Gudrun Heinze is senior VFX artist and Marc Anthony P. Barrette is IT director and senior systems administrator at Calibre Digital Pictures, a Toronto-based animation/FX house for film and TV production

Heinze is a NAB veteran. Barrette, on the other hand, is a newbie to the media technology show. Here, they discuss their respective plans of attack for NAB2003 from the creative and technical angles.

The vet…

Heinze: NAB is my annual chance to catch up with the technology trends and people involved in the visual effects world. As one of the artists at Calibre, my interest in attending NAB is to learn about the latest advancements in invisible workflow efficiency – basically, what technologies will speed up the creative process and allow us to create seamlessly realistic CGI.

Most of our projects are at HD resolution or 2K. These days we seldom see work at NTSC resolution, so we’re excited that we have HD I/O capability. Like most shops, we have a variety of software on different platforms, so I’m interested in all the applications we use and how they’ll perform for higher-resolution projects.

At the same time, as a user, I’ll be spending a lot of time looking at software demos. I love watching the demos. Seeing how other artists put together shots is invaluable, even if it’s on a different platform. No two compositors will approach a shot in exactly the same way, and you can learn so much through observation.

To NAB veterans this may sound cheesy, but I find the nightly Canadian Suite gatherings invaluable. Not enough credit goes to the sponsors. And it’s not about the free drinks, although that doesn’t hurt in creating a friendly and sharing atmosphere.

It’s about making new contacts, solidifying old ones and exchanging highlights and impressions of the show. Such conversations may lead you to revisit a certain booth to see a manufacturer’s new Sparks package, or maybe you missed this cool new software demo that will make rig removal a breeze. The following day you can follow up on the tips you gathered at the Canadian Suite.

You might not remember every detail about what you see on the exhibit floor, but you will remember the people. You will remember the demo artists you can call for advice or hire for advance training. You’ve taken the card of the post supervisor who’s an expert on HD, which will give you peace of mind the next time you’re working on a project together. You’ll meet the salesperson who can give you the best deal on software next time you can afford it.

Going to NAB will provide you with a network of industry colleagues you can depend on in the future.

The newbie…

Barrette: Unlike Gudrun, this will be my first time attending. I am excited to take in all that a show this size and scope has to offer – options, options and more options. We are always searching for hardware and software upgrades and alternatives to evolve with industry standards. How can we work faster and better? Basically, how can we be more efficient?

Since HD has become a common format for us to work in, we are left searching for ways to improve our infrastructure and pipeline, as well as our clients’ approval process. As we all know, warehousing massive datasets such as HD and film is not effective business.

My focus at NAB will be on storage, network and archiving. How do we effectively and cost-efficiently store data as large as this? The network always has a bottleneck among the artist, server, disk and application. Gigabit Ethernet is the way to go here. Finally, finding cost-efficient archiving that is robust, fast and doesn’t break the pocketbook per medium will be on my agenda.

With our international clientele continuing to expand, encoding, authoring and streaming for approvals and transferring materials always need to be improved. In the digital world, you can never be quicker than the latest trends. *

-www.calibredigital.com