Tintin has been given the nod of approval by the Hollywood elite, taking out the Best Animated Feature Film award at the 2012 Golden Globes. The Steven Spielberg directed and Peter Jackson-produced film beat other animated features Rango, Puss In Boots and Cars 2 for the accolade during the ceremony in Hollywood.
Congratulations to Robert Sarkies, Vicky Pope and Tim White for this wonderful achievement. Robert Sarkies’ latest feature film, Two Little Boys, has been selected in competition at the prestigious Berlin International Film Festival, which will run for its 62nd year through February 9th – 19th this year.
The film will screen in the Generation section of the Festival and will be judged by two juries: a young person’s jury which awards the prestigious Crystal Bear to the best feature film in the programme, and an international expert jury which awards a cash prize to the best feature film in the programme. Two Little Boys is Sarkies’ third feature (Out of the Blue, Scarfies), and is based on the novel of the same name by brother Duncan Sarkies. The film was produced by Vicky Pope (Trouble is My Business, Choice Night, The Graffiti of Mr Tupaia) and Tim White (Out of the Blue, No. 2, The Boys are Back, Sleeping Beauty).
Kiwi short film, Lambs, has been selected to screen in competition at the 34th Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival - widely regarded as the world’s premiere short film event. Congratulations Sam and Tom.
Documentary maker Pietra Brettkelly’s film Maori Boy Genius will screen in February at the International Gala in Berlin Film Festival.
New Zealand national film body Film New Zealand and Park Road Post Production are joining forces to open an LA-based office.
From 2012 onwards Vicki Jackways, Head of Marketing at Park Road Post Production, will represent the joint operation in the US. Film New Zealand Chief Executive Gisella Carr says the initiative is part of a wider project by Film New Zealand to improve collaboration between separate parts of the New Zealand industry. General Manager of Park Road Cameron Harland explained: “We are delighted to be partnering with such a progressive organisation as Film New Zealand and grateful for the support of the industry as a whole. We look forward to delivering real benefit through a more focussed market push into the States.”
Park Road Post has been collaborating in a new chapter in the history of storytelling which has arrived with the launch of Booktrack, a New Zealand-born disruptive technology set to change the way people read and enjoy e-books forever.
The brainchild of New Zealand brothers Mark and Paul Cameron, Booktrack is a world-first technology that precisely matches music, sound effects and ambient audio to the text. No matter how fast or slow the reader, Booktrack keeps pace word-for-word, dramatically enhancing reader engagement.
Booktrack is backed by a management team who alongside the Cameron brothers, include some of the world’s leading investors and technology heavyweights. PayPal founder Peter Thiel joins global Kiwi thought-leaders, Derek Handley of The Hyperfactory and Mark D’Arcy, Facebook’s director of global creative solutions.
Three years in development, the first commercially available Booktrack application launches today around the world, fully integrated into James Frey’s ‘The Power of Six’ – the eagerly awaited sequel to ‘I am Number Four’.
Booktrack co-founder and CEO Paul Cameron said: “Until today, technology that can synchronise sound and music within an e-book did not exist – something almost as hard to imagine as a movie with no soundtrack. Around the world, millions of commuters and others read while listening to music that is disconnected or at odds with the book they are reading on their mobile devices. With Booktrack they have a complete movie-like sound experience that transforms their enjoyment of the text and which keeps perfect pace with both their reading speed and their imagination”.
Booktrack Chairman Derek Handley said on paper, initially the concept didn’t make sense, but 30 seconds into his first demonstration he knew it would change reading forever.
Through Derek Handley’s involvement major investment opportunities opened in the powerful shape of lead Booktrack investor, Peter Thiel.
“It’s always exciting to witness the creation of a new form of media,” said Peter Thiel. “Booktrack’s technology promises to captivate readers in a way that will seem intuitive in hindsight and compelling ever after”.
In collaboration with HarperCollins, SonyATV, Park Road Post Production (the Wellington-based feature film post-production facility), the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and leading composers, Booktrack brings together the publishing and music industries to produce the future of reading – soundtracks for books.
Park Road, under the direction of Head of Sound John Neill, produced the first commercially available Booktrack, including 70 originally scored music pieces for ‘The Power of Six’. General Manager Cameron Harland says work on Booktrack compilations requires a similar skill set to mixing sound for some of the world’s leading films.
Booktrack has received financial support from the Government of New Zealand’s Ministry of Science and Innovation, and New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (NZTE), the Government’s national economic development agency.
Booktrack editions can be downloaded from the Apple App store with access for Android users available later this year. As well as ‘The Power of Six’, classics including Sher# LOCK Holmes, The Ugly Duckling, Pride and Prejudice, Romeo and Juliet and others will be available. Further information is available at http://www.booktrack.com.
Paul and Mark Cameron and Derek Handley join other investors to launch Booktrack in New York on August 24th at an event attended by hundreds of illuminati from the literary and musical world.
Content Sourced from scoop.co.nz
After a world-wide search, a large part of The White Shadow (1923), thought to be the earliest surviving feature by Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1990), the celebrated master of suspense has been found in New Zealand - just in time for the filmmaker’s 112th birthday.
A wild, atmospheric melodrama starring Betty Compson in a dual role as twin sisters, one angelic and the other “without a soul,” the lost film turned up among the cache of unidentified American nitrate prints safeguarded for the last 23 years by the New Zealand Film Archive. So far, only the first three reels of the six-reel feature have been found; no other copy is known to exist.
The White Shadow was among the many silent-era movies salvaged by New Zealand projectionist and collector Jack Murtagh. After his death in 1989, the highly flammable nitrate prints were sent to the Film Archive for safekeeping by Tony Osborne, the collector’s grandson. The Hitchcock film is just one of the treasures uncovered, including John Ford’s Upstream, which owe their survival to Murtagh’s passion for early cinema. Reflecting on his grandfather’s passion Tony Osborne says, “From boyhood, my grandfather was an avid collector– be it films, stamps, coins or whatever. He was known, internationally, as having one of the largest collection of cigarette cards and people would travel from all over the world to view his collection. Some would view him as rather eccentric. He would be quietly amused by all the attention now generated by these important film discoveries.”
Like Upstream, the surviving reels of Hitchcock’s The White Shadow will be preserved at Park Road Post Production in Wellington. Black and white duplicate negatives will be struck from the original nitrate material and colour prints made which will replicate the tints used in the original print. “It’s exciting to work on the preservation of yet another historically significant film here at Park Road and we feel privileged to be involved in such an important project”, says Head of Laboratory, Brian Scadden.
“This is one of the most significant developments in memory for scholars, critics, and admirers of Hitchcock’s extraordinary body of work,” said David Sterritt, Chairman of the National Society of Film Critics and author of The Films of Alfred Hitchcock. “At just 24 years old, Alfred Hitchcock wrote the film’s scenario, designed the sets, edited the footage, and served as assistant director to Graham Cutts, whose professional jealousy toward the gifted upstart made the job all the more challenging. Hitchcock’s own directorial debut came only two years later. These first three reels of The White Shadow—more than half the film—offer a priceless opportunity to study his visual and narrative ideas when they were first taking shape.”
In addtion to the preservation work on The White Shadow and Upstream carried out in New Zealand, many other titles for preservation have been identified amongst the latest find. They include the early Technicolor film The Love Charm (1928), early narratives from pioneering woman directors Muriel Ostriche and Alice Guy, a 1920 dance demonstration by ballerina-choreographer Albertina Rasch, a tantalizing fragment from the Keystone Kops’ lost slapstick comedy In the Clutches of the Gang (1914), and a number of other shorts and newsreel stories long unavailable in the United States.
The ‘lost’ films will be preserved over the next three years in partnership with the US National Film Preservation Foundation, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, George Eastman House, the Library of Congress, the Museum of Modern Art and UCLA Film & Television Archive and made available in the United States.
Copies of the films will also be publicly available in New Zealand. Many will be viewable on the NFPF Web site. Plans for a re-premiere screening will be announced soon. An additional print of The White Shadow will be presented to the British Film Institute in honor of its Hitchcock rescue project.
The New Zealand Film Archive / Ngā Kaitiaki O Ngā Taonga Whitiāhua (http://www.filmarchive.org.nz), which this year celebrates its 30th birthday, preserves and protects New Zealand’s moving image history, housing over 150,000 titles spanning feature films, documentaries, short films, home movies, newsreels, TV programmes and advertisements.
The National Film Preservation Foundation (http://www.filmpreservation.org) is the nonprofit charitable affiliate of the National Film Preservation Board of the Library of Congress. Since starting operations in 1997, the NFPF has helped save more than 1,810 films at archives, libraries, and museums from all 50 states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia.
Mistika plays a central role for 3D film production workflows at Park Road.
With production now in motion on Peter Jackson’s two film adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, SGO is delighted to confirm that Oscar award-winning New Zealand-based facility, Park Road Post Production has selected Mistika for the majority of Stereo and DI work for the production and post production workflows of the feature film. Mistika now forms the nucleus of Park Road’s stereo 3D infrastructure, placing Mistika at the heart of their stereo 3D workflow.
Owing to Mistika’s open and configurable architecture, real-time capability, advanced toolsets and workflows, Mistika now plays an integral role throughout the entire stereo 3D production pipeline at Park Road, including producing dailies rushes for editorial, finishing and grading.
Mistika plays a major role in the workflow process of all Park Road stereoscopic work, including rushes preparation, stereo adjustment, colour grading and EDL conforms for screening. Mistika Operator based at Park Road, Francisco Cubas said: “This is such an exciting time, Park Road is an amazing facility and we are working on one of the most important motion pictures being filmed right now in the world, and Mistika and SGO are part of it.”
Park Road Post Production, which recently purchased an additional four SGO Mistika 4K systems earlier this year, including a Mistika Software License Agreement for the Weta Group, has enhanced its existing Mistika-centric stereoscopic 3D production pipeline to meet the high demands for this high-profile feature film project in stereo 3D. The facility currently hosts a total number of six powerful Mistika 4K workstations. Weta Digital who have taken on the visual effects for both films, also have a Mistika workstation.
Dave Hollingsworth, Head of Picture at Park Road says “We had some very specific and extremely difficult challenges to overcome leading up to the beginning of The Hobbit principal photography. After seeing the Mistika last year and hearing about SGO and the development team, we decided to go down a path of using the Mistika as the hub for our new digital rushes workflow. There was no other system that could deal with turning around stereoscopic Red Epic high frame rate material in the timeframe and with the quality that we needed. Working very closely with SGO along side developing our own proprietary software we have achieved something that is quite incredible and beyond cutting edge. SGO has been amazing, it has been a true collaboration, and it is only just the beginning!”
Director of SGO Global Sales & Operations, Geoff Mills concludes: “SGO is totally committed to providing great technology; and in turn, great technology stems from great partnerships, which defines the very close relationship we have with Park Road. We are dedicated in supporting Park Road’s industry-leading projects, not only now, but for the years to come.”
About SGO. SGO is a leading European developer of high-end solutions for the post production and broadcast industries and has been distributing and providing system integration and developing solutions for the film and media industries since 1993. Mistika, SGO’s high-end post production system offers a complete solution and industry-leading performance for post production across all genres from advertising, film and TV productions. Customers include Park Road Post Production, BSkyB, Framestore, Preditors, On Sight, Chroma Film & TV Hamburg, BTV, ATM, Mighty Horn, Videomedia, Molinare Madrid, Infinia, El Colorado, Thomson Technicolor Madrid, Real Madrid Televisión, PICTORION das werk GmbH and OPTIX Post Production Inc., amongst many others. http://www.sgo.es
About Mistika. Mistika is a flexible high end post production system capable of SD, HD, 2K, 4K, 5K and stereoscopic 3D with real-time RED camera and other native data workflows including ARRI. It seamlessly integrates timeline-based editing, conforming, infinite-layer compositing, colour grading and image restoration all in one complete system with various tool-sets working together in the timeline.