[MAC] Sobre Anillos e iPods....

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http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/columns/tech_reporter_display.jsp? 
vnu_content_id=2077623

'Rings' digital dailies circled globe via iPod

By Sheigh Crabtree


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Jim Rygiel
Fans of "The Lord of the Rings" films know him as Frodo Baggins, but in 
plain technical terms, the cutest hobbit ever to shuffle onto the 
screen, in the guise of actor Elijah Wood, was essentially a storage 
transfer medium.

Compact, sweet by design and capable of delivering precious goods to 
far-flung destinations, Frodo is to Middle Earth what Apple's iPod is 
to modern-day digital media. Just as Frodo exists basically to 
transport that precious ring to where it needs to go, "Rings" master 
Peter Jackson found a way to make Apple's iPod all about helping him 
get his digital dailies where they need to go, namely halfway around 
the world.

During the making of the "Rings" trilogy, Jackson and his Wellington, 
New Zealand-based Weta Digital crew upped the ante on Apple's 
innovative iPod storage technology, using it for a few rigorous 
filmmaking sessions during production on "The Two Towers" and "The 
Return of the King," the latter of which collected 11 Oscar noms 
Tuesday.

The Weta wizards set up a review and approval system for remote digital 
dailies centered around iPods that spanned the globe from New Zealand 
to London.

For two months on each of the films, Jackson was stationed in the 
United Kingdom overseeing composer Howard Shore's scoring sessions. And 
during "Towers" and "King," Jackson also maintained a videoconferencing 
line to Weta so that he could spend about two hours a day reviewing the 
movie's progress in absentia.

Jim Rygiel, a two-time Oscar winner and visual effects supervisor who 
picked up his third Oscar nom Tuesday, says Weta's cyber Tolkien Trail 
was seeded by a dedicated server, safely isolated from Weta's intranet 
and connected to a secure outside line.

Media was transferred from Weta to Pinewood Studios in London. There, 
Jackson's 30-gig iPod was ready and waiting to upload Weta's daily 
fresh-baked shots and sequences. His iPod was then delivered via 
sneaker net to his home a few minutes away from Pinewood.

Jackson then viewed those 1K-resolution QuickTime files on an Apple 
Cinema Display, tied to his G4 laptop, which drew directly from his 
iPod. The director's setup was mirrored in New Zealand, so Rygiel and 
crew could step through shots with the help of their iPods, with 
Jackson's guidance piped in over a videoconferencing system. During the 
course of two movies and four months, "Rings" iPods stored and served 
up nearly one-half terabyte of digitized footage from "Towers" and 
"King."

In effect, digital crews used Apple's iPod as a modern-day "Rings" 
bearer. But in their case, "precious" was actually layer upon layer of 
visual effects passes, matte paintings, miniatures and raw footage from 
the Pelanor battle sequence pulled directly from a video tap.

"What the iPod gave us, since we were in such a high-speed mode at that 
time, was just a real quick turnaround," Rygiel says. "We could show 
Peter many, many iterations and get shots to the point where we're 
99.9% sure that when we put it on film, it was going to be final." (The 
final film prints took two days on average to wend their way to Jackson 
via air courier.)

Rygiel says the only thing he'd change about the setup is the $15,000 
videoconferencing system. While they were in the midst of "King," Apple 
introduced iSight, a tiny and fast videoconferencing camera with a 
microphone.

"These iSight cameras are 150 bucks," Rygiel said. "Next time -- well, 
there is no next time. ... But if we could have, we would have used 
iSight too."



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