The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) is hosting their annual production Technology Seminar, dubbed “Inspired by Users”.
The seminars will hot topics like SOA and FIMS, along with codecs, QC in file-based workflows, and the latest developments in cameras and lighting.
Day 1
Howard Lukk of Walt Disney Studios opened the seminar today with a keynote on the view from Hollywood.
He talked about the new developments in cinema, tagging the three ‘H’s: high frame rate (HFR), high dynamic range (HDR), and high resolution—the new technologies coming to theaters near you.Howard’s view is that the biggest gain for audiences is HDR. This will need the delivery to the viewer a minimum bit depth of ten, and ideally a twelve bit signal. This will of course need a new range of displays (opportunity for the CE guys here?) that can deliver the necessary performance.
Looking forward to the future Howard talked of computational cinematography. In production, rather than conventional capture of a 2D scene, plenoptic and multi-view cameras are used to capture the light field of the scene. In post production a synthetic aperture is created, and the focus pulling can then be performed in post. The light field can be used to construct depth maps, for shots that would traditionally use green screen to separate foreground objects, or to create a stereo 3D output. Companies from Adobe to ARRI are actively researching this technology.
This imaging science may be a way off, but it promises the first real change in the way movies are made since the the Lumières, Edison et al.