Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/26447
Technology ■ ■ ■ ■ Clark would open the QuickTime in Australia. Okun would open the same fi le in Los Angeles. And, they’d talk on the phone. “I’d say, ‘Go to frame 100,’ ” Clark says, “and then, ‘Do you see the yellow blotch to the right? Make it a little more red.’ ” It quickly became clear that having a nice chat about the image wasn’t enough. “We’re in south Australia, so it’s very challenging to compete,” Clark says. “Having a con- versation on the phone is fi ne, but we needed to show our work in progress and take quality feedback to our clients. If you’re having a creative collaboration, you need to see a common image and refer to it. You want to point to it.” T e studio’s research group had already created a color management tool that allowed people in their offi ces in Sydney and Adelaide to share a fi lm recorder. Similarly, the fi rst implementation of the tool that would become CineSync helped artists communicating only between those two offi ces. “T e fi rst versions were no more than a QuickTime player,” Clark says. “T ey went backward and forward and stayed in sync, and you had the ability to point. It was so simple an idea, but so eff ective.” When shots for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire landed at Rising Sun, the studio shared CineSync with overall visual eff ects supervisor Jim Mitchell. “After a couple sessions, he asked if he could use it with other people,” Clark says. “So we changed it to use it with another com- pany. T en other people started asking if they could use it or buy it for another show, and it started to fl ow out.” Artists working in studios around the globe can collaborate by pointing to and annotating synchronized images using Rising Sun’s CineSync software. doesn’t make us rich,” he says. “We’re a small company, and it isn’t our main focus, but a key tool. It enables us to do our job. It’s important for Rising Sun Pictures, as a vendor of visual eff ects work, to compete from Australia.” And, unless someone were to infuse the company with capital to exploit other markets, it’s likely that Rising Sun will keep CineSync focused on visual eff ects. T at’s fi ne with Clark, who’ll settle for fame, not fortune, in this case. “T is is an enormous honor,” Clark says of the SciTech award. “It’s Although some studios had also created their own remote previewing systems, CineSync became the fi rst system available for sale in the market. And as the Internet became more pervasive and faster, CineSync grew with it. “We had one user, then two, three, 10,” Clark says. “We have over 100 licenses now. Each of those can have four accounts, and each of those can have 25 users. It’s all around the world. I feel that CineSync has been an enabler to the global visual eff ects world, for better or worse.” In fact, so many studios use the program that it’s become a verb. T ese days, people use it not only to communicate between studios halfway around the world, but also to share fi les with those a few blocks away. “We’re fi nding that more and more people CineSync across town,” Clark says. “T ey might be in Bur- bank and need to talk with someone in Santa Monica at 4:00 in the afternoon during rush hour.” Clark has even reviewed shots using his laptop and cell phone from airport lounges. “It’s not optimal, but it works,” he says. He envisions a time when people sharing visual information in areas other than visual eff ects— mining, oil exploration, medical imaging, edu- cation, and so forth—begin using the system. But, that isn’t a main goal at Rising Sun. Rising Sun Research, the group respon- sible for CineSync, runs autonomously from Rising Sun Pictures. Clark says they make enough money from software sales to sustain their own development team and to move the research forward. “It Rising Sun founder Tony Clark, at right, and colleagues Alan Rogers, Neil Wilson, and Rory McGregor received a Technical Achievement Award for developing CineSync. really as good as it gets to have devised something like this, create something ubiquitous in the industry, and be recognized for it. It’s the best thing that’s happened to me in a long time.” Facial Animation Scientifi c and Engineering Award (Academy Plaque) to Dr. Mark Sagar “for his early and continuing development of infl uential facial motion retargeting solutions.” T is is Sagar’s second SciTech award. Last year he received a Scientifi c and Engineering Award with Paul Debevec, Tim Hawkins, and John Monos for the design and engineering of the Light Stage capture device and the image-based facial rendering system developed for character relighting in motion pictures. Mark Sagar moved into the world of visual eff ects and animation from bioengineering; he received his PhD in bioengineering from the University of Auckland (New Zea- land), followed by postdoctorate research at MIT from 1996–1997. “I was working in surgical simulation when some businessmen asked me to apply the technology for faces I’d been working on to vir- tual actors,” he says. “T at’s how I ended up in Hollywood.” From 1997–2000, Sagar was co-director of R&D for Pacifi c Title/Mirage, which focused on virtual actors, and held the same title at LifeFX from 2000–2001, a company that attempted to move the technology onto the Internet. T en, the stock market bubble burst, and Sagar found himself looking for work with an amazing resume in hand: He had directed the astounding short fi lm “T e Jester,” star- ring an animated photorealistic face, that January/February 2011 19