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Digital Oscars Awarded
prostoalex writes "MSNBC covers the Academy's Scientific and Technical Awards, which generally take place before the Oscars, but recognize companies and individuals that helped the advancement of film-making with technology. This year's winners include DigiDesign, the creator of Pro Tools audio package, Bill Tondreau from Kuper Controls for robotic camera systems and Peter D. Parks, with a lifetime achievement award."
in Hex or Binary?
My hyperlinks aren't worth the paper they're printed on.
Too bad they make no mention of the rendering software(s), etc. used in films like LOTR and ROTK. Many times its the softwares that drive the new hardware discoveries and advancements as was the case with the movie Titanic. And with all the Linux rendering farms being used these days, I'd expect at least some mention of the softwares powering them.
Jennifer Garner hosts to highlight the technological achievments that make her look better on camera. It's just a simple thanks that she has to give due to her lack of acting ability (have you seen Daredevil)
We all know that the real winners were all the geeks that got to hang with Jennifer Garner for the night. Yuh!
He most certainly contributed to technology in films!
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
It is a shame really that these people do not receive more recognition for their work. Their contribution is in some cases ground breaking. But since it is not "interesting" they do not get any air time.
As anybody who uses Pro Tools will tell you, it is the end all be all when it comes to the audio spectrum. They defenitely deserved the recognition. And regardless of what you may think of LotR, you have to give props to the Massive project.
Kudos to you.
There are certainly some achievments of technology in movies that should be included in the Digital Oscar Hall of Fame 1. HAL 2. WOPR (WarGames) 3. the designers for Terminator 3 (Terminator boobies are now one of my top fantasies)
Among those honored with plaques were Kinoton GmbH for its high-speed studio projector; a team from Eastman Kodak Co. for developing an anti-static layer on film that survives processing; Stephen Regelous for developing Massive, the software used to create tens of thousands of warriors for the "Lord of the Rings" battle sequences; and a group of companies for their work in digital audio editing.
Here it is, what little there is
Filmmaking is technological by nature. Many filmmaking technologies are in the realms of mechanical engineering, optics, lighting, chemistry (e.g., film emulsions), model making, etc. I don't think it's very accurate to refer to the Academy Awards for technological achievements as the "Digital Oscars."
the guys from Digidesign deserve recognition - they are terriffic. Met them in 95 in LA at a conference. They were very helpful.
Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development. (Wilde)
Okay, digidesign has done some neat things recently, but the most notable are the cool digital control consoles that attach to software-based workstations.
Digi was once widely recognized for building hardware that made mid-90's computers capable of audio feats that would not have been otherwise possible, but these days, there are a lot of other options, and protools is no longer an obvious choice over other software such as cubase sx, which has been very popular among smaller studios.
I suppose the academy is really not very interested in the cool developments that have made it easier for the indie movie scene, such as the terrific, and very affordable Behringer Truth monitors, and small digital mixers that cost less than $2k, but sound better and buss signals easier than the $10k mixers of yester-year.
I really think the coolest technical innovations in the movie and audio community recently have all been the ones that have made it easier to run a small studio out of your garage. I think that movement should be recognized a bit more by the academy.
- EricMakePassword.com Mp3 Blog
Henrik Wann Jensen (one of the winners) is a professor at UCSD. He has had numerous contributions to the area of Computer Graphics, including Photon Maps, Subsurface Scatterring, etc. Some of the animations and images of of his work are trully amazing.
Don't Panic
I'm not sure about ILM, but Pixar (Ed Catmull in particular) has won at least one of these awards for Renderman. (2001)
Why no Bill Gates? He created a revolution in computer technology.
They ARE Oscars, just not the glitzy ones that the media covers. Sometimes software wins, sometimes hardware (e.g. innovative camera systems, mounts, sound equipment etcetera).
Everybody's a libertarian 'till their neighbour's becomes a crack house.
for Best Performance in an Online Feature.
Are they any film people out there who could point out which are the better books on film technology (not in the CGI sense) and techniques? I've been curious recently as to the sound technologies and techniques used, and also the mechanical engineering used.
Christophe Hery of ILM won an award this year for his work on rendering realistic skin. ILM has won a number of other awards from the Academy for their technical work over the years; see the Oscars web site.
Oscars web site, 2003 sci-tech winners
To Christophe Hery, Ken McGaugh and Joe Letteri for their groundbreaking implementations of practical methods for rendering skin and other translucent materials using subsurface scattering techniques.
These groundbreaking techniques were used to create realistic-looking skin on digitally created characters.
Other folks honored for related work are:
To Henrik Wann Jensen, Stephen R. Marschner and Pat Hanrahan for their pioneering research in simulating subsurface scattering of light in translucent materials as presented in their paper "A Practical Model for Subsurface Light Transport."
This mathematical model contributed substantially to the development and implementation of practical techniques for simulating subsurface scattering of light in translucent materials for computer-generated images in motion pictures.
Seriously, is there any other industry that does as much back-patting and self-stroking as Hollywood?
These are some seriously affirmation-hungry groups that just live for the moment to tell everyone "what a great opportunity it was to work with such a great professional" blah blah.
Soon they're going to have a hard time fitting any new "content" in between the award shows.
The story doesn't list everybody who was honoured, but I'm guessing Andy Serkis got missed again. Surely he contributed toward digital effects in film in numerous ways over the last few years, yet consistently gets overlooked. Sure, he isn't a techie, and he didn't invent the concepts as such, but he's the only actor who has taken a digital character to such extreme lengths?
Pixar has a double handful of these, for Renderman, for digital film printers, and several others. Two of them (for designing Pixar's animation system and for the first digital compositing system) are on the mantle at my house.
-Tom Duff
That was the case ten years ago. It's not the case today. Pro Tools is still standard in many high end studios, but not the only DAW system present, and often not even the primary DAW system used. In some areas, Pro Tools is still very common -- especially in holywood, but I wasn't talking about holywood, I was talking about the industry as a whole, and in the rest of the world, garage studios, indie production companies, etc.. it is Pro Tools that is the exception. - Eric
MakePassword.com Mp3 Blog
ILM has won 23 Sci-Tech awards (not counting the RenderMan ones, which while the research was started when Pixar was still part of Lucasfilm , they werfe awarded after they spun off). Pixar has 3 per se, though as td pointed out some stuff they have won when they were still at Lucasfilm (particle systems, math principles of digital compositing, etc.).
I list the ILM award, plus some done by poeple later that left here:
ILM Academy Awards
Many other companies have won. Some of the Sci-Tech awards have been shared, like the DID was between ILM and Tippett Studio, and ILM, the Computer Film Company (now part of Famestore/CFC) and other have won for film scanning and digital compositing, PDI has won for their facial animation system and fluid dynamics, etc.
Only in very rare cases do we give awards to companies. We strive to identify the individuals most responsible for the innovation. That's why the technical awards are on Tom Duff's mantle and not in Pixar's boardroom.
So, while you can say that people working at ILM won 23 Sci-Tech awards -- you can't say that ILM won 23 Sci-Tech awards.
The only recent exceptions have been the Oscars (Awards of Merit) presented to Alias (for Maya) and to Avid. In these cases, it was impossible to reasonably assign credit to a very few key people, but the contribution was too large to be ignored.
Thad Beier
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