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Revolution Studios Taps Picture Pipeline Application LOS ANGELES — Picture PipeLine announced that it is providing its secure broadband network and file transfer capabilities to Revolution Studios for the feature film XXX, starring Vin Diesel. Picture PipeLine's tools will allow Avid files to be transferred between Barrandov Studios in Prague, Czech Republic, to Revolution Studios' headquarters in Santa Monica, Calif., turning a week long delivery process into less than a day. In the case of XXX, Picture PipeLine encrypts audio and video files that have been encoded by Barrandov production personnel in Prague. The files are then securely transferred via high-speed Internet connection directly to an editing bay in Santa Monica. "The increasingly global nature of production is making digital collaboration a must in order for filmmakers to make their deadlines," said Picture PipeLine president Tom Gritzmacher. "We are thrilled that Revolution Studios chose our applications and we look forward to implementing secure and efficient solutions that help them work more effectively." Cornerstone Animates Larryboy With Flash LOS ANGELES — Big Idea Productions, creators of the Veggie Tales children’s video collection, recently released Larryboy, an animated direct-to-video release created in Cornerstone Animation’s Glendale studio using Cornerstone’s new proprietary process of combining traditional hand-drawn animation with Flash technology. [an error occurred while processing this directive] The process involves what Cornerstone co-founder and chief creative officer Larry Whitaker called "smart animation management" combining Flash animation with classical approaches to timing, posing, staging and acting in animation.
According to Whitaker, the late Ray Patterson who served on the original Tom & Jerry crew, and was on Cornerstone’s board of directors, guided the development of the process. "They used what’s called a unit, rather than breaking everybody up into separate slots. So artists get to color the characters, animate the characters and do animation clean up," Whitaker explained. He added that one of the advantages of Flash animation is that images created in Flash are vectorized, so elements can be reused (and resized) without having to reanimate a scene. "So, if you had a close up of a character’s face and then you wanted to go out to see the character walking in the distance, generally because there is such an extreme difference in the character’s size, you would have to redraw those shots." Flash eliminates this need to redraw. This time savings enabled Cornerstone’s crew of 25 artists to produce 30 minutes of broadcast-quality animation, in 21 weeks including the production of a 22-minute episode, a one-minute title sequence, plus writing and producting of a seven-minute short. Ric Burns: Capturing Ansel Adams NEW YORK—Ansel Adams’ majestic black-and-white photos of Yosemite Valley are the antithesis of television: stills vs. motion; black-and-white vs. color; tall or wide shots vs. 4x3; fine-grain film vs. NTSC. Who would have the guts to do a TV biography on Adams?
Burns, who served as writer and director, worked on Super 16, collaborating with his colleague of 15 years, cinematographer Buddy Squires. "We have a great rapport," said Burns. "Unlike some cinematographers, Buddy revels in direction. It creates a liberating structure in which he can go further." Michael Chin and John Else, whose work Burns describes, respectively, as "great" and "extraordinary," did additional cinematography. For Burns, the growth of reality programming and new cable channels are making this period "the glorious days of documentaries." But he also detects a darker side. "There are less understood trends in TV, including public TV, that reduce the creative leeway of the independent producer. Quality comes from producers who do it their own way, with passion, joy, blood, sweat, tears, and de facto editorial control—and some forces are throwing that out. This is a complicated moment." Prev 1 2 3 Next [an error occurred while processing this directive] 
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