brilliance of the community of creative people who help realize filmmakers’ creative visions. As our industry evolves, what remains constant is the HPA’s true passion for honoring and celebrating the talent behind the talent.”

The HPA Awards recognize an entire spectrum of the creativity behind the scenes. The call for entries for the HPA Engineering Excellence Award opened last month and submissions will be accepted until May 24, 2019. The Judges Award for Creativity and Innovation, a juried award, will be announced in advance of the gala. The recipient of the HPA Lifetime Achievement Award will be announced in the coming weeks.

The HPA Awards are made possible through the generous sponsorship of Awards Title Diamond Sponsor Blackmagic Design, Platinum Sponsor IMAX, and Foundation Members Avid, Co3, Deluxe, Dolby, EFILM, and Encore. For sponsorship or program advertising opportunities, contact Joyce Cataldo at jcataldo@hpaonline.com. Announcement of ticket sales will be made in June.

For a list of the previous years' winners, click here.

The emergence of new content formats in the media and entertainment sector—think 4K Ultra High Definition (UHD), Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR)—has created a deluge of data that needs to be managed, accessed and processed in record time to feed the insatiable appetite of today’s entertainment consumer.

According to Tom Coughlin’s ‘2017 Digital Storage for Media and Entertainment Report’, digital storage capacity used in the entertainment industry will increase by 3.5x between 2016 and 2022. To battle the rapid turnaround times and increasing data volumes that follow as a result of this fast-growing industry, an up-to-date and ever-expanding storage system is not just a recommendation—it is a necessity. Is your storage infrastructure ready for the technology challenges of the modern media workflow? Let’s take a look.

STATE OF THE M&E INDUSTRY

Looking at behavior models in the media and entertainment industry, and specifically the VFX space, we can see that today’s media industry is characterized by spikes, as production requirements and schedules are notoriously fickle. Media studio operations must accommodate for huge data workload spikes caused by unplanned job changes that occur in the middle of planned production schedules. Moreover, tight budgets and high expectations are a main concern. As a result, companies are facing unprecedented cost pressure to support new production and distribution technologies that drive differentiation and enhance productivity.

Inevitably, responding to this imperative requires investing in storage and other infrastructure components, but all too often, the need for investment clashes with an ultra-tight budget which can lead to saving in the wrong places. It’s important not to forget that an inadequate storage infrastructure can not only have an adverse effect on business outcome but may also take a human toll by requiring labor-intensive administration, which not only impacts the bottom-line but also shifts the focus from where it needs to be: on the craft and creativity of your production facility. That’s why it’s important to find storage that offers the right combination of performance, price, flexibility, and manageability.

WHAT ARE WE UP AGAINST?

Data-intensive media rendering and animation jobs in the visual effects (VFX) industry demand powerful processing of complex assets with higher resolution, denser colors and faster frame rates. Also, increased pressure on media production teams to deliver higher quality content faster requires an infrastructure that can support 24/7 activity with unparalleled reliability and the confidence that files are available when needed.

If storage is static, lacking, or outdated, wall-clock time increases and deadlines suffer. You need storage that supports parallel creative activities handles high resource demands from multiple sources and delivers the raw speed and management simplicity required for everyone in the creative value chain to work faster and smarter. As a possible solution, studios are moving to or expanding their network-attached storage (NAS) storage solution.

EVALUATING YOUR STORAGE OPTIONS

Putting an agile and easily manageable storage backbone behind both media production and development is essential. As you evaluate your next storage purchase, ask yourself the following questions: Can investment in new storage technology improve our system architecture in terms of greater flexibility, better scalability, improved reliability, and easier management? How will new storage technology improve my creative workflow? How does my team access and share data? How much data growth do we expect from the increased use of 4K formats, 3-D animation, virtual reality, creative collaboration, and new channels for distribution?

In essence, you want a solution that is affordable, delivers high-performance and is still easy to manage. At the same time, performance for all users must be maintained to keep creatives happy as they perform their valuable tasks to push content through the production pipeline.

THE CASE FOR SCALE-OUT NAS IN VFX

Scale-out NAS, when delivered with parallel processing, packs the punch you need to address the data-intensive media rendering and animation productions in VFX environments. When you need shared-access storage that scales easily and delivers faster rendering times, supports highest data availability, and handles dozens of editorial sessions and high resource demands from multiple creatives, scale-out NAS is the way to go. A scale-out storage infrastructure reduces congestion across multiple “vectors,” including bandwidth and capacity, by supporting small-file I/O requirements across multiple flash-based components, while parallel access to larger files such as IMF containers for DPX or EXR elements improves responsiveness to artists seeking to load and process shots rapidly. Here are a few more points to be made for the advantages of scale-out NAS in VFX production:

Ability to adapt to dynamic business needs: Scale-out storage is well suited to media studio operations looking to expand storage capacity and bandwidth vertically. It’s easy to “turn more on” at the source to expand the scope of the data pipe serving the studio operation. Today’s on-premise scale-out storage solutions are proven effective at delivering the right capacity at the point of need, with the flexibility to grow easily without downtime. Your budget also scales predictably because you pay for what you need when you need it, not for what you think you’ll need tomorrow, making you work faster and more efficiently.

Consistent access to vast amounts of data: A flexible and agile scale-out NAS solution is capable of supporting the highest data transfer requirements in your computing infrastructure while maintaining the highest data availability on a 24/7 basis. Consistent access to vast amounts of data, while also providing reassurances to manage a consistent repository of data that can be deduped, backed up, protected and kept secure, is the cornerstone of a modern storage infrastructure.

Driving a collaborative and connected business operation: Maintaining maximum creativity for artists, streamlining workflows, and delivering projects on time and budget is what it’s all about, and the right scale-out NAS solution makes a difference. Artists being able to focus on their craft instead of wrestling with a complicated storage environment can deliver a higher-quality product. Teams being able to work on media files at full resolution rather than editing a lower resolution and rebuilding are saving valuable time and costs.

THE FUTURE OF STORAGE

Media organizations that embrace technological advances in computing infrastructures can realize incredible benefits. Visual media studios are harnessing the use of scale-out storage technologies to work in new ways that allow them to function as a different kind of collaborative, connected and altogether experimental business operation. There is an extraordinary number of choices when it comes to delivering and consuming media and entertainment production content, and audiences expect a high-quality experience across the board, no matter the channel of delivery.

At the heart of this infrastructure is data storage, and the ability to rationalize and optimize this layer to serve different operational needs is of paramount importance in running an efficient studio.

RW Hawkins is a Storage Systems Engineer at Panasas, a performance scale-out network-attached storage company based in Sunnyvale, Calif.

Blackmagic Design today announced that Editor Alan Edward Bell used its visual effects (VFX) and motion graphics software, Fusion 9 Studio, while editing the film “Red Sparrow.”

”Red Sparrow” is a new spy thriller from 20th Century Fox about ballerina Dominika Egorova (Jennifer Lawrence) who is recruited into Sparrow School, a secret Russian intelligence service. On the search for a mole within the Russian government, Dominika’s first target is an American CIA agent (Joel Edgerton). Also starring Jeremy Irons, Matthias Schoenaerts, Mary-Louise Parker and more, “Red Sparrow” was directed by Francis Lawrence and edited by Alan Edward Bell.

Bell used Fusion Studio as one of his editing tools while cutting the film, using it to create performance enhancing VFX during the editing process. He explained, “With performance enhancing VFX, you merge together editing and compositing to get the best cut, whether you’re heightening actors’ performances, helping with cohesion, or adding impact. By using Fusion Studio within my editing workflow, I can easily merge together different takes or make subtle changes to help amplify a scene.”

For example, Bell used Fusion Studio while editing “Red Sparrow” to merge together actors’ performances from different takes when it was needed to preserve the performance or further the story.

“There is a scene after Dominika finishes her Sparrow training and is reunited with her mother. In one take, Jennifer’s performance was very powerful as it showed a sense of dread, however, in another take they added a line that underscored her character’s determination and furthered her motivation. Instead of compromising on the performance or just slipping in the audio but not the visual, which is what editors have done in the past, I used Fusion Studio to combine the two takes together, layering Jennifer’s performances on top of each other,” Bell said. “I used Fusion Studio’s new planar tracker to track and stabilize the image. I then composited Jennifer’s mouth out of the first shot, and morphed the mouths together. Dominika’s motivation for the rest of the film is colored by that line, so it was important that we got it in, and because of Fusion Studio I was able to do it seamlessly.”

“Throughout the film, Dominika goes through varying stages of facial bruising and some hemorrhaging in her eyes,” Bell continued. “Using Fusion Studio, I was able to enhance and smooth out the way Jennifer’s bruising looked while editing, so when we previewed the film it was seamless.”

Bell concluded, “We used a lot of wide shots for this film, which meant that when I needed to rely on performance enhancing VFX, the backgrounds often needed tweaking to get things to line up. I frequently used Fusion Studio’s grid warper to make sure the background would match and that things were cohesive between cuts.”

Press Photography

Product photos of Fusion Studio and all other Blackmagic Design products are available at www.blackmagicdesign.com/media/images

About Blackmagic Design

Blackmagic Design creates the world’s highest quality video editing products, digital film cameras, color correctors, video converters, video monitoring, routers, live production switchers, disk recorders, waveform monitors and real time film scanners for the feature film, post production and television broadcast industries. Blackmagic Design’s DeckLink capture cards launched a revolution in quality and affordability in post production, while the company’s Emmy™ award winning DaVinci color correction products have dominated the television and film industry since 1984. Blackmagic Design continues ground breaking innovations including 6G-SDI and 12G-SDI products and stereoscopic 3D and Ultra HD workflows. Founded by world leading post production editors and engineers, Blackmagic Design has offices in the USA, UK, Japan, Singapore and Australia. For more information, please go to www.blackmagicdesign.com.

MONTREAL—Though the fictional world of Westeros is not often kind to those who inhabit it, the visual effects team in charge of creating it is reaping some benefits. Rodeo FX, the Montreal-based visual effects studio, won a Visual Effects Society Award of its work on season five of the popular HBO show “Game of Thrones” for the creation of the city of Volantis.

Rodeo FX artists Dominic Piché, lead modeler, Christine Leclerc, lead texture artist, Patrice Poissant, CG artist, and Thomas Montminy-Brodeur, digital compositor, were awarded the VES Award for Outstanding Created Environment for their work on creating Voltanis. To create the city, the artists worked from a live plate using a Roman bridge in Córdoba, Spain, and then added buildings, market and a background matte painting with CG.

Rodeo FX also won a VES Award in the Outstanding Visual Effects in a Photoreal Episode category for its work on “Game of Thrones.”

According to Rodeo FX, it delivered more than 200 visual effects to “Game of Thrones.” To see an example of the studio’s work, check out the video below.

Game Of Thrones - Season 5 - VFX Breakdown from Rodeo FX on Vimeo.