Berkeley Breathed making his mark at Technicolor. (LA Times)
If I mention the name Technicolor what is the first thing that comes to mind? Chances are you’ll think of the company primarily known as a film processing lab and the world’s largest DVD replicator. Original content creation is probably not a concept most would associate with the company.
That may be changing soon, as Richard Verrier reported in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times. Technicolor has purchased the rights to “Pete & Pickles”, a children’s book by Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Berkeley Breathed with the intent of adapting it into an animated television series. The book focuses on the Mutt and Jeff friendship between a playful circus elephant and a prim-and-proper pig. Breathed is probably best known for his comic strips “Bloom County” and “Opus”.
Continuing the trend of sending animation and effects work overseas to India, most of the show’s production will be done in Bangalore, where Technicolor built a computer animation studio with partner Dreamworks Animation in 2007. Technicolor has since taken full control over the facility and renamed it Technicolor India. About two dozen artists will work in the United States on key frame drawings before the work is sent to India, where skilled labor is less expensive. The studio plans to have a staff of 1,200 by the end of the year working on projects for a range of clients, including Electronic Arts and Nickelodeon.
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Popularity: 9% [?]
With the demand for digital 3D films at an all time high, Technicolor has decided to jump into the fray with what they are calling an affordable, alternative solution that has stirred up intense debate. The leading motion picture service company is introducing the Technicolor 3D Solution, which will allow exhibitors to use their existing 35mm film projectors to project 3D releases without upgrading to more costly digital cinema equipment. And there’s the rub; rather than using digital content Technicolor’s solution is film based.
Even though the technology relies on celluloid, rather than bits and bytes, Ahmad Ouri, Technicolor’s Head of Strategy, Technology & Marketing, on Wednesday assured roughly 400 members of the industry that the technology was not old or steeped in the past. Sitting on a panel titled 3D’s Impact On Digital Deployment at the 3D Entertainment Summit in Los Angeles, Ouri explained, “It’s actually new technology that we’re introducing that’s perhaps based on an older concept. A lot of people have experienced 3D on film historically. We’re introducing a system that is basically an over/under film based solution that’s two-perf based on a format that Technicolor brought to market decades ago called Techniscope.”
Techniscope was first introduced in 1963 and used by the likes of spaghetti-western filmmaker Sergio Leone in an effort to find more economical ways to shoot. By halving the size of each film frame less film stock could be used, though the image quality was less than that of the four-perf (or four sprocket hole) format. Technicolor 3D Solution uses a special split lens that can be mounted to a conventional 35mm projector which then assembles the left eye and right eye images as the film runs through the projector. Read More »
Popularity: 34% [?]
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