The team of filmmakers on the HPA Cloud production test

More than 300 volunteer filmmakers from around the world, working with cloud services from Amazon, Google and Microsoft and dozens of technology developers, are embarking on an ambitious effort to examine the potential of cloud production. Planning began in February 2020, initially with the idea of ​​creating a single short film using the cloud, but a month later the approach shifted from experience to necessity as the world grappled with it. COVID-19.

The effort, led by veteran color scientist Joachim JZ Zell through the Hollywood Professional Association, grew as filmmakers in more countries felt cloud collaboration was essential for working in the midst of the pandemic. The result is six short films made using the cloud, shot in five cities around the world in Hollywood, Dubai, Brisbane, London and Mexico City, as well as an animated entrance to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. The postproduction involved collaborators from the countries involved in the shootings, as well as other countries such as Brazil, Colombia and Lithuania. In addition, diversity is a priority and each short film has been directed, shot and / or produced by women filmmakers.

The takeaway: Cloud production has arrived, although the project has identified areas where more technological advancement is needed. The cloud is part of our future. It’s a game-changer, ”says Mandy Walker, Academy Governor for the Cinematographer’s Branch, who recently completed production of upcoming Baz Luhrmanns. Elvis movie. Walker was supervising director of photography on the poetic short Tangent. Deliberately, she never appeared on set. Instead, she monitored the weekend’s shoot live from her computer using cloud-based services to collaborate with others involved.

Each production implemented COVID security procedures and used different combinations of technologies, allowing participants to experience numerous workflows that enable cloud-based remote production tasks, including live review of images. camera, daily newspapers and participation in editorial, color grading and mixing sessions. The experiment involved Amazon, Google and Microsoft clouds, as well as a range of technologies from participating manufacturers including 5th Kind, Adobe, ARRI, Avid, Bebop, Blackmagic, Colorfront, Evercast, Frame.io, Moxion, Sohonet, Teredek and Teradici. The shorts were also made with the collaboration of many companies from the house of VFX Framestore and Skywalker Sound (who mixed four of the shorts).

Tangentwas created by working writer-director Ruby Bell, Walker, who is also Ruby’s mother. The short film was shot over a weekend in Brisbane and involved many Walker members Elvis crew. Walker and Bell say they intended to hire a diverse team. Says Walker: I believe in creating more opportunities and diversifying teams, and the way to do that, I think, is to uplift people. “

Sure Tangent, the co-author, producers, publisher and composer were all women. The project also created opportunities for crew members such as ElvisCameraman B Jay Torta, who served as director of photography. “We could knock [crewmembers] up to a few positions for the job they ultimately want to do, ”says Bell.

After the shoot, the Tangent the filmmakers used the cloud to collaborate during postproduction. The short was edited and tagged in Sydney, with color grading from the Dolbys Vine Theater in Hollywood and sound mixing at Skywalker Sound in Northern California. It was a good way to test these things, and it worked pretty seamlessly, says Walker. “I will be much more relaxed about using their systems [on future productions]. “

Each team tested different technologies and workflows for their particular short film. For example, in Dubai, the filmmakers put to the test a prototype of Blackmagic’s 12K camera (now available). In Hollywood, the team used Frame.io’s new Camera 2 Cloud system to send proxy (low-resolution) images to the cloud, allowing remote writing and post-production to begin.

Hollywood production, horror comedy Found Lederhosen, directed by (and with) Barbara Wilder, took place on a virtual LED production stage at ARRI in Burbank, with DP Chris Probst using tools developed by ARRI to operate the camera remotely, from a separate room of the complex, in order to limit the size of the crew on the set. Additionally, a LIDAR scan of the ARRI scene was used by Digital Film Tree to create a 3D “safety preview”, which is actually a preview of where the crew would be positioned on the set in order to follow the COVID security procedures, implemented by the on -Define COVID Compliance Officer.

According to Zell, vice president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Color Encoding System Project (ACES was used in testing), the cloud is ready for Hollywood production, although the One of the main things to remember is that when it comes to downloading. full resolution data to the cloud, more technological advancements are needed. Initially, according to the plan, “the directors of photography would take the magazine [with the camera footage] at home at night, download [full-resolution footage] on the web, and in the morning they could delete them and re-register them in the magazine. It has failed everywhere. But not in Brisbane, hence from the start [the plan] was to download the material into a post installation, ”he explains.

“The bandwidth is not there yet. Don’t try this at home,” Zell adds, warning that bandwidth requirements only increase camera data increasing in file size (the shorts were in 4K, 6K or 8K resolution).

“The easiest part of these new cloud workflows to ignore is the push process,” admits Michael Cioni, senior vice president of Frame.io. “Even in a studio like ARRI, the Wi-Fi network can work in the morning, but as the traffic in a building increases or people start downloading and downloading, the general traffic starts to have a big impact on the transmission. significant assets. , as we all know, Wi-Fi has a limited range. The main thing, then, is to take the LTE network which is widespread all over the world and make sure that we have reliable and amplified signals capable of moving high quality videos. Cioni says Frame.io is currently experimenting in this area with Los Angeles-based Sclera Digital, led by CEO Willis Chung, a former Local 600 DIT, who works with industrial-grade telecommunications tools.

The completed shorts will begin rolling out today, initially as part of the HPA Virtual Tech Retreat program.