Company plunges past core restoration biz into 3D services

[By TODD LONGWELL, Variety]

In a darkened room on the second floor of a nondescript building tucked away in an industrial area near Bob Hope Airport, a dozen or so young men and women sit at computer workstations equipped with dual 32-inch monitors that are wired into a powerful 300-machine, 1.5-petabyte Linux processing system.

These are the members of Reliance MediaWorks Burbank’s image processing team, and they’re studying and manipulating individual frames of classic and not-so-classic movies such as Michael Powell’s 1943 epic “The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp” and Brian De Palma’s campy 1974 rock ‘n’ roll frightfest “Phantom of the Paradise.”

“Just final checks on ‘Cinderella,’ ?” says digital artist Alexis Ross-Gallaher as she scans her monitor, huddled in a parka. “We’re almost done. Getting ready for the Blu-ray.”

Founded as Lowry Digital in 1988, the company has left its mark on — or, more accurately, removed unsightly marks and otherwise repaired and revitalized — approximately 450 film and TV projects. They include several titles in Disney’s Platinum Collection, 20 James Bond pics, three installments of “Star Wars” and some more esoteric efforts such as Akira Kurosawa’s “Rashomon.”

While it remains one of the premier restoration houses in the world, today that portion of its business is just the tip of the iceberg. Since being acquired in 2008 by Reliance MediaWorks, a division of Indian multimedia behemoth Reliance ADA Group, the company has made a concerted effort to market its image-processing expertise to studios for new releases such as “The A-Team,” “Eat Pray Love” and “Yogi Bear,” while also plunging headlong into 3D.

“The proprietary tools and the relationships Lowry had were very valuable to us,” says Reliance MediaWorks CEO Anil Arjun of the rationale behind the acquisition. With the diversification of RMW Burbank, “we created a global technology center to fuel our business worldwide,” That business includes the iLab postproduction and vfx house in London and a new 2D-to-3D conversion facility in Mumbai, launched in May, that is handling Lionsgate’s “Conan the Barbarian” remake and several other major studio films due for release this year.

According to RMW Burbank COO Reid Burns, the recent emphasis on 3D is an evolutionary application of software originally developed for restorations, such as grain-removal tools.

“Using our proprietary processes to digitally remove the grain, increases the accuracy and expedites the rotoscoping, object separation and clean-plate paint work for 2D-to-3D conversions,” Burns says. “We have also developed automated fixes for the polarization issues prevalent in stereo capture today. When photographing images that may have windows, chrome or other reflective surfaces, polarization issues are a common problem that we have been fixing for a number of stereo productions. As an example, we have recently been working with DreamWorks on ‘Fright Night’ remedying these type of issues.”

RMW Burbank honed it 3D chops working with James Cameron on “Avatar” and, earlier, his 2003 documentary “Ghosts of the Abyss.” It recently completed a restoration on the helmer’s “Titanic” using an entirely 4K pipeline and it is now doing the same with his films “The Abyss” (1989) and “True Lies” (1994).

The facility has also been a frequent stop for director David Fincher, who made ample use of its proprietary noise management and image and detail enhancement tools on his last three films, “The Social Network,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” and “Zodiac.” He also used its software to enhance “Fight Club” and “Seven.”

In addition to solid relationships with top filmmakers, RMW Burbank is also well known for its so-called 9/11 services — repairing footage damaged by airport X-ray machines, streaky film processing or camera jitter.

Its 75-person staff also handles a small amount of vfx work, largely confined to rig, wire and object removal, leaving more complex CGI and compositing to sister facilities in India (where it employ approximately 1,200 digital artists), England and San Francisco. The latter, formerly Slash FX, collaborated with the Burbank unit on Relativity Media’s upcoming “Shark Night 3D.”

Burns thinks the biggest areas of future growth might be up-converting SD projects to HD, as the company has already done with the first three seasons of “The Simpsons” for Fox and a group of anime titles as part of a deal it has with Imagica Corp. in Japan.

“We’re talking to a lot of different libraries and content holders about getting much, much deeper there,” Burns says. “Some black-box solutions for that are OK, but we’re trying to do something that’s of higher quality.”

See the original post here: http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118035578

Film School Announces Collaboration with Leading Digital Effects Studio

[by Brenda Mills, Florida State Univ website]

Florida State and the Digital Domain Media Group are collaborating in the creation of a new facility, to include the Digital Domain Institute, and the development of a unique program that will result in new educational opportunities, high-tech research programs, high-paying jobs and an economic boost for the state of Florida. The City of West Palm Beach, including former Mayor Lois Frankel and City Commission President Kimberly Mitchell, played an integral role in this effort, providing land and funding to facilitate the development of the facility.

Representatives from the Digital Domain Media Group, comprised of multiple digital production companies, including the multi-Academy Award-winning Digital Domain (www.digitaldomain.com), Florida State University (www.fsu.edu) and the City of West Palm Beach unveiled the future site of the Digital Domain Institute in downtown West Palm Beach (401 Okeechobee Blvd.).

The presence of Digital Domain Media Group’s new headquarters in Port St. Lucie, as well as the Digital Domain Institute and an adjoining digital production studio in West Palm Beach, will lead to the creation of hundreds of high-paying jobs, as well as thousands of other jobs indirectly connected to Digital Domain Media Group operations. The establishment of a clean industry and state-of-the-art research programs yields the promise of even more economic growth for Florida.

“This agreement is an extraordinarily exciting development for the state of Florida and Florida State University,” said Florida State University President Eric J. Barron. “This pioneering public-private collaboration could be a model for universities nationwide in a time of budget shortfalls.”

For the Digital Domain Media Group, the decision to open a studio in Florida was an easy one, based on the unmatched quality of film-industry professionals produced by Florida State’s College of Motion Picture Arts (www.film.fsu.edu), and the support of the West Palm Beach community, said John Textor, Chairman of the Digital Domain Media Group.

“Florida State’s film school graduates are excellent storytellers, and story is the key to our business,” said Textor. “Floridians just now seem to be learning what leading filmmakers already know — that the quality of Florida State film school graduates’ creative work is among the very best in the country.”

The creation of a jointly operated Digital Domain Institute in West Palm Beach will provide rare opportunities for undergraduate students enrolled in Florida State’s College of Motion Picture Arts. The Digital Domain Institute will provide students with the opportunity to work side-by-side with top industry professionals and become “Digital Domain Certified” in an area of professional specialization of their choice.

The college will establish a new Bachelor of Fine Arts major specifically related to digital media production and a new digital media research center that will focus on industry-sponsored applied research. Students will have the opportunity to work side-by-side with industry professionals on high-profile media projects — and even to conduct research on cutting-edge technologies that have possible applications in the film industry and in other fields. Like the college’s innovative Torchlight Program (www.film.fsu.edu/Undergraduate-Programs/The-Torchlight-Program), this new venture will provide in-depth, real-world experiences that match the college’s unique curriculum.

“Imagine being a film student, and having the opportunity to work on a blockbuster film, likeTron: Legacy before graduation alongside top digital artists in the world,” Florida State College of Motion Picture Arts Dean Frank Patterson said. “These are the types of golden opportunities that educators like me absolutely dream about for their students.”

See the original post here: http://film.fsu.edu/FSU-Film-News/Top-Stories/Digital-Domain-Institute-to-be-developed-in-West-Palm-Beach

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3D conversion portion of Digital Domain has company growing rapidly

[By Alexi Howk, T C Palm]

Digital Domain Media Group‘s acquisition of In-Three Inc., a company that pioneered technology to convert flat two-dimensional live action films into 3D stereo imagery, is leading to an explosion in job growth.

That section of the company, now headquartered in Port St. Lucie, is the largest division with 151 employees, And that portion of the company alone is now expected to reach up to 500 jobs, surpassing the company’s goal of hiring 500 overall employees throughout the entire company by 2014.

Originally based in Agoura Hills, Calif., about 10 miles west of Los Angeles, 48 of In-Three’s 65 employees chose to relocate to Port St. Lucie when Digital Domain acquired the company last fall.

“As far as I’m concerned, it’s unprecedented that any company has been acquired and that many individuals would relocate 3,000 miles away, so it really showed how much the staff believed in carrying the vision of our company through,” said Jon Karafin, formerly In-Three’s vice president of production operations and now director of production operations at Digital Domain Media Group.

Digital Domain Media Group is the parent company of academy award-winning visual effects studio Digital Domain, which is based in Venice, Calif. Digital Domain Media Group was lured to Port St. Lucie in late 2009 by state and local officials with an incentive package worth nearly $70 million. In exchange, the company agreed to create up to 500 jobs with an average annual salary of $65,000 by 2014.

The goal this year was 90 jobs. However, with the acquisition of In-Three, the company has topped 243 employees so far this year.

The kind of work In-Three and the visual effects side of Digital Domain — which mainly focuses on 2D films — is doing is allowing the company to hire many entry level type positions for job seekers fresh out of college.

“That’s what has allowed us to hire so aggressively local people who we can train,” Digital Domain Media Group CEO John Textor said.

In-Three organized in 1999 to pioneer research and development in stereoscopic reconstruction of two dimensional images and patented a process calledDimensionalization, which makes it possible to convert two-dimensional films into high-quality 3D films. Digital Domain 3D is the new name of the 3D division. However, Karafin said the company owns the In-Three trademarks.

“So we really show that we were really the ones who started the industry,” he said. “There wasn’t any stereo 3D projection essentially when (In-Three was) first developing the technology.”

In-Three has done work on films including, Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland” and “G-Force.”

“What conversion allows you to do that 3D cameras cannot … the purists will say, ‘Oh, you’ve got to shoot it in 3D.’ Well, even the very best directors in the world get (that) this stuff is good. You can take a 10-year-old film like Star Wars and bring it back … in 3D,” Textor said. “The company we acquired owns the six original patents on this whole process.

“We’ve tested this out for all the major directors and producers,” Textor said. “That’s why they were so important to us. They were like the original scientists in space, you know freaky bright guys. “

The patents go back to the late 1990s when a lot of 3D wasn’t being used in films like it is today, Karafin said.

The 3D division is doing work on two Hollywood blockbusters set to be released this summer, and while the company can’t disclose the number of projects in the pipeline, “our capacity at this time is sold out, so there’s room for expansion,” Karafin said.

Because of confidentiality agreements with clients, the company is prohibited from revealing the details until the films are released.

“They will be huge films,” Karafin said, referring to the summer blockbusters.

He said the move to Florida has enabled the company to keep huge portions of its work in-house rather than outsourcing it overseas. He said costs in California are becoming too expensive, so the move to Florida made sense.

“We’re trying to bring industry back to Florida and populate out here,” he said. “The real estate prices are more reasonable, taxes are lower and there are a lot of incentives for any form of film and digital effects production.”

For Karafin, originally from the northeast, it was an easy move.

“Florida is a beautiful state so it wasn’t that difficult of a sell,” he said.

See the original post here: http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2011/apr/22/3d-conversion-portion-of-digital-domain-has/