Transfer networks help productivity
The work never stopped, Nelson sez
Wam!Net,a networking storage and hosting application service, provides dedicated phone lines at high bandwidths to companies that produce and distribute media-based content.
Created in 1995, Wam!Net enables visual effects supervisors to send digital dailies, CG imagery, graphics and sequences to companies across the globe in a matter of minutes.
Senior visual f/x supervisor John Nelson, who oversaw last year's Russell Crowe starrer "Gladiator," attests that because of Wam!Net, "the sun never set on 'Gladiator.'"
"Our editorial base was in L.A., as was Pacific Title, one of the effects houses we had employed," he says. "However, Mill Film in London was creating (the) bulk of our effects, so we were constantly transferring files back and forth, and because of the time difference, the work never stopped."
Wam!Net offers a number of options to customers, DreamWorks among them. The studio is working with Wam!Net on Ivan Reitman's sci-fi pic "Evolution." The film used the company's mobile film-editing facility, Wam!Van, during lensing on location in Arizona to send files to Tippett Studios in Berkeley, Calif.
But Wam!Net's signature service lies in Customer Point of Presence (C-POP) devices, which are placed inside customers' local and/or wide area networks, allowing connectivity to Wam!Net's global network. This infrastructure places Wam!Net at the center of its customers' media production processes, allowing the company to offer comprehensive support for their network services, data storage services, made-to-order desktop review stations, work flow applications, hosting needs, bandwidth and security requirements.
Such services allow studios and boutiques time to create, says Anne Wagner, Wam!Net's segment manager for broadcast and post-production.
"Creation is their talent," adds Wagner, "we allow them to do their work and we take the burden and complexity of technology off of them."
Newer to the transfer scene are NeTune and aerospace and defense technology company TRW, which in early January, ventured into the world of entertainment, launching its real-time transfer program, Picture PipeLine.
TRW has already tested Picture PipeLine through a partnership with Warner Bros., which holds a minority stake in the company. The studio used PipeLine to link the producers of "The Perfect Storm" with effects studio Industrial Light & Magic.
NeTune is lending its satellite network, dubbed ShowRunner, to Warner Bros. and Sony Imageworks for "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone."
The $25 million private satellite, which has assembled an array of leading high-tech and industry partners, including Hughes Electronics and Creative Artists Agency, uses advanced broadband wireless technologies at speeds of up to 45 megabytes per second to provide comprehensive communications and data-sharing capabilities.
"It is our mission to enhance work flow, but we also want to enhance the power of creative collaboration, says NeTune prexy and CEO Curtis Clark. "With the immediacy, filmmakers can pool more resources, and in the end a better film will exist."
For production on "Harry Potter," NeTune set up shop at a BBC encoding station near the film's London set. After the source material was encoded, Showrunner would send large files to Imageworks in L.A., Leavesden Studio in London and the "Potter" visual effects supervisor's London flat.
"For so long, we would see all of these small upstart companies offering us service, however, they all seemed to be fighting the same uphill battles of finance difficulties, says George Joblove, senior vice president of technology for Imageworks. "People would come to pitch service to us, but they would have nothing to back it up. Imagine the year was 1876 and Alexander Graham Bell was selling phones. Now, while it was a great idea, nobody knew if there would be someone on the other end. It was a risk. It's the same idea today with connectivity, but thankfully a few companies seem to have a handle on it."
