An international collaborative research project into online motion picture creative processes and technologies.

The motion picture industries, along with all other media and information sectors are involved in a period of technological change from an analogue to a completely digital domain. These changes are global, they will impact upon all aspects of content creation, production, distribution and education and training.

Despite some early difficulties digital HDTV will be introduced globally within the next two years. Internet2 will provide solutions to real-time quality of service issues permitting extensive fully interactive access to true video on demand. These changes amongst others will drive a transformation in the motion picture industry and its associated education and training sectors.

The demand for digital-media literacy and high quality creative content suited to the new media will escalate dramatically. Most current technical impediments to transnational collaboration in on-line production and distribution of content over data networks will dissipate. We are being confronted with a new information / entertainment paradigm.

Digital production infrastructure is relatively well established within some of the specialist sub-sectors of the motion picture industry (eg. computer animation/special effects, post-production). The understanding and acceptance of an integrated network of telecommunication links from script-to-screen is far less mature than in many of the allied manufacturing, software development and media industries.

The tools for collaborative production of time based interactive media by groups working at separate geographic locations are at an embryonic stage of development. Purpose-designed tools for the production of such media are effectively non-existent. Given the time scale of less than two years there is significant urgency to research and develop appropriate collaborative mechanisms and associated expertise with the prospect of significant financial gain.

The UCLA School of Theater Film and Television and the Australian Film Television and Radio School are amongst the world’s leading film and television schools. Monash University’s Centre for Telecommunications and Information Engineering in Australia and the UCLA Department of Electrical Engineering are also world leaders in the development of telecommunication systems upon which the paradigm shift is predicated. These groups have now agreed to bring their resources to bear in a partnership with others to conduct the research and capitalise on its outcomes.

This partnership is one of the outcomes and recommendations arising from the 1999 CILECT Conference at UCLA " Online distance learning for Film and Television Schools " ref: http://hypermedia.ucla.edu/cilect/

The conference recognised that the creators of most forms of audio-visual media will move to a digital domain within two years. This has been highlighted by the global introduction of digital HDTV and the dramatic increase in the use of digital techniques within traditional film and television production. The introduction of Internet2 will provide solutions to real-time quality of service issues permitting extensive fully interactive access to true interactive video on demand. The games industry has made significant advances in fully interactive time-based media in the form of Internet multiplayer games however these developments are taking place mainly outside the traditional film and television industry.

The film and television schools, as the principal providers of professional education programs, recognised that they need to dramatically accelerate the introduction of appropriate techniques into their teaching programs and extend the traditional studio-based models to collaborative production at a distance often across national boundaries. The schools also recognised that much of the research needed to support the new collaborative working paradigms had yet to be conducted and that they, with the essential support of leading edge engineering schools, need to take a leading role.

A core group has now offered to participate in an initial series of collaborative research activities and projects of mutual interest.

• School of Theatre Film and Television, UCLA. (Professor Robert Rosen)
• Department of Electrical Engineering, UCLA. (Professor Bill Kaiser)
• Australia Film Television and Radio School. (Director Rod Bishop)
• Department of Electrical & Computer Systems Engineering, Monash University, Australia. (Professor Greg Egan).

Over time, other institutions may join the initial core group or be invited to participate in trialing some of the projects. 

The history of the motion picture arts is one of continual evolving technology, the most recent being the utilisation of computers, digital media, interactivity and telecommunication networks.

For the purpose of the research the generic term "motion picture" has been used as an all inclusive embrace for a spectrum of genres, technologies and screen cultures spanning the photo-mechanical, electronic to the current digital age eg. film, cinema, television, video, animation, multimedia, interactive media, online media.

Education /training and research for the motion picture industries, has traditionally been undertaken in an arts practitioner mode (learning by doing). It is acknowledged that the education and training sector is able to make a significant contribution to industry and society in being an experimental research and development arena for both the art and technology.

Motion picture creation could be broadly divided into two historically distinct modes: animation (creation by synthesis) and live action (creation by replication). Whilst live action has been the dominant artistic and commercial mode of the motion picture industries, there is evidence to show that the animation sector has been the pioneering adopter of digitisation, telecommunications and new media applications.

In this respect there are benefits in assuring that any tests and projects which are developed take into account the complimentary and different modes of motion picture creation eg. animation, live action and interactive media.

A notable feature of the CILECT 99 Conference was the reaffirmation of the need for an equal and collaborative partnership between artist and scientist/engineer. Historically, the significant developments in the motion picture industries have evolved from these symbiotic relationships. It is apparent in the partnership that there are challenging areas of independent and overlapping R&D activities which can be pursued to the mutual benefit of all parties. One common area of particular interest is the development and utilisation of telecommunication networks for education and training, production, distribution and exhibition of motion picture media. For the artist creator this offers the opportunity to explore and define the artistic and communications assets of a new medium and for the scientist / engineer the opportunity to test and extend the boundaries of current telecommunications technologies in a new realm.

Engineers and scientists have considerable experience in international collaborations and in the use of telecommunications and computing to support these collaborations. Their experience, and techniques from other manufacturing, media information industries, will provide an important base for addressing the combination of issues associated with time-based audio visual media, interactivity and hi-fidelity audio/visual theatrical display environments including HDTV and meta information transmitted within broadcast material - datacasting. 

AFTRS is the national professional training institution for the film and broadcast industries. It is federally funded, highly resourced and conservatory in style. It offers Master of Arts (Hons), Master of Arts, Graduate Diplomas and Certificate courses. There are 100 full-time students and more than 4,000 participants in 170 short courses. The AFTRS is a national institution with representatives and offices in every state of Australia. The School’s film and television curriculum includes specialisations in Directing, Producing, Writing, Cinematography, Editing, Sound and

Design. There are streams in Drama, Documentary, Television, Digital Media and Screen Studies. The School is housed in a $20m purpose-built facility, housing equipment valued at $25m.

In 1996, the School established a Digital Training Facility with an Onyx Infinite Reality processor and Silicon Graphics High Impact work stations equipped with state-of-the-art software for digital visual effects and computer animation. File transfers between Sound and Editing post-production are enabled with a fibre optic network.

AFTRS was a foundation member of the Digital Docklands steering group, and with Monash University leads the initial CyberPort One trial.

The Centre for Telecommunications and Information Engineering has active research programs in most areas of telecommunications engineering. It hosts elements of two Australian Federal Government funded telecommunications research centres. Its research programs are driven by strong applications emphasis where it has wide experience in addressing diverse organisational telecommunication needs. Its R&D activities include the areas of:

• video coding;
• performance of heterogenous telecommunication systems;
• distributed AV servers;
• optical and wireless transmission;
• digital signal processing;
• telecommunications software engineering
• copyright and royalties.

As far back as 1993 its researchers investigated the use of AV servers for production with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Issues of time based media production involving geographically distributed production teams were part of that investigation. This work proved to be ahead of its time but led to the Swift wide area video on demand trial. Recently, in a return to the origins of the work, the Centre, with AFTRS and others, established the Digital Docklands initiative and CyberPort One. Current work includes issues related to the introduction of HDTV in Australia 1 Jan 2001.

The territory of the collaboration by its nature is largely unmapped and will evolve over time. It is proposed that a base framework could be the production sequence noting that there are distinctively different artistic/technical and management issues involved in each of these stages. These will provide a framework for focusing the research and the formation of research teams.

• Concept development: Research, script, and property development/acquisition.
• Pre-production: Project breakdown, budget, project management.
• Production: Audio-visual assets creation, acquisition.
• Post-production: Editing, testing, mastering.
• Publication, exhibition, distribution.

All documentation for the project will be maintained on secure WWW sites mirrored in the participating organisations.

It is proposed that the partnership build upon existing expertise and trials, progressively moving deeper into the production sequence as tools mature and telecommunications capacity becomes available.

The overall assumption is that several groups most often in different time zones will work collaboratively on elements of production content also scattered geographically and stored/viewed at various resolutions. This distributed environment is to be maintained in a consistent manner with all production steps/decisions being tracked and reversible.

The starting point for the research will be the development of an existing project "Cyberport One"(exploration of a Virtual Studio production of a joint project script to screen over a distributed network environment). This is a proof-of-concept demonstrator project to the industry designed to attract potential involvement and investment from government and the private sector.

It is proposed that "Cyberport Two" run in parallel with CyperPort One and that it be a development between UCLA School of Theater Film and Television and Australian Film Television and Radio School. CyberPort Two would test the technical feasibility of long-haul telecommunications networks between East Coast Australia and West Coast USA. At the same time, both projects will be used as proof of concept demonstrators towards the development of sponsored local USA/Aust industry and co-production trials between the two geographic centres.

CyberPort Three would commence late 1999 with three or more international sites. It is anticipated British National Film and Television School. (Director Stephen Bayly) would engage in appropriate elements of the above trials as a bridge to a significant involvement in Cyberport Three.