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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.
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.
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."
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.
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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)
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.
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.