WHY HOLLYWOOD JUST CAN’T WAIT TO BE CLOUD Ann-Marie Corvin wraps up some of the highlights from this year’s IBC Conference
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hile hot topics around OTT, AI and the growing dominance of Silicon Valley were in abundance, the biggest innovations at IBC this year were arguably to be found in the Auditorium. This year’s Big Screen strand ran throughout the entire Conference and the sessions offered delegates a glimpse into future production techniques and workflows that will set the bar for years to come. Employing a live-action film crew that can work virtually to set up and execute shots in an animated world is one example; a technique employed on Disney’s alldigital, astoundingly photorealistic The Lion King remake. In one keynote session the film’s cinematographer Caleb Deschanel and its VFX supervisor Rob Legato demonstrated how they used VR headsets to plan out their shots. “VR allows you to walk around the CG world like you would on a real set and put the camera where you want. You know where the light goes, you know where the
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camera goes, you know where the actors are,” Deschanel explained. “We were able to get some obscure points of view and tell a different story about the characters - and VR gave us that opportunity.” According to Legato, the film’s budget could have been much larger had the production gone to Africa to shoot and then composited CG characters into the shots. As a result he predicted that VR previsualisation would change how movies were made and scheduled while Deschanel argued that it would democratise the filmmaking process for a new generation of filmmakers. “A 25-year-old aspiring director will be able to practice a shoot at home virtually before sharing their vision with the world. This is where the next generation of talent will come from,” he predicted. HOLLYWOOD’S VISION FOR PRODUCTION IN 2030 In another Big Screen session, Hollywood studios’ tech bosses gathered to discuss a new whitepaper that is set to transform production workflows in an industry where massive increases in content production across multiple platforms is proving a real challenge. Michael Wise, CTO of Universal Pictures, argued that “faster production cycles and more rapid iterations”