The Darklight Digital Film Festival is presenting three seminars over the coming weekend.
Seminar 1: Walking with Dinosaurs
Date: Friday 26 May
Time: 4 - 5.30pm
Venue: IFC
Darklight in consultation with Screen Training Ireland are proud to welcome Mike Milne from FrameStore, to lead a seminar about their BAFTA winning 'Walking with Dinosaurs' series for BBC.
This ground-breaking documentary comprised three hours of photorealistic computer animation. The series was modelled and animated entirely in Softimage 3D, and the final images were created with Mental Ray rendering software. FrameStore's in-house programmers developed extensive production software to cope with the demands of the project.
As Director of Computer Animation for 'Walking with Dinosaurs', Mike has stated that it was the greatest challenge of his career, and the dream project to combine his twenty years' experience of computer-generated animation and a lifelong passion for the study of wildlife - both the living and extinct varieties.
Seminar 2: "Media Convergence and Distribution"
Date: Saturday 27 May
Time: 12 - 1.30pm
Venue: IFC
Webcasting! Netcasting! Cybercasting! Microcasting! Narrowcasting! Movies on demand! Video on demand! Streaming media! Broadband access! Any movie, song, or show ever produced in any language by anyone anywhere. Available instantly. Now.
We have all heard the promises. How the proliferation of personal computer ownership and broadband access will allow the delivery of high quality digital multimedia content and services economically and globally.
But where are those video on demand services? Where are these online broadcasting networks that were to challenge the comfortable position that "government approved" traditional broadcasting channels enjoy? Where are the video enabled portable wireless devices?
They are all here. But we are still in the courting phase
During this seminar an invited panel of speakers will discuss and consider the state of the online broadcasting industry.
Panel Speakers include: Pamela Casey - Atom Films European acquisitions executive, Kevin Mc Dermott TP Media Ltd. gaming industry representative, Kevin Quinn servecast streaming media specialist and more to be confirmed.
Seminar 3: Sony DW-F900 24p -"a new era in movie making".
Date: Sunday 28 May
Time: 3.30pm - 5pm
Venue: IFC
This seminar will be accompanied by a selection of work shot using this new Sony camera including Wim Wenders latest production 'The Ground Beneath Her Feet' featuring a song by U2 from the movie 'The Million Dollar Hotel'.
Producers of prime-time TV and cinema are constantly looking at how to deliver higher screen value within increasingly tight budgets. Multiple versions and formats are often needed to meet the requirements of distribution channels and to meet the opportunities at home and abroad. Faced with this diverse marketplace, it is far more efficient and cost-effective to create a single, digital master that all other formats and versions can be taken from.
To meet this need, Sony has worked closely with a number of partners to introduce 24p - 24 Frame Progressive High Definition Digital Mastering. This is a unique film-friendly HD, consisting of 24 digital images per second, and is recorded in real-time and at the HD resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels, very close to "2k" film resolution. This resolution has been adopted as the world-wide Common Image Format (CIF) for high definition.
24 fps film converts well into 50 and 60Hz video. The 24p digital HD master is equally perfect for creating quality 50 and 60Hz HDTV versions, as well as PAL and NTSC down-conversions, plus conversion to 35mm film.
Wim Wender's latest production 'The Ground Beneath Her Feet' features a song by U2 from the movie, The Million Dollar Hotel and was shot using a Sony HDW-F900 and specially developed lenses by Panavision. This enabled Wenders to shoot the short digital music movie stylistically like a film, but with all of the advantages afforded by digital 24-frame progressive high definition HDCAM.
Wenders is one of a few European directors to produce in CineAlta using a Sony 24P camcorder. The one-day shoot for The Ground Beneath Her Feet took place in Dublin, Ireland and included only a small support team from Sony and Panavision
"I worked with people from Sony and Panavision once I received the camera and within a remarkably short timeframe, I was shooting complex scenes quite easily with it," said Wenders. "I was amazed at the quality of digital images produced using Sony's HDW-F900 and how well it intercut with the film footage shot on 35mm."
Visit Darklight at www.darklight-filmfestival.com
