The Making-of 2014
Introduction
The chairman of the workshop, the German producer Martin Hagemann (Zero Fiction Film Gmbh) opened the event stressing the main differences and challenges for film professionals today vs. 5 years ago when the Digital Production Challenge programme was launched.
The film industry is now realising that the changes brought by the digital technology are huge ones: some jobs have disappeared, new ones are appearing. More important, those changes are not just a technical revolution interfering with our way of making and distributing films but they are a “disruptive innovation”, destroying the business field and business models (ex. Internet with the arrival of disruptive players: the flat rate channels).
This is the reason why, even if the DPC workshop is focused on technical challenges, it will also trigger larger discussions especially on the future for the films we produce in Europe and for us, professionals. It has become clear that the whole market of film business is over, the old system has to be quickly replaced by new business models, but which ones? And is there still a future for independent professionals (focus on producers)?
Before sharing experiences, opinions and visions on the future of the European film industry, the first two days of the workshop has combined different types of sessions especially designed to help professionals to get a better grasp of this complex environment and to acquire that shared language thus granting them full access to the decision chain.
The workshop opened in a very practical way giving the floor to 4 participants to pitch their projects in pre-production stage (or advanced development phase), expose the main challenges they face regarding the workflow, thus offering concrete material to the whole delegation to work on. The projects were then discussed in further details in group sessions, with final conclusions and recommendations given the last day.
Between the projects’ discussions on Days 1 and 3, there has been a series of sessions alternating:
- technical focuses by the French DoP Philippe Ros and the German Digital Image Supervisor Florian Rettich on the workflow skeleton or Decision Tree (including key words such as Compression, Colour Depth and Colour Sampling, CODEC, Bayer/Debayer, Sensors, Dematerialization, Bitrate, LUTs) and the most used digital cameras. Complementary expertise was regularly given by the two main post-production providers participating, Tommaso Vergallo (France) and Ruedi Schick / Swiss effects Film GmbH.
- case studies presentations on films (from low to high budget) recently completed, concretely illustrating key principles and challenges production and post-production professionals often have to deal with,
- presentations and panel discussions on key topics such as digital distribution and archiving today and in a near future.
Throughout the workshop, tutors stressed the importance of communication which triggered interactive discussions on the evolution of the roles played by the various key players of the chain, from producers, DoPs, post-production managers and providers to distributors and the appearance of new, key positions.
Digital technology is demanding since it keeps on changing (lack of standards) and quickly. Not a single professional can be a real Expert knowing not only all the specificities of existing cameras & other digital equipment, having tested all of them but also controlling 100% of the possible problems and challenges. We all learn by doing. Teamwork and sharing experiences have never so important than today!
The Making-of 2014
- General Presentation
- Introduction
- Technical Presentations [PDF] by P. Ros
- Case Studies
- Participants’ Projects
- Workflows of Participants’ Projects [PDF] by P. Ros
- The DCI Manufacturing Process and Digital Cinema Distribution
- New Models, New Perspectives
- Photo Gallery