Apple Talk
Have you seen Apple’s new store in Regent Street? I suggest you run by if you have half a mind to. You could walk too, it all depends upon how much you ate at Christmas.

Anyway, it’s very Apple and very impressive. More than that, we were delighted to be invited to do a talk there on December 9th 2004. For our chosen topic we went through our “Roogalator” pop promo that was completed using FCP in HD in our suites.

Phil is pictured here doing his stand up comedy routine whilst verbalising on HD. Tricky balance to strike between over-techiness and involving the masses, we could not rely on everybody understanding SD let alone HD (just in case, SD: Standard Definition HD: Higher Definition VD: Vertical definition PE: Physical exercise LE: Laxative emission)

As part of the promo was a SHAKE composition so we brought our good friend Diego in to cover the beauties of using Shake and incorporating it into an FCP timeline.

You should have seen the faces of the audience when he casually ambled through his Shake session tree (Flow diagram of how the visual FX were made).

It went well, they have invited us back and next time we shall bring T-Shirts made with Pogo Films logos, Give away I-Pods, Pencil tops, Pogo sandals and corporate embossed live goldfish.
Not

So long, Aaron and Ta!
After a splendid few months interned with us, Aaron has made a reluctant trip back to his homeland, North America, The big town with the old green church, three houses down on the left, small blue door beside the blind juggler.

A great help all round and a ready source of cheer and fresh things. This is Aaron doing his impression of Benny from Crossroads. If you don't understand then click http://www.crossroadsappreciationsociety.co.uk/paulhenry.htm and see Benny at frame right.

We miss you Aaron and wish you all the best!

IBC 2004
It is September. This means all of the little TV People come out of their darkened rooms and huddle together... in one BIG dark room.
They mill around and chat at displays and stands. Poke at new toys with LEDs and fidget in their be socked sandals (I’m not joking, they were there. As were the once obligatory colour bar T-Shirts).

So of course, Pogo Films went. Here we are, Paul, Myself, Diego and Oli popping his head in! Our intention was two fold. Firstly, to go shopping for HD equipment. Secondly, to marvel at the High Definition display of our Promo, as detailed below.

Our shopping list expanded. We now look set to be bringing in a Courtyard SPG, Kona II HD card, New raid, XSAN network controller and a decent TV for our client lounge. Also, some more medication for late night stress and some gloss paint for around the bin.

The screening of the promo was a hit. The definition and colour was superb and alongside the BBC footage was, in our opinion, the best HD material being shown. In discussion with SONY and JVC, it seems that we shall soon be exploring a new project that tests Sony’s HD format with FCP. Watch this space.

Free drink? Not enough. What happened to all of those great big parties of old? Is our industry so down-trodden that we can't expect some star spectacled extravaganza with copious drink and nosh? In the end, we settled for listening to Apples new announcements on XSAN and product integration to get to the free stuff.

Diego (our vfx man) and Oli and myself, finally feasted on anything that was motionless. This of course excluded the wine that was highly mobile and carried by fast moving waiters. Not fast enough for us, though! However, notice the fast moving waitress escaping Oli's attention in the photo. Our only solace is that she was carrying juice not hard liquor.

So, all in all, a success. Another large shopping list for our transition to HD and also a great screening of the promo. HD and expansion, here we come!

HD Rocks
Click on images to see HD original sizes!

As one of soho’s rare FCP companies running FCP HD online, we began to get enquiries for HD projects. These needed responsible and realistic replies and so we went searching for hard facts. The two super-formats of 1080 and 720 are so smattered with frame rates and conformity issues it proved an impossible task to supply responsible quotes. Panasonic and Sony have created two market present formats and the suppliers are building what they can, but being so new made finding sympathy between format, hardware and not being in the US, difficult. We felt uneasy taking advice when each phone call would garner a different answer or a twist on another truth. What was practical HD?

It was time to make a problem into an opportunity and we decided to take on board a test project. With great help and patience from Apple, Hamlet, Optex, Panasonic, Polar Graphics and our fab resellers 1080Pro we undertook a music video supplied by @radical.media called “Sweet Dreams Baby” from Fast Lane Roogalator. Directed by the unforgettable Johnny Shahnazarian.

We were provided with a Panasonic 1200 HD deck and monitor to capture plentiful rushes and used a Kona 1 HD card. Johnny was keen to test Optex’s Panasonic Varicam to the limit with with some varispeed footage so we also took advantage of the Fame Rate converter that Panaconic build. The capturing procedure was at full online res. Why? Because we wanted to!

Soon the Medea drive was groaning with nearly 2Tb of media and the process was underway. Mixes and simple transitions have to be rendered on the timeline as the data movements are colossal and occasionally, a simple offline version was trialed before re-rendering at full res. Effects and grading were handled on Shake and Combustion in our other suite. Gary Tobyn and Diego Vasquez, our Editor and FX man respectively were working like a charm between the two suites. It was a very impressive sight to see footage flip between the two rooms and see the project appear in beautiful HD before our eyes.

Delivery was always going to be on D5 and Panasonic provided us with their top flight D5 deck to master onto. The last few masters were made to Digi-beta in both Full Height Anamorphic and letterboxed versions. All through Final Cut Pro.

To say that the whole process was easy would be a terrible lie. Our choice of format was happily Panasonic as the camera can really provide great shots, but not being able to use firewire and the native codec was a pain. The file sizes are much smaller and we could have saved on time and rendering but it’s just not available in 25fps, at least, not yet!

En route, we also lost a drive in the XRaid to the mystery Pogo illness, which then went on to claim victims of one of our Apples, One TV, One dual channel SCSI card, One Medea Raid and a lot of sleep.

Fingers also proved a problem as we kept pressing the wrong buttons. Configuring one piece of kit with another and ensuring that the right type of HD was moving around the place was hard. The varispeed footage is fantastic but keeping a close eye on the set up of the Frame Rate Converter is essential.

FCP performed generally well but as all things seem still so much in their infancy, there were a lot of hard resets taking place and much fiddling with the Audio visual set ups. Particularly important is the need for a tri-level HD sync pulse generator. And coffee, lots of coffee.

The whole job is done and looks very splendid. So much so it merited an IBC screening on the big digital screen on the Saturday. But my word, we have learned a lot. Principally that FCP HD hardware required is not totally robust yet and we await some imminent new boxes in September. We also await a 25Hz native codec for Apple FCP so we can edit at smaller file sizes.

Time is, of course, the one thing we could do with more of. No surprise there but HD does take more of it. SD is so taken for granted after all the years of development and deployment and we just don’t have that yet for HD. So allocating more time for just setting up is essential. We would have liked a further day or two to just play and test, not within a project’s post time though.

Resolution too is an area where we could have worked differently. We do no regret working at full online res’ all the way through, it made us work hard and learn. But for now, a return to traditional off lining with a conform seems essential especially with the lack of a useful codec to firewire around and the mad sizes of data storage needed. However, we do want to try some other systems and formats now and should hope that Sony will let us experiment too.

It’s a beautiful video and all are happy, especially us. But is it practical? – Phone us, we’ll let you know.

Paul joins Pogo
A big event happened on the 12th July. But also, Paul Schleicher joined us as our Marketing and Facilities Manager. He will be dealing with the running and marketing of the suites and also developing with us the future of the post side of Pogo Films Ltd.

Although he looks very much like a front cover of a dubious romance novel, underneath beats the furious heart of a postproduction professional. Educated in the hard streets of America and London, Paul is delighted to be chomping down on the gnarly world of Online FCP. Hence the expression.

...and just as a little tease, he is helping us boost our High Definition FCP ability through the development of our latest selection of HD Pop videos and features. So there!

Cannes 04
“We said we weren’t going to Cannes this year”

A good friend of mine came over to London to visit us and in a drink related discussion asked “How is Cannes? I’d really like to go and see it.” And after a few more drinks and myself doing my best to come up with an excuse not to go he said “I’ll invite you.” Next moment I’m at the Century Cannes sipping a nice cool pilsner with Finers Stephens and Innocent talking about our next Feature film projects.

[Phil: Century Cannes was the Century club’s bar they created off the Croisette. Don’t you know?! ]

After Pogo’s early learning experience in Cannes last year, I felt empowered to dip my toes and maybe walk out a bit into the sea of the market of films. The first noticeable difference is that you have to pay to get into the market and for that you get a large bag that doesn’t come with a free physio appointments and takes about a day to sieve through. The highlight of this portable library of film knowledge is the Cannes Market guide. It’s like “The Knowledge” and list all the buyers and sellers that are there as well as anybody else who has bought a market badge. Want a meeting? - Pick up the book, flick through and call or go by the stand, simple as that.

Of course since our last trip, there were a few old faces that I wanted to see. So off I went to Stand L7 M6 in the Riviera and there was John Neis looking in fine selling form. Of course as it was the end of the festival every body was more preoccupied in getting the last free drinks parties and taking down the stands.

After few other hectic hours running around trying to check out everything I had seen last year in the space of three days, I decided to step down a few gears and come up with a more sensible plan. So I went to see my friend Pandora who works at Icon. They had hired out an apartment along the Croisette which they had converted it into an office with a vista onto the bay. What a view! I stayed there chatting about the latest gossip of the festival, which shall remain with me. [Gee thanks!]

By then I had to think of evening activities and JM came up with a dinner at the Majestic with Aimee a producer from New York. So it was posh nosh (ahh the fond memories of pasta carbonara over some cheap Bordeaux in the van, not) By the end of that dinner my 3 am wake up call to catch my flight was having it’s toll on me and decided to find my bed.

Day 2, After a short but nice breakfast at the Carlton (I was not staying there!) I took JM to the market and showed him the inner workings of the film industry and loaded him up with the market bag. I took him to a market screening to see “Bad cop” -a Danish no budget film. It started well with a feeling of the series “Shield” but was let down with a complete lack of budget for the story they were trying to tell. But respect for having made a feature and taken it to Cannes!

Drinks at the Century Cannes and JM had a managed to get tickets to the American Foundation for Aids Research evening dinner. Of course, in London I had thought no point taking my black tie like last year, just takes up space. Was I kicking myself! All the stars were there from Tarantino (and girlfriend, Sophia), Sharon Stone etc etc. But JM tells me he had a good time - not listening! The only memories left of my evening was some petit majestic moments and walking back to my Hotel with the sun rising over the bay of Cannes.

[Phil: Truly moved by the romance of it, Oli'. Thanks!]

Day 3, Swore I’d never ever drink again, and found myself sipping dark French coffee in a cool dark spot somewhere in the back streets of Cannes. [Phil: Pervert!] Met up with Pandora with equal hangover and we decided the best thing for us was to see a movie. So off we went to see “Venus and Lily” in competition for new directors. 10 minutes in we were regretting our seating position there was no way out! So we suffered through a French arty film about two girls who accidentally meet each other and lust after boys. One openly and the other shyly and all told with a fixed camera. Did not enjoy that. By the end, it was time for my return to Blighty. As I sat there in Cannes airport watching private after private land and take off, I thought - What a great business we’re in. you fight tooth and nail for a film to be financed, produced and post produced and at each of those levels you sell, steal and rob to get it through to the finished product. Then you take your baby to Cannes and they treat it like it was some supermarket product. Couscous anybody?

PS: Thank you JM. If you're curious about Johannes, he's walking around the world right now!

Wowdy Webblers!
To launch our facilities to the Producing and editing world, we had a little shindig at the end of March. (What is a shindig?) Thank you to all those that came and helped us through fifty bottles of bubbly.

There are more to come as we busily publicize and expand our network of Producers and editors, and Directors, and runners, and boozers, and of course, chums!