• About
  • Archives
  • Advertising

NYCPPNEWS

NYC Production & Post News

  • Home
  • Directory Listings
    • The Standby Program
    • Brooklyn College
    • Brooklyn Workforce Innovations
    • Columbia University Film Program
    • Downtown Community Television Center
    • Electronic Arts Intermix
    • Film Biz Recycling
    • Freelancers Union
    • Independent Filmmaker Project
    • Manhattan Edit Workshop
    • Mediakite Training Center
    • New York Film Academy
    • New York Film/Video Council
    • New York Institute of Technology
    • New York Production Alliance
    • New York Video School
    • New York Women in Film & Television
    • NYU Film & Television
    • Post New York Alliance
    • The Independent Film School
    • International Film Institute of New York
    • The New School – Documentary Studies
    • The New School — MA in Media Studies
    • Union Docs
    • Upstate Independents
    • Syracuse Film Office
Home » HP Ups the Creative with Z Club

HP Ups the Creative with Z Club

HP decided its connection to creatives needed nurturing, and in new ways the company hasn’t tried before. Last week at annual Adobe Max, the company revealed just that, new plans and initiatives to better deliver their hardware to the world’s creative professionals.

At the conference, HP announced Z Club, a program to offer creative professionals better options to upgrade their studios. An initial group of 100 creatives will be selected. What do they get? Custom-built hardware and software bundles for photographers, video editors, graphic designers and other artists.

The bundle will be free of charge for three months. HP will then offer the hardware and services as a monthly subscription, the popular – and lucrative – approach that Adobe pioneered. For that monthly fee, the Z Club will provide the latest computer internals, pro-grade displays, printers and accessories with HP experts available to help members along the way.

Subscriptions for workstations – that sounds like a potential stress-free approach to putting your studio together. Those interested in more info about the Z Club can go here.

What about the gear?

So what has HP been up to with their re-badged Z by HP line of products? We’re talking about the ZBook mobiles, Z desktops and the award-winning HP DreamColor displays. As you might guess, updates are in store, with better processors and displays including the latest six-core Intel i9 processors which help to better handle heavy workloads such as video editing and 3D rendering.

More memory is also available, up to a massive 128 GB on some models. Meanwhile both the HP ZBook Studio (the thin and light workstation ultrabook), and the convertible HP ZBook Studio x360 (a great machine for digital inking and painting) have gained a boost in graphics performance with a speedy NVIDIA P2000 series card.

The HP ZBook Studio x360 is one of the most exciting and powerful convertible PCs available. If you are an artist who relies on digital painting and sculpting, you should definitely take a look at it. The Studio x360 features an optional anti-glare touchscreen which helps tone down glare in bright lighting conditions including sunshine outdoors. The display supports 100 percent of the Adobe RGB spectrum with 600 nits of brightness, 20 percent brighter than the Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch Retina display and 50 percent brighter than the Dell XPS UltraSharp 4K display.

Granted, a bright screen isn’t always the best when color grading, so you can pull that down. But the boost in brightness is what you want if, for example, you like to do a little editing when on a lit set or in the great outdoors.

 

HP ZBook Studio x360

 

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.

  • About
  • Archives
  • Advertising
Copyright © 2021 NYCPPNEWS | Site Built with Studio Press Genesis