If you took a second to close your eyes and think about Star Wars, what comes to mind? What are you hearing? Laser blasters, light sabers, possibly a dramatic score by John Williams? For the major films in pop culture, music plays a major role in developing the themes and tone of the production.
As I sit down and begin to contemplate 2020, I wondered out loud what were some of the better take aways from 2020? Where should I start?
The first thought that came to mind was, what did we learn from 2020? Did we as an industry or as individuals learn anything? I think the quick and easy answer is that we were all pretty much “scrooged” in some fashion. From a personal and professional standpoint it's fair to say that most—if not all of us—lost something or someone in 2020. If we wanted to, we could easily sink into some of the gloom and doom of 2020, but hey, that just isn’t my style. With those thoughts in mind, let’s take a look at the whole of 2020 and see what we can make of it.
There is no doubt in my mind that if you are living and working in the production space long enough, sooner or later you will come face to face with some extremely nasty weather and be able to tell your very own bad ass, bad weather production story. In the moment, the weather will make you wonder what the hell did I sign up for? It’s like every time I watch an episode of the long running reality show Deadliest Catch, I'm thinking—would I sign up for that? Would YOU sign up for that? I think my jury is still way out there, just trying to stay warm and not get wicked seasick.
Threaded Films, a boutique production studio in Chicago, IL, partnered with creative team, Project Adventure, and Twitch software developer, Warp World, for their latest film project. They quickly realized the need to modernize their studio to fulfill their goal of creating a new style of dynamic and interactive content. To meet the demands of the project, Threaded Films needed affordable yet feature-rich technology to be used in their home studio to boost creativity and execute a live production remotely—all while adhering to shelter-in-place mandates.
The 2020 election cycle has seen record ad spending as candidates vie for the attention of voters who have spent the last six months home consuming content on every device imaginable. But even before the COVID-19 pandemic began, the Democratic primary was the most expensive in history, with $1 billion in campaign media spend.
As lockdown restrictions start to ease around the world, one of the key consequences that is starting to come to light regarding the Covid-19 pandemic has been its role as an accelerant. Certain trends within the industry were already well under way, such as the growth of remote, collaborative workflows in post production or remote contribution for live events. But Covid-19 has moved these very rapidly from being a nice option to becoming an absolute necessity, and next on the list is virtual production.
No industry was left undisturbed by the current pandemic. The majority of web design and marketing agencies immediately felt pressures as clients canceled, marketing budgets were reduced, and businesses scrambled to figure out how to improve their online presence.
A few days ago I received a call from a very knowledgeable person in the media technology field who excitedly said “Stop what you are doing I want you check out this company called Wildmoka. They have this amazing new technology that you will love. Well, being the technology nerd that I am, I did stop and I did check them out. After reading the press release twice I was hooked and wanted to know more. ProductionHUB caught up with Thomas Menguy the President and CTO at Wildmoka. He walked us through a very interesting process of seamlessly real time converting horizontal images to a vertical for viewing on smart phones via AI and the cloud. He also shared some of the research that was instrumental in the development of their new product Auto ReZone.
As we slide into August and the dog days of summer, production companies and production personnel keep asking me the same question over and over. That question is: “Are we there yet?” It seems to be the overwhelming theme over the last month doesn’t it? To be honest, I think that the jury is still out. In some areas remote truck production “seems” to be working. Some mobile units are carefully rolling out and taking on new “remote” productions full stream ahead. Other truck owners are still taking a 'wait and see' approach and working in what I call a “hybrid” work model. In the truest sense of the word we are talking remote production but with a lot of caveats.
Live video production via IP, and specifically over the Internet, is transforming the content consumed by the public, offering producers an array of new workflow options that were unimaginable even a few years ago. There has been a recent influx of video conferencing tools like Zoom, WebEx and others, being used on a daily basis for traditional broadcasts by major TV networks. The ability to "bring in" remote presenters, guest speakers and international contributors are rapidly transforming not only the traditional broadcast market but also the educational, religious, and government production workflows. The presence of live feeds became an integral part of everyday content regardless of distribution, OTA, OTT, or via social media on the web.
