From Post Production to the Cinema of the Future: Part One: Post Production

Early in 1992, the San Francisco SMPTE section meeting was held at Pacific Bell's Corporate Headquarters in San Ramon. The presentation was on the transmission of High Definition Television over the telephone network, and included a reenactment of the Golden State Warriors basketball game sent from the Oakland Coliseum, followed by a tour of Pacific Bell's Broadband Network Research Lab. Among those in attendance was Fred Meyers of Industrial Light & Magic, with whom it was decided to test this concept with a more practical application. This paper will describe with some detail how Advanced Broadcast Video Service was used in the making of Jurassic Park. — After the required regulatory approvals, a test network was built that connected ILM in San Rafael to Amblin Entertainment at Universal Studios in Southern California. Fiber optic terminals and digital video codecs were installed at each location and interconnected by digital facilities provided by Pacific Bell and Vyvx, a Williams Company. During the testing period, which lasted about nine months, a satellite link to Cracow was provided by San Francisco Satellite. This network enabled the daily review of work in progress remotely and kept the film on schedule. Enhancements developed by ILM dramatically improved the network's capability to provide interactivity between the director and the creative talent. — These technologies are now being made available to the entertainment industry as a whole, and this paper will include a discussion of how each of the production processes can take advantage of Advanced Broadcast Video Service by identifying applications, interface specifications, and hardware requirements. And finally, it provides a look into the future with a discussion of ongoing developments in Pacific Bell's labs of the next generation of film and video transmission capability.

Published

1994-02

Content type

Original Research

DOI

10.5594/M00863

ISBN

978-1-61482-921-8