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Direct-to-Web Programming: New Surge?July 7th, 2011
Whoa! What’s Kiefer Sutherland doing at the top of the CRE blog? Has CRE “gone Hollywood”? Truth be told, CRE has been in Hollywood for a long time, if we define “Hollywood” as “the entertainment industry around L.A.” CRE Rentals’ high-end gear (like render farm rentals) and powerful computers (Macs and PCs with the right software) support media professionals from creation through production, post-production and distribution. That last one, distribution, is our subject today – specifically, the new surge of programs going “direct to Web.” The “old” days? The year 2000 may not seem like the “old” days, but in Tech Time it’s eons ago. The first “direct-to-Internet movie” debuted that year, a sci-fi story entitled The Quantum Project — it was filmed with a Panasonic DVCPRO50 digital camcorder and good special effects. When you discover that the movie didn’t stream, but had to be downloaded and watched in Windows Media Player, suddenly it does seem like 2000 was the Stone Age. Finally, a decade after that inauspicious start, the Web is showing signs of maturing into a first-rate distribution channel for original programming, especially since storage aids like Ethernet disk RAID rentals can make workloads shorter than what used to take days. So where’s Kiefer? Kiefer Sutherland and John Hurt star in the Web series, The Confession, on Hulu.com, comprising 10 seven-minute webisodes. Co-producer Chris Young of Digital Broadcasting Group says the show sets a high bar “for what is possible in original webisodic content” and is clearly aiming at “motion picture quality.” Young expects a “seismic shift in how content of this caliber is released” and believes that well-produced programs could attract audiences rivaling those “of a hit television series.” Talented pros of many kinds look to CRE for high-powered help, from our people and our equipment. Our AJA Io HD rentals are a great example of how to tackle a big project with Final Cut, for instance. It takes the same general kind of hardware and software to make a webisode as it does to make a movie – they are just delivered in different formats. Even if you want to compress and convert your production to MPEG-4 (mp4, h264) for watching on iPad Rentals, you still must create it at the highest possible resolution, then “repurpose” it for DVD, HDTV, traditional TV broadcast and so on. From audio visual rentals for your movie set to Xserve rentals for networking, CRE has you covered. If you know what you need, use the handy Quick Rental Quote form. Otherwise, call or e-mail an experienced Account Executive for help in blowing through that bottleneck or ramping up that new project. Digital Film: Art Meets TechnologyJuly 1st, 2010Those who lived (even better, worked) through the so-called paradigm shifts in desktop publishing (mid-1980s) and audio recording (through the 1990s) will recognize today’s “digital film revolution” talk. In the early and mid-1980s, when Apple’s LaserWriter teamed up with its Macintosh kin and Aldus Corporation’s PageMaker, some technology observers declared the new publishing model would put “freedom of the press into overdrive” and result in a real renaissance in publishing. It didn’t. In the 1990s, new digital technology put a recording studio in every teen rockers’ computer, but no Grammy Awards were snagged by any of these home recordists. Bottom line, there is no push-button solution. The changes that technology wrought in printing and recording took years to evolve into new workflows, as the technology was adopted and learned. It’s evolution, not revolution, that drives the creative arts. It is the same with digital filmmaking. Budding filmmakers must understand that just having the same high-tech tools as leading filmmakers doesn’t mean they can make Taxi Driver or Citizen Kane. Buying Apple’s Final Cut Pro doesn’t mean they are going to ace the post-production on that new TV pilot. To work at a professional level, one either has to put in the time to master these things, or get help with them. The reason the indie film industry is slowly but surely becoming an ongoing source of work for L.A. post-production houses is because smart indie filmmakers know when they need help, and are not ashamed to go get it. Getting the right technology tools
As novice filmmakers continue to learn the craft, many will also learn to do post-production, and some will even form new companies to offer their services. For start-up and even existing post-production facilities, the technology tools available and their evolution are essential in driving innovation in digital film making. CRE supports companies that, in turn, help a lot of up and coming filmmakers. By making everything from AJA Io HD rentals to fast iMac rentals available with a simple e-mail, phone call or Quick Rental Quote form, CRE enables post-production companies to take on work whenever it comes in. In no time at all, we can outfit you to get it all done – with PCs, Macs, Xserve RAID rentals, monitors and any other hardware you need, plus specialized software for your specialized work. Our #1 job is helping you get your jobs done! CRE Rentals, Your Co-Pilot During Pilot SeasonFebruary 23rd, 2010Those of you who read Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, not to mention all the specialty TV-biz newsletters, know that the last six weeks or so have seen a lot of action on the TV pilot front. ABC gave the greenlight to two dramas and a comedy in one day, with Fox, NBC and CBS spreading out their action over a bit more calendar space. Fact is, though, that the pilot season is in full swing, which means companies great and small will be doing title sequences, post-processing, digital effects and other work for the producers of the shows. CRE, of course, specializes in supporting the entertainment industry with the best computers and other high-tech equipment.
It was not that long ago that it took a room full of computing power to produce a single four-minute cartoon. Now there are independent films being created on single Macintoshes. Even the 17-inch iMac, for example, has a Core 2 Duo processor and a gigabyte of RAM, an unthinkably powerful combination that would have seemed otherworldly in the 2001 TV season (remember The Lone Gunmen?). It is muscular enough for audio/video chores and provides a potent platform for Adobe’s Creative Suite, too. Technology rentals for the entertainment industry Running hither and yon to meetings, day and night? If you take along one of the CRE laptop rentals, like the HP NX9010 with a 3GHz Pentium, you will power your way through them all. You will be in constant contact with its WiFi, and the 1GB of RAM will keep you multitasking with notes, video clips, audio addenda and everything else that is likely to come up. Staying put at your desk? Offload your extra work to your assistant or pilot-season temp, outfitted with an HP/Compaq D510, a desktop rentals star with a 2.4GHz Pentium 4. This rental package comes with a 17-inch LCD monitor, too. CRE covers you no matter what your production needs. From 30″ Apple Cinema Display rental for a big-screen work window, to powerful video and post solutions like the PowerMac G5 with Kona card rentals, we have it all. No matter what you have to do, we have the equipment to help you get it done, and everything arrives to you tested, double-checked and ready to rock, every time. Even more, we can provide the office equipment rentals to tie everything together – whether it’s an HP 4000N B&W laser printer or an all-in-one printer/fax/scanner. CRE has got you covered. Need some help configuring a system or figuring out a solution for your pilot season workload? Our Account Executives know what you need and have been helping entertainment industry professionals of all kinds for a long, long time. We know what you’re up against, and we know how to help. Contact us today, or fill out a Quick Rental Quote form if you already know what you need, and we will get on the job for you, right now. We do our best to help you do your best, which is the kind of win-win formula we like. Making Hit Movies With MacsSeptember 1st, 2009What we now know as Apple Final Cut Pro, now in version 7 while the Studio package is in version 2, was actually created by Macromedia. That’s the company that took over the venerable FreeHand vector drawing program way back when, and also brought Dreamweaver (née GoLive), Flash and a few other goodies along when Adobe absorbed them in 2005. Long story short, Macromedia brought a beta version of a program called KeyGrip to the National Association of Broadcasters convention in 1998 (NAB1998) but found no takers. In somewhat of a strategic move, Apple bought up the KeyGrip code and the team that birthed it, added Firewire and DV support, continued developing the product and released it at NAB1999 as Final Cut Pro (FCP). Meanwhile, its old code and low optimization took Adobe Premiere’s Mac market share steadily downward, to the point that Premiere Pro became a Windows-only product at about the turn of the millennium. Starting then, however, FCP began making serious inroads into the Hollywood movie scene, and by 2007 it had just about half (49%) of the domestic professional editing market, compared to 22% for Avid. It began with a teen flick Demonstrating the power and potential of a consumer (more like “prosumer”) product, the teen movie Rules of Attraction was edited on a beta release of FCP3 in 2001. This made the film’s director, Roger Avary, something of an unofficial spokesman for Apple’s editing software, which caused a few industry pros—editors, directors of photography, directors, producers—to take notice. The entertainment world as a whole then noticed, and FCP won an Emmy in 2002 for its “impact on the television industry.”
Gaining momentum still There is no doubt that FCP’s involvement in the production of the 2008 Brad Pitt hit, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, sent a powerful “get on board” message to filmmakers still undecided about the software. The movie led the year’s Oscar nominations with a baker’s dozen (13, remember?) and was noteworthy for the excellent look and seamless special effects. Renting CRE’s Mac Pro with FCP gets you the same power that brought a bucket of Oscar noms to this well-regarded film. Even before Benjamin Button, however, a long list of first-rate films attested to the growing power and popularity of Apple’s editing package (see Mac Movies List, below), including multiple Oscar-winner Cold Mountain, Clint Eastwood’s Letters from Iwo Jima and the Best Movie of 2008, No Country for Old Men. Big help for small films It’s not only big studios and bankable stars that benefit from the Mac’s creative muscle. Able Edwards, made in 2004 by director Graham Robertson and producer Steve Soderbergh, was shot on a small Hollywood green-screen stage in 15 days on a $30,000 budget. It was edited on a single PowerMac G4 with a mere 2GB of RAM, using FCP alongside Maya, QuickTime and Adobe Photoshop. Five years later, the iMacs that CRE rents have many times the power of that G4, so a low-cost rental can put you in the race for Oscar gold—assuming you have a great script, a talented cast and a distribution deal (YouTube may do in a pinch). As far as a “movie on a shoestring” story, there’s an even better one. Johnatan Caouette made his a 2003 documentary film, Tarnation, on an iMac for a final budget of $281. If you think that’s impressive, he didn’t even use FCP, he did it all with iMovie. Incredibly, the distributor spent over 1,400 times more (nearly $400,000) promoting the flick and bringing it to theaters. Caouette didn’t even have an external hard drive for storage, much less a RAID array like CRE rents, and dealt with iMovie’s limitations by producing 15 minutes of the film at a time. He would then dump each segment onto his Hi-8 tape master, delete it from the iMac and start up on the next piece. Where there’s a will, there’s a way—but where there’s a Mac, it’ll save the day. If you are thinking of giving Universal and Paramount some competition, and need a little extra post-production prowess, CRE is here with the right solutions. One of our specialties is supporting animators, editors and special effect pros in the entertainment industry, so contact us by filling out the CRE Quick Quote Rental Form , calling us toll-free at (877) 266-7725 or sending an e-mail for a quick, courteous and knowledgeable response. - – - – - – - – - - Major films edited with FCP: Black Snake Moan Hollywood Early Adopters Push the Digital EnvelopeAugust 25th, 2009Just about everyone except government bureaucrats has learned that decentralizing operations, facing stiff competition and staying up to speed with new technology makes you more efficient. Being more efficient in business, of course, leads to profitability, which translates to “staying in business.” CRE stays in business, of course, by helping other people get their own business done faster and better. Whether it’s setting you up with a Mackie 16 Channel mixer for your annual meeting, or producing that entire corporate event for you, we’re here with solutions. Hollywood, being a pretty cutthroat business environment, is always seeking the better, faster, more efficient and effective solutions. In fact, the town is a veritable living laboratory of experimentation and progress. From the biggest board rooms to the lowest-rent lofts, the entertainment industry is full of technology early adopters, “idea people” and non-stop dreamers leveraging the newest tech to make the latest Shrek. Plenty of production pros rent Kona-card video-editing workstations from CRE when they need some extra muscle for a big project, while marketing mavens use our Audience Response Systems for focus groups and film feedback. Below you will meet three people who are in the Movie Biz Tech Vanguard, which we would consider abbreviating MBTV except that Monsignor Bonner TV, a club at Monsignor Bonner High School in Drexel Hill, PA, already has that acronym. Anyway, let’s meet a few members of the Hollywood tech elite. Steven Soderbergh, Director Since dropping out of college and making sex, lies and videotape, Steven Soderbergh Kevin Tsujihara, President, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group No one used to think of the big, old-line film studios as being early adopters, but one studio has been out front in recognizing the huge upside of DVDs and other digital delights. It’s Warner Bros. Robert Rodriguez, Director Hollywood has really taken to Robert Rodriguez’s “new movie math.” For his first film in 1993, El Mariachi, he took $7,000, added a digital camera and came up with a total of over two million bucks in box office. Since then, he has made Desperado, the Spy Kids trilogy and Sin City, as well as the two-part Grindhouse with his pal, Quentin Tarantino. His cumulative box office over about 16 years totals $600 million or so. A real digital dynamo, Besides these high-profile professionals, there are thousands of artists, writers, designers, animators and even accountants using digital technology to keep the movie biz humming. If you’re an entertainment industry pro, and you need some extra processing power for your latest gig, complete the quick one-click rental quote form from CRE, call us toll-free at (877) 266-7725 or send an e-mail for a quick, comprehensive response. Computers in Film and Music ProductionMay 28th, 2009People’s need for entertainment – in the form of music and movies that are available via the Internet – is what has really driven the technological advances of the last 15 years or so. The public’s thirst for music, movies and the rest also drove the development of the tools used to create it all. The stop-motion monsters of the early 1960’s required months of labor-intensive work, and building the set for 1963′s Cleopatra rivaled the construction of a new housing development. Today, CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) would handle both assignments on a Macintosh or PC with a few powerful software programs. Music has changed, too The Macintosh was widely adopted by artists of all kinds immediately upon its introduction but PCs have closed much of that gap since. While a film editor could certainly run Apple’s Final Cut Pro or Sony’s Vegas on a MacBook or top PC laptop, most professionals want as much power as they can get. They also want a lot of screen real estate, too, so a fast PC or a Mac Pro rental is where it’s at for this work – especially with two or three 30″ Apple Cinema Display rentals or other big monitors to spread the work around. Since the processing demands of audio recording are somewhat less than that of film and video editing, it is now common for audio engineers to do both studio and field recording with a high-end PC laptop or a MacBook model. With a USB microphone, there’s no need for a USB audio interface, although it would provide input channels for electronic keyboards, electric guitars or additional microphones. Computers as instruments With software like Ableton Live and Serato Scratch, DJ’s have been mixing and mashing up music tracks for years now, on PCs and Macs alike. However, a properly outfitted desktop or laptop running Propellerhead Reason, Ableton Live or Digital Performer (the last is Mac-only) can take the stage with the band and bring a string section or trio of backup singers along. This is not a way to “lip sync” or play an unattended recorded part. Rather, someone has to “play” the computer at the appropriate times, key the correct patches and contribute like any other band member. It brings a new, exciting dimension to live music. CRE Rentals knows how to outfit computers for whatever needs to be done. In addition to making PCs and Macs available to businesses for accounting overflow, conferences or in-house graphic design projects, CRE Rentals puts creative power in the hands of entertainment industry professionals as well. Whatever you need to get done – creatively, innovatively and immediately – we’re ready with the right computer rental, the right software and the right deal. Give us a call, whatever kind of help you need. |
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has won awards while establishing himself as one of film’s frontline innovators. In 2005—eons ago in “tech time”—he shot 
Now that the DVD cash cow is drying up, Warner has chosen Kevin Tsujihara to lead it into the next Land of Milk and Money. Tsujihara was promoted in 2007 to head video on demand, wireless, online operations, games, antipiracy initiatives and other leading-edge matters. Now president of all home entertainment operations, Tsujihara is mixing it up big-time by using state-of-the-art in-house digital departments as well as small specialty firms like 
Rodriguez lives in Austin, TX, relies on broadband to stay in touch with creative folks around the country (including “the suits” in Tinseltown) and has helped convince Tarantino, once a “celluloid purist,” of the wonders of digital technology. Rodriguez is a known 
