M2 Digital Post Inc: A Clearly Cloudy Future

By Toms Inglesby

Michael Towe, president of M2 Digital Post.

At NAB this year, a section of the exhibition space was designated as the Cloud Pavilion.  About 20 companies exhibited – to the extent that anything called a “cloud” can be exhibited – and discussed applications for this digital environment. A cynic might revert to one of the early clichés of computing and refer to some of it as vaporware; a nice pun, that.

But there are some practitioners who have had their heads in the cloud for a while and they seem to think it actually has value. Not only value, but value balanced with growing pains. Markee had a digital discussion with Michael Towe, president of M2 Digital Post Inc. (www.m2digitalpost.com) in San Diego on his experiences with clouds.

“Let’s start with strengths,” Towe began. “The production industry is changing and has been for a few years now. The era of large production houses is gone. … The trend is for smaller, more distributed production resources. The editor that used to drive into the large post house to work now has his own system and is working out of his house. But working out of the house has drawbacks. It makes the act of collaborating more difficult, as well as the task of client review and approval. This is where the cloud comes into play.”

Speaking of the client approvals process, Towe recalls: “In the past, I had office space that was nice and big and comfy and expensive. “Now I work out of a 400-square-foot patio [at home]. I made the move in a large part because the cloud enabled me to do so. I send clients a video via a cloud review and approval service, they look at the video and send me changes. I came to the realization that I was spending about $3,000 per month to have a big office I didn’t need. So in early 2008, I dumped the office space. I now do 99 percent of my review and approval via the cloud.”

So what about collaboration? A big part of this industry is sharing ideas, brainstorming with others. Towe has that covered. “The cloud has helped here, too. The review and approval process I just explained can be used with others. I use it quite often for motion graphics work and especially for voice work. Now I can use online services to post my job. Within a couple hours, I have auditions to put in front of a client; they pick the one they like, and we’re off to the races. Granted, there are still times where getting everyone to a recording studio is the better choice, but those jobs are few and far between.”

Brainstorming isn’t all like it used to be. Face time is valuable when you consider the travel time and coordination necessary. According to Towe, “I find myself sharing ideas and impromptu brainstorming with so many through social networks. Things like Twitter and Facebook become a valuable resource to bounce ideas off of friends. Sites like YouTube and Vimeo have given me hours of inspiration from simply looking at others’ work. And when it comes to getting people together in a virtual room to discuss things, I have used sites like GoToMeeting and Skype.”

So what about weaknesses? What’s the downside? “There is one big downside,” Towe admits, “and that’s spontaneity. That water cooler moment with a coworker that sparks a great idea really is gone. To be honest, I don’t know how you get that back. Social networks come close, but it’s still not the same. Speed is another drawback. We’re still at relatively slow Internet speeds for the size of files we need to push around in the video world. I still find myself having to ship a drive from time to time because the files are just too big. Another downside is it does make client management a bit more difficult. You need to develop a different set of skills to manage those clients when dealing with them through emails.”

So Towe is working in what might be called a hybrid cloud environment, combining real world (FedEx, hard drives) with cloud activity. “My quick conclusion is the cloud is here to stay,” he confesses. “The video profession has changed drastically in the past 10 years. The cost of entry has come way down so competition has gone way up. This in turn has driven profits through the floor. What I can charge today for a five-minute, corporate trade show video is a fraction of what I could charge for it in 2004. That means I have to find ways to cut back my costs to remain competitive. The cloud has enabled me to do this by making office space a thing of the past. I have lowered my overhead by thousands of dollars a month because of it.”

Last thoughts? “Darwin taught us that you need to adapt or die. The most recent adaptation in the video production species is a connection to the cloud. Those that don’t make that connection will go the way of the Dodo.”

What's Your Creative Process?

Every creative person has his or her own process for developing and finishing projects, whether it is a job or a hobby. Call them quirks. Call them idiosyncrasies. Whatever you want to call them, creative individuals need this routine in order to complete the task at hand. For my own creative work – the writing part of my job – I have a series of steps I must go through for each article before the final step of sitting down at my computer to compose the first draft.

Of course, my work starts with research and interviews, but the quirk of my writing process is the composition. You see, once I have all of my notes together and I know generally what I want to say with a certain article, I will "write" it in my mind before a single word is typed at my keyboard. I will think about the article for days, working it out in my head exactly what I want to write. So, when I finally sit down to compose an article, I will know how it begins, what I want to say in the middle of the article, how the article will be structured, and how it should end. Most people probably do this with notes or an outline, but I've just always worked it out in my mind. It's just the way I work.

This might not be the most efficient or practical way to work, but the process works for me. It is just my way of doing things, of getting the job done. In thinking about my own process recently, I started to wonder what your creative processes must be like. Surely, you each have specific, or perhaps peculiar, ways of getting the job done. How could you not? You work in a creative field and often are tasked with finding new ways to do your job. So do you have a unique creative process that others find quirky and idiosyncratic? Tell me what this process is, how it works for you, and why your coworkers raise their eyebrows. I'll understand, and perhaps other readers will too. Who knows, you may inspire someone to adjust his or her own creative process.

Playing With Fire: When fire breaks out on Chicago Fire, it’s real.

By Michael Fickes

Photo: Matt Dinerstein/NBC. Copyright NBC Universal, Inc.    

Fires – real fires – rank as major characters in Chicago Fire.

Director of Photography Lisa Wiegand and Special Effects Coordinator John Milinac carefully plan the fires for the NBC show from prolific hit-maker Dick Wolf. 

Milinac works with his crew to design and install networks of pipes that jut out of the floor and ceiling for the fire sets – often built in a warehouse. Then, the crew pumps fuel for a fire into the pipes. For safety, camera operators and dolly grips don fire retardant automotive racing suits before the shoot.

In a typical scene, fire trucks drive up to the building – a real building in Chicago with real flames from fireboxes installed in the windows. “The cameras, two ARRI ALEXAS, are always with the firefighters,” Wiegand said. “So the audience discovers problems along with the firefighters.”

Starting fires

Inside, Milinac brings the fire in each pipe up to a planned and pre-tested level. The actors wear firefighter bunker gear – protective clothing and equipment that can withstand high temperatures. “John is always there, along with Stunt Coordinator Rick Le Fevour,” Wiegand said. “If something goes wrong, they will turn off the fuel and put the fire out.”

Holding back fire

Onscreen, the scenes look extraordinarily dangerous. In one scene inside a multistory downtown apartment building, a character named Matthew Casey (Jesse Spencer) herds two residents into a room with a window and slams the door on the growing fire that has blocked their escape route down a stairwell. 

Firefighters outside must raise a ladder to the window. While they work, the raging fire pushes against the door. Casey braces his back against the door to keep it shut. The pressure from the fire pushes the door ajar and flames lick around the openings. Casey pushes the fire back and the fire pushes Casey back. He bounces back and forth, moving a foot or more each time. That better not be real fire coming through the openings around the door.

“It was real,” said Wiegand. “But it looks worse than it was. Casey wasn’t moving very much, and the shot was dull. Then Reza Tabrizi, the camera operator, tried zooming way in and way out rapidly and repeatedly. It worked and gave the scene all that energy.”

The crew carries three Angenieux Optimo lightweight zooms for each ALEXA: 15mm-40mm, 28mm-76mm and 45mm-120mm. Then there are two primes: 135mm and 150mm for each camera. The lightweight lenses facilitate handheld shots, which make up 90 percent of each show. Two 12:1 Angenieux Optimos handle studio shots. 

Speed counts

Chicago Fire is a demanding show. Every scene, even the difficult rescue scenes, must move quickly. Large crews facilitate that. “My departments dealing strictly with photographic concerns number 30 to 50 depending on the day,” Wiegand said.

Technology helps. The show uses Burbank-based FotoKem’s nextLab, an automated software solution for productions shot in high-definition digital video files.

“We set up look-up-tables or LUTs before the season,” said Scott Rader, VFX supervisor on Chicago Fire and creative director at Spy, a post-production house with offices in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

“The LUTs are digital files that contain color specifications for various scenes,” continued Rader. “For example, Lisa wants a certain look for the interior of the firehouse during the day. There is a LUT that contains color and lighting specifications for those scenes – and there are LUTs for other kinds of scenes.”

When the digital video loads into nextLAB, the software downloads the appropriate LUT for each scene, attaching each to the appropriate video files. “That corrects 90 percent of the color,” Rader said. “We fix the rest during final color correction.”

It’s an innovative system that is slowly replacing disk drive storage. Rader also is in charge of VFX fire. Although the fire scenes are real, Rader’s team often makes them bigger, smokier and scarier, while painting out the safety riggings and harnesses that keep the actors safe during the shoot. So while Lisa Wiegand can scare you with a zoom lens, Rader does it with animation software.

Northeastern Trailblazers

It is no surprise that the filmmaking industry attracts independent spirits. It takes a certain kind of pioneering attitude to complete projects under the stresses of shrinking budgets and condensed timetables. Running a small company in this industry not only requires a trailblazing disposition, but a willingness to learn new skills and to know when turning down a job might be the best thing for your company. With our eyes on the Northeast region of the United States, Markee 2.0 shines its Spotlight on a few small businesses forging their own paths.

Adventure Productions

George A. Stover III, a former TV news videographer, started Adventure Productions in 1998 so he could spend more time on each project and have more creative control over the final product. Almost immediately, Adventure began producing numerous weekly TV series such as Around the House, Bloomin’ in the Garden and Rodricks for Breakfast. The company also specialized in commercials, corporate videos and underwater videography – a specialty of George’s who also is a certified scuba instructor. Today, Adventure Productions – managed by George, Creative Director Mark S. Sanders, and Marketing Director Carol Stover – takes on larger and more involved projects.

“I think the most notable thing about our company is that we just keep reinventing ourselves,” Carol said. “This industry is changing so rapidly, and the uncertain economy is driving a lot of this change. If you are resourceful and fast moving like we are, you can weather those changes and keep getting better at what you do." READ MORE

Robots to the Rescue?

Earlier this year, while speaking to students at the University of Southern California, Steven Spielberg foretold of the impending "implosion" of the movie industry as we know it. His reasoning was the failure of many "megabudget" movies to turn a profit. "There's going to be an implosion where three or four or maybe even a half-dozen megabudget movies are going to go crashing into the ground, and that's going to change the paradigm," he told the crowd attending the opening of USC's School of Cinematic Arts' new Interactive Media Building.

Spielberg's estimation wasn't that big-budget movies no longer would be made, but that the pricing structure for seeing such films would cost theater goers more than an independent film, for example. He suggested the ticket price to see the next Iron Man type of movie could be $25. He might not be far off base.

If you believe the words of movie producer and author Lynda Obst, then "spectacular, Cameron-inspired technology" is all Hollywood has left to showcase. Obst argues in her book, "Sleepless in Hollywood: Tales From the New Abnormal in the Movie Business," that 70% to 80% of studios' revenues are from foreign box offices – particularly China and India – places that produce their own comedies, dramas and other "small" films. Therefore, she says, all that Hollywood has to offer the overseas audiences whose entertainment spending they crave are "razzle-dazzle effects."

If this is Hollywood's future, I can live with it. There are plenty of other outlets for creative writing and storytelling – cable and network television, and online entertainment sources such as Netflix and Hulu, which already are producing their own original programming. Spielberg can see the writing on the wall; he produces the very entertaining Falling Skies for TNT. What I can't live with are continual regurgitations, reboots and unending sequels. Fewer Fast & Furious variations or Superman remakes. More Pacific Rim. If all we're going to see in theaters are "big" movies, I don't want to see another superhero remake. Clearly, the man of steel can't rescue Hollywood. But perhaps men and women fighting for our planet from inside steel robots can.

Share Your Knowledge

With increasing frequency, I have been attending web-based seminars (webinars) on how to be a better journalist (with topics as varied as social media metrics and entrepreneurial journalism). I find that these sessions can be quite instructive. And they certainly are easy to attend since I don't have to leave my office. Plus, technology and the publishing industry changes frequently, so it is important to stay on top things.

Attending these webinars has me thinking: I'm sure there are many Markee 2.0 readers who have valuable knowledge they could share with other industry professionals, and magazines such as this one have built-in audiences for these sessions. Additionally, I'm sure there may be new skills or techniques that many of you would like to add to your repertoire, but you just haven't found the time. Further, I don't have to tell you how often technology changes in your industry. Well, surely you could spare 1 hour while at your desk -- perhaps over lunch -- to learn a new skill or find a new way to get your projects completed.

So, why not try to make this happen? Are you an expert in creative lighting techniques, specialty shooting, video or audio post-production, etc.,? Let's discuss some webinar ideas and make this happen! Just send me an email to get the conversation started.

You provide the knowledge and expertise; we provide the audience. 

Where Imagination Thrives

BigStar composited footage of a real raven in a promo for Game of Thrones.

As I wrote here last month, I am a fan of television commercials. Unlike most TV viewers, I look forward to the spots running between the scenes of my favorite shows. I'm not just looking for a good laugh or a palette cleanser, if you will, during heavy dramas; I admire the creativity behind many TV commercials. (Some of my favorites are listed here.) Markee 2.0 admires this as well, and we often celebrate the creators of these spots in our print publication.

Recently, we featured the work of BigStar, which created a fascinating spot for HBO's Game of Thrones; a52 VFX, which developed an intriguing spot for Nescafe Latin America; Ntropic, which created a spot to showcase a new car from Lincoln; and MPC LA, which worked with Spike Lee on a clever ad for the NBA. What do all of these commercials have in common? Imagination.

Chris Paul appears & disappears in a restaurant booth in an NBA spot by MPC LA.

As Christine Bunish wrote in the article: "Spots and promos are fertile venues for innovative VFX and CG work. Whether they play on broadcast networks, cable, the web, or at trade shows, these short- and long-form advertising messages offer high-quality executions of compelling, heart-warming, elegant and fun creative." For general audiences, these types of spots will be remembered; they will be talked about among friends and shared online. For those of you in the business of creating such spots, you might admire this work for a multitude of reasons, and the work could inspire you when creating the next spot of your own.

So, if you haven't seen these commercials and you're looking for some inspiration while working on your current projects, please read our article and then follow the links to view these spots. Get inspired. Create some of your best commercial work and then send us the links to your finished spots. Who knows, you may end up in a future issue of Markee 2.0 and, in turn, inspire someone else's great commercial work.