Technicolor Buys On Premise Company The Room

Technicolor-PostWorks COO Rob DeMartin says that Ben Murray (shown here), founder of The Room, will assume duties as the company’s creative and technical lead, focusing on workflow design, training, talent management and recruiting.

Familiarity breeds – well, a new acquisition in this case. Technicolor-PostWorks New York announced that it has acquired The Room, the on-premise finishing studio that has been in-house for the past three years.

Technicolor-PostWorks COO Rob DeMartin, quoted in a press release, says that the buy will leverage the creative talent, 4K workflow and technology that have made The Room the “finishing facility of choice” for an increasing number of independent filmmakers as well as other content creators. Designed by architect Rafi Segal, The Room has handled clients working on independent features, long-form television and documentaries. Each of the three finishing suites includes an Autodesk Flame Premium workstation and 4K Christie projector.

The Room has a number of indie productions under its belt including St. Vincent, Her, The Giver, True Detective, Marco Polo, Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown,and Years of Living Dangerously.

Ben Murray, founder of The Room, takes up a new role as Vice President, Creative Services for Technicolor-PostWorks.

While PostWorks, a creative partnership from an earlier merger, posts and finishes top projects on a regular basis, Technicolor has shied away from offering creative finishing in the house. One reason? The prospect of competing with clients that offered their own finishing services.

So why change now? While the actual business reasons remain unclear, New York’s increasingly competitive market for post means that facilities need more reasons for productions to come in-house and stay, in this case, also accessing Technicolor’s worldwide distribution services.

About Dan Ochiva

New York City-based journalist and NYCPPNEWS founder Dan Ochiva writes and consults on film, video, and digital media technology.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.