Each February, the Hollywood Professional Association (HPA) holds their annual Tech Retreat, a gathering of thought leaders in creativity, know-how, and enterprise, who come collectively to debate and debate the matters on the forefront of the media and leisure business.
Members of the Movement Image Academy, Tv Academy, American Society of Cinematographers, program leads from NASA, studio know-how groups, and notable tech professionals are amongst those that assist form the way forward for movement photos, typically by introducing game-changing know-how that marks a major turning level or business “first.”
This yr’s focus? Cloud-based workflows.
The problem? To make a brief movie utilizing as many cloud applied sciences as doable whereas chronicling a brand new, hybrid cloud workflow from begin to end.
It’s why Body.io’s very personal International SVP of Innovation, Michael Cioni, a longtime member of the HPA, leaped on the likelihood to point out our proof of idea camera-to-cloud effort to the 2020 retreat that was held final month in Palm Springs.
Michael, together with Body.io CEO Emery Wells, VP of Info Safety Abhinav Srivastava, and Workflow Architect Patrick Southern, demonstrated a model new proof of idea of a hybrid camera-to-cloud workflow—whereas greater than 500 business consultants, influencers, and decision-makers watched.
The mission
Spearheaded by HPA President Seth Hallen and led by Joachim (JZ) Zell, VP of Expertise at EFILM, the crew of the quick movie entitled The Misplaced Lederhosen included Steven Shaw, DGA, ASC (director); Roy Wagner, ASC (cinematographer); Peter Moss, ASC, ACS (digital camera operator); Sam Nicholson, ASC (VFX digital camera); Barry Goch (editor); and Stephen Morris (Skywalker Sound).
Cameras had been supplied by ARRI (Alexa LF), RED (Monstro), Panavision (DXL2), Blackmagic Design (Cinema Camera), and SONY (Venice).
Michael and JZ have recognized one another for years, and in November of 2019, Michael had given JZ a sneak peek into how Body.io might be used to centralize a cloud-based workflow.
So for its debut at HPA, Body.io, together with know-how companion Teradek, took on the duty of realizing JZ’s imaginative and prescient to create the experimental movie by counting on as a lot cloud know-how as doable, with Body.io on the middle of your entire course of.
Michael informed JZ, “There are quite a few instruments that work successfully within the cloud and provide digital companies, however Body.io is the one cloud-based instrument that acts as an working system that touches many of the key skilled video points that the HPA will want to ensure that this to be successful.”
The crew spent three days capturing at places round Los Angeles previous to the convention. Throughout what the HPA calls the “Supersession” on February 18, 2020, they spent the ultimate shoot day on a set constructed within the convention area, the place they accomplished the movie in practically actual time and screened it earlier than the reside viewers.
Body.io was used within the subject to host and distribute all lively media (dailies, stills, VFX parts, and materials for overview) in addition to internet hosting passive media within the type of unique digital camera recordsdata (OCF).
“The HPA contacted all of the winners of the HPA engineering award as companions for this mission,” JZ mentioned. “With each dialogue with totally different distributors, it turned clear that Body.io turned the “glue” product and lacking hyperlink for a lot of merchandise and workflows.”
However earlier than we dive into the main points of how they did it, it’s value stepping again to think about how workflows have beforehand been constructed—and the way this mission represents the way forward for video content material creation.
The bones of the workflow
If you concentrate on a workflow from an anatomical standpoint, the various totally different applied sciences ({hardware} and software program) it takes to supply shifting photos will be thought-about the “skeleton” of the method.
Connecting the bones are the corresponding creatives, which you would possibly consider because the joints. Cameras and DPs, audio recorders and sound engineers, NLEs and editors, compositing instruments and VFX artists, coloration correction instruments and colorists (and extra)—all kind a manufacturing assist construction. They make up crucial a part of the workflow basis, and require essentially the most vital funding from an gear and labor perspective.
Whereas there are nonetheless hotbeds of movie manufacturing the place studios are centered and expertise swimming pools are deep (Los Angeles, London, Mumbai, Hong Kong), we reside in a world the place productions have gotten more and more decentralized.
Creators need the liberty to work within the places that finest serve their tales, with individuals who share their inventive visions and sensibilities.
So what in case your bones are in a single place and your joints in one other? How do you deliver them collectively in a means that lets your workflow operate at peak efficiency, the place every thing is easily related and optimally aligned?
Friction versus fluidity
Content material creators speak about “friction” or “ache factors” relating to workflows—the place the method turns into intrusive and impacts creativity.
It’s much like what occurs when a human physique suffers from arthritis. Misalignment or put on and tear trigger cartilage and fluids between the joints to interrupt down, creating undesirable friction that results in ache.
Translated into workflow phrases, the most typical causes of friction in post-production are distance, time, and communication. And when these break down, ache ensues.
Fluidity is the core idea that conjures up the design of Body.io.
We try to make the expertise of utilizing Body.io straightforward and intuitive—regardless of its being a deceptively highly effective instrument. We by no means need customers to really feel as if they’re being pulled out of their inventive circulate—fairly, considered one of our guiding rules is to assist creatives really feel extra immersed of their mission.
Connective tissue
5 years in the past, Body.io’s cloud-based platform started relieving ache factors by introducing improvements like real-time commenting and collaboration, frame-accurate suggestions, and the power to share work-in-progress from anywhere, at any time.
Our mission is to maintain discovering methods to cut back the ache that happens when steps within the manufacturing course of break down. We all know, from firsthand expertise, the place the friction factors are almost definitely to happen.
That’s why we’re continually looking ahead to see how we will be taught to leverage new applied sciences—just like the cloud and 5G networking—to create a fluid workflow that looks like a pure extension of the way in which business professionals wish to work.
The movement image business has labored in essentially related methods since its beginnings. The director and DP collaborated on the set to seize photographs. Whether or not through movie processing or digital downloads, the unique footage needed to discover its strategy to the slicing room, the place post-production started and the director and editor collaborated to form the ultimate movie.
Even when digital seize overtook movie as the first seize medium, the instruments modified, however there was nonetheless a one- or two-day turnaround to get digital camera originals into the slicing room. Authentic digital camera recordsdata should be downloaded to drives. Drives should be despatched to the post-production vendor to be backed up, transcoded, synced, and to have proxies made.
These recordsdata are then despatched to the slicing room, the place the assistant editor ingests the fabric to the NLE earlier than slicing can start. If VFX are a part of the method, the editor (or VFX editor) might want to relink to the unique recordsdata based mostly on the offline. And, lastly, when the minimize is locked, they’ll have to do a remaining coloration grading and meeting by relinking to the unique recordsdata.
Till now, few of those steps immediately related to at least one one other by way of a single platform.
In recent times, there’s been a mounting buzz round on-set enhancing, with editors utilizing materials from the video faucets as they anticipate the unique digital camera recordsdata to be downloaded or proxies created by cellular dailies techniques.
Particularly on large-scale, VFX-intensive initiatives, administrators have turn into extra reliant on real-time know-how to make sure that they’ve gotten their shot earlier than shifting to the subsequent setup.
The unlucky fact in regards to the shift to digital know-how is that it didn’t pace up the method as considerably as initially promised.
And given the honest quantity of guide processing it takes to maneuver by way of the workflow, there’s nonetheless room for errors and failures—even (and maybe particularly) on the highest ranges of the business, the place creatives are continually pushing know-how to its limits.
It’s what drives us to maintain pushing ahead to create the cloud-based paradigm that powers the business’s workflow.
Constructing muscle
It’s additionally why Michael Cioni joined Frame.io. His background in main movement image workflows makes him one of many key folks in our business who understands what it means to substantively change the way in which movement photos are made.
However his credo is that for brand spanking new know-how to be embraced by our business, it has to really feel prefer it’s enhancing, not impeding, the inventive course of.
“I’ve been toying with the concept of a camera-to-cloud resolution since 2011 [he co-founded Light Iron in 2009], however the know-how for it to be built-in into skilled workflows was by no means fairly prepared,” Michael says.
“The final 18 months of technological progress have opened new doorways, and the concept of a strong camera-to-cloud workflow for professionals is coming into view.”
Which brings us to the HPA Tech Retreat.
“Did we have now a product that was able to go to market on that day? No. However did we need to stress take a look at our proof-of-concept? Completely. And the way higher to do it than with among the business’s most revered professionals?”
The HPA retreat is “the” place to take dangers, reveal prototypical initiatives in a protected atmosphere, and collect invaluable suggestions from among the smartest minds on this planet.
“We’ve been engaged on this at Body.io and to deploy an early pre-prototype at HPA for the highest thought leaders within the business to place it by way of the paces. We needed them to point out us the place the real-world vulnerabilities are, so we will determine how finest to maneuver ahead in our growth,” Michael says.
Resistance is what builds muscle. It’s one of many explanation why we welcome skeptics. “I need to invite folks to grasp that we don’t have all of the solutions. We’re removed from excellent. And we’re okay with that. I would like them to know that we anticipate there to be resistance,” Michael says. “There at all times is simply earlier than a revolution.”
Disruptive know-how with out disrupting workflow
For the three-day shoot that preceded the Supersession, director Steven Shaw, DP Roy Wagner, digital camera operator Peter Moss, and VFX digital camera operator Sam Nicolson started by capturing footage on the totally different cameras at 4K, 6K, and 8K.
With each digital camera document set off, the Body.io cloud proxy engine was enabled and pictures flooded into the cloud for an on the spot overview of all belongings, the place they had been proven in each HDR and SDR for simultaneous comparability utilizing Panavision’s onset viewing stem, LINK HDR.
LTE hotspots had been used to determine connections to the cloud, so timecoded and file-named photographs had been immediately backed up and redistributed proper on the set.
“It’s an emotional second for the crew,” Michael says, “when a director calls ‘Lower’ and some moments later the take is mechanically out there on an iPad or pc or cellphone.”
On the finish of every day, with the shoot contemporary of their minds, Michael and Patrick pulled down all of the footage that had been shot that day from the cloud and introduced it into FCP X, into which Body.io is an embedded extension.
Michael and Patrick had been capable of edit the day’s work and ship overview hyperlinks from Body.io to all of the principals on the manufacturing that very evening.
“Going by way of each manufacturing stage we had a plan A, B, and C,” JZ mentioned. “Whereas typically Body.io appeared within the plan A path, it was wonderful to see how typically it turned the B- or C-plan if different techniques failed or couldn’t ship in time. The effectivity and pace of Body.io was sort of scary at occasions!”
Because the mission progressed, practically 50 folks joined by way of Body.io and used their connection to the cloud as a brand new means of collaborating with everybody concerned. “The objective was to get folks eager about collaboration in a completely new means,” Michael says. “A few of it for the primary time.”
Expertise firm Colorfront constructed their integration with Body.io in order that dailies might be linked from the unique digital camera recordsdata. “This checklist of belongings is historically achieved by way of quite a few downloads, transfers, and delivery, going by way of various totally different palms within the picture chain of custody,” Michael says.
- Instantaneous dailies (H.264 proxy)
- Edit recordsdata (H.264)
- Tough minimize outputs (HEVC)
- Audio recordsdata (WAV)
- Colour-timed dailies (H.264 & DNxHR)
- Behind-the-scenes parts (JPEG and MXF)
- Authentic digital camera recordsdata (OCF)
However on the middle of this HPA take a look at, Body.io turned the only real instrument used to ship, and in some instances to create, all the belongings required for the publish workflow. What we demonstrated to the HPA for the primary time is that each one of these items got here from a centralized cloud system, and that Body.io has created a viable cloud-based workflow.
Lastly, for a very cloud-based workflow to succeed, it must have hooks for end-to-end integration. After the tough minimize was accomplished, an XML was exported from FCP X and loaded into Resolve after which downloaded to a neighborhood drive that additionally contained the unique digital camera recordsdata.
This hybrid workflow proved that it’s doable to host the unique digital camera recordsdata and energy the offline edit from the cloud, after which relink again to them regionally for the conform. The timecode and metadata captured within the reside streaming belongings on the set had been adequate to hyperlink again to the unique digital camera recordsdata for the ultimate digital intermediate.
The proof of the idea is within the viewing
The Supersession day started with attendees watching displays that had been immediately subsequent to the place the reside manufacturing for the remaining scenes was happening.
Body.io was onstage utilizing our camera-to-cloud proxy engine to seize all of the takes within the second and stream them immediately to the cloud, enabling the attendees to observe the reside digital camera feed on two giant screens.
In the course of the Supersession lunch break, knowledge was wrangled in order that after lunch the VFX crew might work on compositing, the editor might replace the minimize, audio might be blended, and the ultimate coloration grading might be accomplished in preparation for the ultimate screening that night.
In the meantime, whereas remaining post-production was ongoing within the afternoon, Body.io introduced its portion of the demonstration onstage, which included a behind-the-scenes video (captured in the course of the morning’s manufacturing) of the camera-to-cloud workflow for the attendees to view.
Studying in regards to the course of is one factor, however watching the video actually drives the purpose residence. You’ll see how we captured a second from the cameras and streamed it to all of the post-production instruments (the “bones”) which are used within the regular publish workflow in actual time.
For the primary time, Body.io was the connective tissue that delivered all of the belongings to all of the inventive entities with out having to obtain them to a drive. We replicated the identical post-production workflow movement image creators are used to—however with out anybody having to attend for a drive to be shipped.
“For this yr’s twenty fifth Tech Retreat, the HPA program committee got down to deliver really next-level programming to the business. We had been extraordinarily proud to allow essentially the most cloud-based applied sciences ever assembled into one workflow and to current them reside in entrance of a whole lot of individuals,” Seth Hallen says.
“The one strategy to obtain this was to deliver the group collectively in a very collaborative strategy to innovate and be taught. A couple of dozen firms made this occur, however the mission would merely not have had the raving success it did with out Body.io, whose tech turned the important thing enabler to the entire experiment.”
“Underneath the management and fervour of Michael Cioni, it was so thrilling to observe true innovation and novel next-generation workflows take form in real-time. We are able to’t wait to work with Michael and Body.io on subsequent yr’s mission!”
The wrap
The mixture of know-how and creativity is what Michael likes to name being “technative” (technological + inventive). It’s about taking dangers to energy inventive potential by leaning into know-how.
On the finish of that day’s Supersession, we completed what we got down to do with our proof of idea. We proved that Body.io isn’t nearly making a product. It’s about bringing collectively a group of creators and serving to all of the contributors work extra seamlessly and fluidly.
In the identical means {that a} human physique works when it’s match and wholesome, you don’t discover what’s occurring inside it. You simply know that it responds to no matter you need it to do, whether or not meaning making fast bites of content material to be seen on a cell phone or leaping out of planes to seize excessive aerial footage for IMAX blockbusters.
And it’s just the start.
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