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Home » Behind the Scenes at HP’s Ft. Collins Workstation Labs

Behind the Scenes at HP’s Ft. Collins Workstation Labs

In the business of full-on motion picture and television production and post production, it’s a workstation that allows you to get your work done. Why? That’s easy. Unlike laptops or a garden variety desktop, workstations are built to handle the punishment that is meted out twenty-four hours, seven days a week during intense production cycles.

Whether you’re working at a big studio like Dreamworks or ILM, or even in your busy home studio, robust workstations are specifically engineered with potent, leading edge technology such as dual liquid-cooled Xeon processors, hefty power supplies, gobs of RAM, massive RAIDs, potent GPUs and…well, you get the idea.

When it comes to workstations, HP is the market leader (read why in this article). You’ll find them in animation studios, color grading rooms and editing suites around the globe. I’ve been enthusiastic about their workstation products for years, finding them to offer more features for the money than competitors such as Apple and Dell. Others seem to agree (see this article about the HPZ820 RED Edition).

So when I received an invitation, along with several other journalists, to visit HP’s workstation headquarters in Fort Collins, Colorado, I jumped at the chance to see for myself just what goes into designing and defining their workstation products.

I packed my video camera, with a plan at first to shoot a little footage here and there to turn out a modest five minute video about the tour upon my return. Shortly after I got started on the HP campus, however, I felt a much longer piece was in order.

“How often do people get a chance to tour the design labs of one of America’s most important computer companies and witness how workstations are made?” I thought. NYC Production & Post News is all about production, I figured, so I might as well make a production out of it.

When I got back to New York, I laid out all the shots on the timeline in Adobe Premiere CS6, the NLE that I use most often these days, and set about editing. When I finished, at 50 minutes the result was more a mini-documentary than the simple tour I first imagined.

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” Arthur C. Clarke famously said. While HP won’t say it’s magic, come along on my tour of their Workstations Lab and you might be tempted to call it so. As I followed computers on a test course from a massive anechoic chamber that looks like the set of a science fiction movie to heating and freezing chambers to prototyping shops, I began to better understand why HP machines are among the most advanced workstations on the planet.

The movie begins with an in-depth look of HP’s entire workstation family of products from the innovative all-in-one Z1 workstation to the mother of all workstations, the extremely powerful Z820. Next is a little about HP’s history and philosophy, and finally comes the tour itself. So heat up some popcorn, grab a comfortable chair and watch my documentary “Behind the scenes at HP’s Workstation Labs”.

About Joe Herman

Joe Herman is a filmmaker, artist and post production specialist and writes often about the industry. You can reach him at joe[at]legendmultimedia[dot]com. Or reach and follow him on Twitter @JoeHermanTweets.

Community & Partner Links

How Sony’s New Virtual Sound Technology Can Change How We Hear Films

Kami Asgar and Jessica Parks are post-production heavyweights who work with major studios, namely Sony. As a sound designer (Asgar) and as a post executive (Parks), their collective resume touches on everything from Apocalypto to Grandma’s Boy to Venom.

Parks has recently shifted her focus from supervisor to hands-on sound design, and we talk about how it’s never too late to pivot on your career path and find the thing you love doing wherever you are in life.

Click on this link to read the rest of the article on No Film School’s site.

NJ – Governor Murphy signs $14B Incentive Program Bill – the NJ Economic Recovery Act of 2020

 Film tax credits — amending existing programs to include provisions for so-called New Jersey film partners and New Jersey film-lease partners and allowing an additional $200 million of tax credits annually over 13 years.

Click this link if you want to read the full article on the Lexology site. http://bit.ly/35NtDx6

Film Commish announces date for production restart

In her December 18, 2020 news update, MOME Commissioner Anne del Castillo announced that the Film Office is now accepting permit applications for production activity that begins on July 27th.

She also announced awards now (Awkwafina) and more. To read all of the Film Commish’s bloggy sort of news column, click here.

Stimulus Offers $15 Billion in Relief for Struggling Arts Venues

The coronavirus relief package that Congressional leaders agreed to this week includes grant money that many small proprietors described as a last hope for survival.

For the music venue owners, theater producers and cultural institutions that have suffered through the pandemic with no business, the coronavirus relief package that Congress passed on Monday night offers the prospect of aid at last.

To read the full article on The New York Times’ site, click here.

If you want to start production, here’s the latest news from the Mayor’s Office

Phase 4 production guidance is available on the Film Permit website. All production activity, whether it requires a Film Permit or not, must comply with New York Forward Industry Guidance.

For more information see, please refer to the State Department of Health’s Interim Guidance for Media Production During the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency. Please review the guidelines and FAQ before submitting permit applications. The Film Office is operating remotely, so please allow additional time for Film Permit processing.

The above paragraphs contain links to the various FAQ – just mouse over the relevant words.

Nikon to Stop Making Cameras in Japan

Nikon has fallen on hard times as of late as its camera sales have cratered, and now there’s a new indicator of how dire its financial situation is: the company is reportedly pulling the plug on making cameras in Japan after over 70 years of doing so.

To read the full article on Petapixel’s site, click here.

NVIDIA Uses AI to Slash Bandwidth on Video Calls

NVIDIA Research has invented a way to use AI to dramatically reduce video call bandwidth while simultaneously improving quality

What the researchers have achieved has remarkable results: by replacing the traditional h.264 video codec with a neural network, they have managed to reduce the required bandwidth for a video call by an order of magnitude. In one example, the required data rate fell from 97.28 KB/frame to a measly 0.1165 KB/frame – a reduction to 0.1% of required bandwidth.

To read the rest of this article on Petapixel, click this link.

 

 

 

Union Health Plan Dodges Film Workers’ Suit Over Virus Relief

Law360 (October 9, 2020, 5:22 PM EDT) — The Motion Picture Industry Health Plan’s board can’t be sued under ERISA for allegedly flouting its duties when it relaxed plan rules in response to COVID-19, a California federal judge has ruled, nixing a proposed class action filed by two cinematographers who still couldn’t qualify for benefits.

In an order entered Thursday, U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner granted the board of directors’ motion to dismiss Greg Endries and Dee Nichols’ Employee Retirement Income Security Act suit accusing board members of breaching their duty to treat all plan participants fairly.

Endries and Nichols, members of Local 600 of the International Cinematographers Guild, said in July that the board left them and others “out in the cold” in its attempts to address the problems COVID-19 caused for plan participants.

But Judge Klausner agreed with the board’s contention that the case, which alleged a fiduciary breach, should be tossed because plan administrators don’t act as fiduciaries when they amend health care plans.

Read the full article on the Law360 site by clicking here.

Russo Brothers Received Close to $50 Million From Saudi Bank

Anthony Russo and Joseph Russo photographed at the PMC Studio in Los Angeles for the Variety Playback Podcast.

The Russo brothers, directors of the all-time top grossing film “Avengers: Endgame,” quietly secured a roughly $50 million cash infusion for their production company AGBO from Saudi Arabia earlier this year, multiple sources tell Variety.

In a deal brokered and closed at the beginning of the pandemic, the Russos received the investment from an undisclosed Saudi bank in exchange for a minority stake in the brothers’ Los Angeles-based shop.

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