On a recent Friday at the Back Bay Events Center, the First Annual Boston SuperMeet showcased the future of film post-production.
Hosted by the Final Cut Pro Users Group (FCPUG), the event was sponsored by some high profile brands in the filmmaking industry and showed off a wide array of impressive new technology. This was the first FCPUG event of its kind in Boston, but organizers hope to establish it as an annual event as they have done with similar events in other cities around the world.
Like trends in other tech industries, the new technology seen at the Boston SuperMeet indicates post-production is getting smaller and faster. Before the evening’s keynote speakers were introduced, a video played in the background, depicting someone in a country field with Edvard Grieg’s "Morning Mood" as a soundtrack. The video appeared to be professionally shot until the end when it was revealed that it was all done on the new iPhone 4 and revealed, joked the head of the FCPUG immediately afterward, "We’re all out of a job."
The event attracted some high profile speakers in film editing including crowd favorite Rodney Charters, the director of photography on “24.” He discussed shooting some his work on the series including high speed chases and making Los Angeles look like New York City through digital editing. Marc-Andr© Ferguson, a founder of the Final Cut Montreal User Group and Director of Technology at Montreal based production company Trio Orange, presented, Autodesk’s editing software, Smoke, along with Marc Hamaker from Autodesk. Their demonstration elicited gasps of amazement from the crowd of film students and professionals. Special effects that once took hours to process were done in seconds. While the cost of this program makes it impractical for personal use, Autodesk envisions it as something that will allow editors to immediately produce effects for overseeing directors and producers rather than waiting hours for them to render.
Boinx Software, a German based company, promoted BoinxTV, which they used to broadcast the event live on the Internet. The software allows one to make professional looking presentations with live footage in real time using its preset templates and transitions. As Boinx describes it, it "turns your Mac into a TV studio."
AV3 was showcasing its brand new plug-in for Non-Linear Editing systems, such as Final Cut or Avid, which search the hard drive phonetically for key audio rather than text. Because the program looks for phonetic sounds, the spelling does not have to be correct and it can find the exact location in video clips where the searched word or phrase was uttered. It could save time for filmmakers looking through hours of footage for specific scenes or takes, or at least for interns at “The Daily Show” and “Colbert Report.”
Also evident at the event was the growing demand for 3D productions in the film industry. Both Autodesk’s Smoke and EditShare’s Lightworks supported 3D video editing. While some products seemed to be marketed towards production companies (one was priced at over $15,000), most of the software and plug-ins were geared towards the growing DIY nature of film production. Editors have the tools to turn out professional quality work with a decent laptop and the new technology on display at the SuperMeet — or as the case may be not too long from now, with a smart phone.
