Friday, February 1, 2013

Mission Completely Possible: the Coordination of Big-Budget Hollywood Productions through Livestreaming


H.254 encoding technology
Their audiences know them by various and iconic names: James Bond, Jason Bourne, Lara Croft, Indiana Jones – all of them globe-trotting, multi-lingual, high-kicking movie characters known the world over. What makes these characters so appealing? Well, many things of course, but part of their appeal has something to do with the fluency and ease by which they’re able to transfer between two utterly, upsettingly different locations: from the medieval alleys of a Moroccan city to the high-wire skyline of New York; sprung from the depths of some MI6 basement and into the throes of a Russian blizzard; racing just ahead of a fast-moving boulder in the depths of the Amazon, making it back (just in time!) to teach the morning archaeology class at a preeminent university.

Our culture idolizes speed, motion, fast-moving spreadsheets of skyline and vista. We love the wild closeness all distances share with each other. This love of ours has always been embodied by the Hollywood characters we spend our money to see time and again. We as a planet are only now, in dribs and drabs, catching up to the speed of these first, pioneering globe-trotters. With H.264 MPEG encoding technology that allows for livestreaming of enormous quantities of audio-visual data from a movie-set in, say, London to a digital production facility in Los Angeles, the lives of filmmakers are gradually assuming the dimensionless versatility of characters in a film.

Let’s say a director based in Los Angeles needs to see the results of the last three takes of a particular shot taken in London. He or she needs to decide – very quickly – which take is the “right” shot to go with. In the olden days, the director would have needed to be onset for those takes. Today, with minute-by-minute digital transmutation of vast amounts of data, the gulf between the director and his or her director’s chair has never been wider – or more irrelevant. Films can be made that much more cost-effectively and within the given timeframe of a production. There is little or no need to go into overtime when it comes to shooting a picture.

We aren’t Hollywood scriptwriters or producers here at Telairity. But what we can do is help coordinate a studio production, or a multi-studio collaborative production, in such a way as to make the experience seamless and “real” as if two different production teams shared the same space. Let us know how we can be of service. We’re quite sure Lara Croft would approve this message.

No comments:

Post a Comment