WWDC2004 Session 726

Transcript

Kind: captions
Language: en
good afternoon everybody I'm Glen
bullets on the quick time marketing team
you are in session seven to six quick
time case studies and we have the
privilege today to talk to the folks who
delivered all of the media for the South
by Southwest Conference and if you're
not familiar with this conference
it's the largest conference for
independent music in the world some
thirteen hundred bands get together and
perform for a large audience and other
bands and hopefully lots of artists and
repertoire people who are adding
independent bands and unsigned bands
into labels and clearly the last several
years have been really really important
for independent music most notably the
internet arising as a way of
merchandising and a way of getting bands
to be able to promote themselves without
being captive or excluded from radio and
some of the promotion vehicles that are
available to major labels and the team
at South by South by Southwest this year
sort of went over and above not only
delivering thousands of mp3s from all
these bands and delivering video from
the panel's but also allowing or
leveraging some of the technologies
including Wireless and streaming to
cross pollinate between all the
different clubs in the performances and
that kind of stuff so pretty packed
session pretty in-depth I'll turn it
over and if we have questions let's save
them to the end and come up to the
microphones and put your you know say
your name and company name and we'll do
our best to answer all the sessions and
our all the questions and I'll kick it
off to these guys
okay my name is Gary Woodcock and this
is Scott Wilcox and we're going to talk
to you a little bit about how we have
done our production workflow at South by
Southwest and I guess this is that's
right yeah
so sorry I got confused there so this is
just kind of an overview of what we're
going to talk about we want to explain
kind of what South by Southwest is what
it's about how we've used QuickTime in
our workflow for production for music
and for video how we've used QuickTime
to help us promote the event how you
know we've delivered the media that
we've created during the event we'll
talk a little bit about some of the
experiments that we've conducted during
the course of the last few years during
that event and go over a few ideas that
we have for future directions and how we
might use QuickTime to help us in the
future and along the way what we hope to
do is help you learn a little bit about
how you can use Apple technologies to
help you do these kinds of things for
your own
promotions or production delivery sorts
of things we've used iTunes and
QuickTime and rendezvous and a lot of
different Apple technologies to to
really streamline the process of
delivering media for South by Southwest
attendees and people who aren't
attending the show but come and look at
the media that's available online so
just to give you an overview of what
South by Southwest is it's um as Glen
said the largest sort of event of its
type in the world there's various
component it all overlaps and for the
last ten years specifically we've been
focusing on convergence of the film
music and interactive technology
industries so to sort of break it down
we also have an exhibition in trade show
it happens in March every year and in
Austin and we're in our 19th year for
music and our 12th year for film and
interactive in terms of attendance it's
it's a large group of attendees who are
sort of registered and can attend the
panel sessions and then there's special
events and in the night time during the
Music Festival we have the bands play on
60 stages around Austin for for four
days so interactive basically our focus
here is we do a lot of panels and
conference programming and the sort of
community that is involved itself most
heavily over the years is really working
with web technologies blogging the
entertainment industry we have designers
and all these people kind of come to
sort of talk about the challenges the
unique challenges that are facing them
in their event and how can they also use
the tools they've been developing to
leverage the music industry and the film
industry to put sort of products in the
hands of executives who are running
labels independent labels major labels
people who are in licensing so we have a
web Awards Show
which is it's focused on trying to
acknowledge the best work we feel done
in the web over the last year and all in
all the interactive event has about 3200
attendees which is been growing
significantly every year and the event
tries to reflect what's going on in this
space and we've been moving more towards
we have a wireless track and we're
talking more about mobile content
delivery and basically what's happening
we just try to reflect it for the film
our emphasis here is really independent
film you've got a tremendous amount
of talent out there they've been making
fantastic films that have been picked up
and distributed by large distribution
houses and then we try to bring the
directors who are really notable and
working in their field of independent
film like Robert Rodriguez initially at
least an independent kind of broken
through now to the sort of majors
Richard Linklater similar story really
put Austin on the map with slacker and
in the beginning and then we've got you
know Jim Jarmusch we've had any number
of other film makers over the years our
focus as far as successful goes is
premieres we try to premiere as many
regional and world films as as possible
we have about eight venues we do about
200 films over ten days so we complement
the conference aspect of the event with
this Film Festival which then creates a
forum for for buyers distribution people
looking to work an independent film and
then we've got a consumer base which
basically comprised mostly of fans that
also come in and see the films so give
you an idea of the scope there this year
we had about 30,000 single admission
entries into the film's some 30,000
people in seats basically and from that
a lot of these films go on to find
distribution and we were able to arrange
special screenings like Jim Jarmusch's
film coffee and cigarettes played there
this year in addition to who else Robert
Duvall did something code 46 premiered
there this year which is Tim Robbins
independent film so that's going on
there's over 3,000 attendees for that
and that sort of happened simultaneously
with the interactive event we've got
both people in the same buildings in
just separate rooms and then we do
crossover panels so people can sort of
meet and mingle in that arena
for music this is probably the
cornerstone of our event mostly because
it's been going the longest and we've
been able to develop a robust
international reputation with a large
European contingency and Asian
contingency we have a European rep and
Asian rep we have a Pacific REM rep down
in Australia and we really try to pull
you know the best talent that the
emerging talent from around the world
and the industry that supports them from
managers the labels they're working with
publicists come and and people come to
really see ok what's the stuff going on
now so because of that we're focused
largely in the indie scene you know
we've got their smaller Indies and your
more established Indies like Sub Pop and
and it's really what we've seen
interestingly enough is that that is
really thriving now as the larger labels
and distribution houses continue to
merge and merge and merge we've seen
that with the tools given to people in
rich media and on the internet and
websites that that more independent
houses have been taking advantage of
implementing new media as a strategy for
promotion and the end result is is that
sales have been through the roof I've
got a friend who's director of sales at
Sub Pop and he says we're doing well and
this is really encouraging news I think
for the for the music industry overall
so 8,000 people there this is an example
of one clip we did with quick time
during the event we we shot this with
minimal production on mini DV and then
edited it in Final Cut Pro compressed
with cleaner 6 and delivered it the day
after sort of we compress overnight and
then publish in the morning
there's ilaria don't you sell first I
really do what you're doing for real
master what you're doing master it'd be
the best nothing less you know and so
this when you master what you doing
you're going to go places you know don't
do this desk toss is going to sell
because then you're cheating yourself
you're not you know your conviction is
not there you're doing this cause you
believe in it is you and it's real Union
still you didn't kill and now you're not
a meal cuz you got the real feel if you
want to play guitar River play the
guitar learn how to play the guitar
No No please don't how to play the piano
learn how to really sing
don't cheat yourself your best day doing
it don't copy this it cuz this ain't
going nowhere if she go in arresting a
weed along she'll be back home 9 author
really really put something in it and
remember this that the grass may look
greener on the other side but it's just
as hard to cut
so that was a clip from our keynote
presentation this year most of you I'm
sure recognized little Richard
and every year we try to have artists
with the benefit of industry experience
to our keynotes and then we integrate
other aspects of people in the music
industry throughout the panel's
programming South by Southwest has a
unique set of constraints because it's
it's a festival it's an event and we
basically go into the space which would
be the convention center and into the
clubs and we have to set everything up
like in 48 hours and then we have to do
the event and at the same time we'd like
to capture as much from the event
digitally as possible and then we need
to cut the stuff and we need to get it
out there on the channels because we
have a very fixed amount of time where
spotlight on South by Southwest we've
got a big promotional push and we need
to take advantage of the interactive and
new media technologies at our disposal
so for our video program in particular
we have a lot of you know budgetary
limitations due to the fact that we're
also having to put all the production in
the clubs and we have to sort of do
things with the theaters so we've got a
lot of physical production and then so
which leaves us sort of scant resources
from a new media production digital
production standpoint the way we solve
this problem is that we use volunteers
for our production and we asked voters
that they provide their own camera
actually we've been going with mini DV
primarily as a format over the last four
years because of just the sheer amount
of proliferation of the device and the
consumer and prosumer markets so what
this does for the volunteer though is
create a unique opportunity for them to
gain exposure at the event because we we
try to make sure that they're credited
appropriately we'll say this person shot
this clip and this person edited this
and then when they're meeting people the
event they have the opportunity to say
oh yeah this is what I'm doing with this
and here's my card
so the whole social networking aspect of
the event plays really well into gaining
sort of a range of talent from from
novice to professional so they go out
and we deployed them to shoot the event
and and the main thing that we focus on
is simplicity overall we have a fairly
elaborate production scheme which I'll
talk about in a minute but we we try to
do it in a guerrilla fashion whereby for
the panels and stuff we we maybe will
plug into the board and we'll set a
camera up in the back and then we'll
send up a close-up shot up front for the
bigger event so we have a two shot to
edit between you know but we don't get
more complicated than that because it
creates a lot of editing time overhead
and we need to get this stuff out quick
and we want to be able to get it out and
extensible to emerging mobile formats as
well so we basically chosen something
where we're actually getting a lot more
content than we're currently able to to
use in real time so we focus on the two
to five minute clip or so and I think
that's don't matter next oh you're
talking about that
okay I'll continue with that part later
so one of the things that South by
Southwest does a really excellent job at
is event promotion and also promotion
for the various films and bands that
participate in the event
and the typical just looking at the
music side of this the bands will submit
songs to South by Southwest that they
want to use promote through either their
performance or perhaps they have an
album out that they want to tie into but
basically something that represents
their their vision their art and that
they want to emphasize at the event the
songs are that are received by Southwest
South by Southwest are encoded into mp3
format
and then they're made available for
download on the South by Southwest
website and they're also we there was
something very new that happened this
year that an engineer at South by
Southwest David Rose had a great idea to
try to leverage the songs that we were
getting from the artists through iTunes
and so the same songs that are encoded
are hosted on a central server and
they're available through iTunes and
David also did some additional work to
go talk with the Austin City Wireless
project which is have a collective of
people that offer free access points
throughout Austin I think there's 50
sites currently and it's there is 50
sites during the event that now there's
like 80 so this is kind of blowing up
really quickly they work in conjunction
with the city as well
yeah so it's you know pretty much
citywide you know while the events going
on there are access points you can walk
into you can you know basically bring up
iTunes and and get to access to these
songs and this is kind of what this
looks like this is an example of one of
the access points locally in Austin and
you can see that there's the promotion
for South by Southwest with a logo and
it also has the iTunes time to let you
know that if you have iTunes either on
your your Mac or PC and you log into the
access point
hey there's there's something really
neat waiting for you and this is another
login example that you can see and so
this is the kind of the screen that you
get when you when you go enter one of
these places that you have to to log
into before you get the access ok so
this is just kind of an example of what
you would see if you brought up iTunes
and you can see there's the South by
Southwest 2004 showcasing artists and
you get a list of all the songs and all
the bands that are available on the
playlist and this year we had 600 600
and saw honey come on yeah and it's very
cool because
you can browse any and use all the tools
that you have in iTunes you can browse
by category or band name or song and and
find something to like and I think
Scott's can talk later about how you can
even tie that back to find the band
during the event so how does this work
basically be the iTunes hearings based
on something called the digital audio
access protocol that's proprietary to
Apple
now even though its proprietary there
are some open source repositories that
implement a server technology that can
be deployed on OS 10 on Linux on Windows
Phone pretty much anything and you can
run this this open source server and
serve your own playlist and then there's
a second piece which is the rendezvous
piece this is basically the service
discovery so this is the part that lets
you when you're in and the access point
service area lets you know that there's
actually a service here that you can you
can use and this was done using the DNS
proxy sample code the rendezvous sample
code that's actually available from the
Apple website now there are other ways
to do this you can do the same sort of
thing with how which is another
rendezvous implementation Vaughn DB is
also known as zero configuration or zero
cost you might note by that name as well
the point being is it's all openly
available it'll run on variety of
systems and basically what happens is
you you have a your we have the attune
served on from a central server and then
at each access point you can run an
instance of this rendezvous client or
the traun tiri server that can relay the
server content to the local access point
the reason this is necessary at least
currently is that the services all is
bound to a local subnet so the server
itself has its own subnet and you need
to bridge to the access point subnet
basically this sounds fairly complicated
it's really not you can download the
sample code and you don't really have to
be
a software engineer to run this you
basically need to be able to type make
and the console and it all worked out
for you pretty well it's not difficult
but it was a bit of inspired work on
David's part to pull all these pieces
together and I'd like to just check with
David I think David has a surprise kind
of for the for the audience here if
you're if you have airport here you
should be able to log in with iTunes and
actually see the playlist here we
haven't relayed here into this room so
as you can see it in action if you're if
you're curious and it's again it's it's
a very powerful concept but it's
relatively simple and very inexpensive
to set up so it fit very well with the
philosophy that South by Southwest has
for getting maximum leverage out of the
technology so just real quick this I
promise this is as technical as we'll
probably get in the session here but I
did want to kind of get this into the
slides again to do this sort of thing
yourself it's not difficult you just
have to go out and download the code
build it with your environment of choice
it might be Xcode on on LS 10 it could
be just using standard GCC tools on
Linux and then install it and then
there's some fairly simple configuration
that you need to do to basically
advertise the fact that you have a
digital audio protocol service available
which is the first line of blue text
there and what you're basically
advertising is your IP address your
database name how you'd like your
playlist to be advertised in terms of
text in iTunes for example and then the
protocol and the port the second line
basically just starts the the audio
service protocol and so just a single
line and it's not much more difficult
than that so actually I could give it a
sec you're eager and I just like to add
the the real benefit
that this has had for us is that it's
really increased the distribution using
cool new technology while actually all
of our audio files still live on one one
server actually in a colocation facility
in San Antonio
so because serving up this type of
content is actually minimal work for the
processor this is this is a pretty old
box it's like a five hundred megahertz
box but what we've noticed is that it's
a box is capable of pushing at least 60
gigs a day and content during the event
and performance hasn't really suffered
okay and then just as a last note that
after the event - there's there is
another way actually gets during that as
well but there's another way to get the
same content in the form of a streaming
audio service and so if you were to go
to the South by Southwest website you
could actually download a playlist file
that would show up as essentially a
continuous streaming audio stream that
you could play in iTunes and it's again
that that - is available through if you
want to try that on we've gotten a lot
of feedback on this being particularly
handy to our attendees because the big
problem that people have when they
attend our event is what do I go see
you've got any given time you've got 60
bands playing you've got 400 bands a
night what a mic OC so this is one of
the real problems that sort of drive the
use of new technology for us and here
people when they're sort of kind of
figuring out oh they're thinking about
the event they can launch this and if
they hear something then they click back
to iTunes they see the band there and
then they can basically easily match
that with our scheduling software on our
site so we got a lot of good feedback on
just having a continuous random stream
for those reasons
so really the big takeaways here are
just that first of all that Apple
technology
and open source technologies really do
play well together you know it's
something that you know you've probably
heard before our experience in trying to
do it for ourselves is that it's really
true it really is easy they really do
work we get a lot of mileage out of
using the standard Apple interfaces for
media types through iTunes and QuickTime
Player things of that nature
because it gives a very standard
experience for all the users that are
coming to view or listen to South by
Southwest content and it works on Mac
and Windows excuse me didn't quite go
there yet and again it's also very
simple and cost effective to setup you
can get you know everyone that wants to
listen to this stuff can go get iTunes
for free they can get QuickTime Player
for free there's no cost burden on the
people who want to view or listen to the
content and you know that just that's
great
nobody wants to to pay a lot of money
when they've already paid for badge I
just want to find out what's going with
the bands as Scott says this is just
another way that we integrated audio
content for the last three years we've
been developing a sort of schedule
application for Palm OS and we had
basically a lot of high demand for oh I
want it on my palm so that I can take it
with me so that I can kind of see and
navigate so we've been adding more and
more features to this over the years now
on this year it was we made it so you
could being your own personalized
schedule to other people so they know
knew what you were going to go see and
also this was a first for us this year
that we via pocket Tunes integrated a
connection directly to that same media
server in San Antonio so that if you're
on your palm and you're you have a trail
or something and you're and within a
Wi-Fi hotspot area you can listen to the
music directly on your palm OS space PDA
so that was a new sort of like
interesting way to kind of integrate and
again bring bring audio content and
vd in general through through various
channels okay the production crew well
it's also about already how we use only
mini DV and and what I found out when we
did this the first year in 2000 is that
I had a variety of camera types I had a
hi-8 I had a mini DV somebody else had a
DV cam and essentially given the fact
that we're trying to get through so much
production in such a short amount of
time with resources we really felt like
we needed to standardize so that we had
one type of tape stock so that you know
we can really we wouldn't have to worry
about whether we had a deck available
for a different type of media at any
given time so again it's work and to the
extent to which now we turn people away
if they don't have the type of equipment
in the future we might create a higher
quality production arm as part of our
digital media program and kind of use
newer high quality technologies that way
and but right now we've been doing the
mini DV so you've got those and you've
got your editors and your quality
reviewers and sort of the way it works
since we're not normally in the
convention center space is we take a
room and we turn it into an editing
suite in about six hours and the way we
can do that really easily is by using
Apple equipment Final Cut Pro and we
basically get a you know an Ethernet
connect into one of our subnets so that
we can move content easily and we
install final cut across all the
machines that we have at our disposal
which varies from year to year depending
on all sorts of factors and we also load
cleaner six on them one year we had a
compression farm available to us a
cleaner central product and we did
things a little bit differently we sort
of like the minute we were done editing
we compressed but due to sort of
constraints compression what we do is
let it all day and then
will compress at night so we run this
editing suite from say 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
so that people are freed up to move
around at night to get more content or
to enjoy the event heaven forbid so
that's how we sort of produce all of our
digital video in a nutshell so this is
just a short clip on basically Richard
Linklater curly Jarmusch do you do you
storyboards at all or just sketch out
your shots and at that let us know Larry
I used to more I think that was just
insecurities like thinking I would be on
the set and not know what I'm doing and
everybody wakes so a plan out each shot
much more in advance but now I've
enjoyed showing up and having some some
vague ideas or some overriding like say
rules stylistically for the film but
kind of discovering stuff almost dead
but you it's the same I used to run
never use the storyboard I used to try
to make shot list yeah alright little
coming in because I like walking in
there and making the film while thinking
on your feet but if you have a shot list
too than the production's on your ass
like well you have to get this many
shots today yeah like it's lunch and
you've only got three at 8:00 or have
one o'clock will be 14 after lunch yeah
no problem
look I'm knife set to that we have
always had this joke of like before
lunch it's gone with the wind and after
lunch it's the Dukes of Hazzard right
this we do Theresa so this is sort of
another example playing into the content
production of how we do it our main goal
is to basically get the stuff shot and
edited and turned around in 24 hours
because you know the the event itself is
about timeliness but we also need to
follow a sort of realistic path so what
we do is we get all the tapes stock and
we have a particularly centralised sort
of
numbering scheme and then we have a
checkout process and a check-in process
and we basically take a crew of this
year I think we had about 25
videographers and so they all come in
and check out stuff and they check it
back in and then we've got a person who
keeps track of what's been shot and they
show a you know the list of stuff that's
just come in to a person who sets
editing priorities according to what
kind of stuff we need to show now what's
the hottest stuff what seems like the
highest quality and then we move that
through the editing chain and people
edit and different editors come in and
they work on different projects but
essentially by keeping it at 2 to 5
minute pieces of content we're able to
get to through a lot more very quickly
so if we have a longer segment or
whatever that we want to present we'll
chapter eyes it and do like at this part
he talks about this and at this part she
talks about this so they gives us a lot
of flexibility in terms of delivery and
we we found the best success with
QuickTime progressive download because
of its quality and because of its ease
and serving it over HTTP so we've got
this this thing we don't really know
what's going to be in the highest demand
and it's a really easy way to load
balanced serving the content if you can
slap it on any web server
here's a photo from this year and this
is what we used some G fives and then we
had a couple of people bring in their
power books because they were like I
really want to edit on my thing
so we let them do that and and then we
use Final Cut Pro and cleaner sixth as I
said before because of the simplicity of
the sort of plug-and-play nature of this
equipment and software we're we don't
need to take two days to build an
editing suite you really just bring it
in and set it down and plug it in and so
this is really a really good thing for
us because then we have editing stations
that kind of come and go throughout the
week according to well we need to put
this one here oh and then we need it
over here so we kind of just balance how
many editors do we have and who's good
and they'll get heavier workflow so
again here's the guidelines you know we
really try to find that moment you know
rather than get really fancy and put in
motion graphics and do all sorts of
things like that we just try to find the
moment keep it simple
make a few cuts and keep the audio
processing to a real minimum sometimes
if you've got sort of low quality
production on the tape we'll use sort of
built-in EQ and filter audio filter
effects that come with final cut and
that's a big reason we don't use that we
use final cut say over something even
more basic like iMovie it's because it
has the ability to do the more advanced
things but it's also really good it's
just doing something simple so I'll have
an editor who's like well I've worked on
avid forever I'm like oh you can learn
final cut in five minutes this is a
really good thing for us yeah so as
Scott was just mentioning I mean the the
plug-and-play nature of what we get it's
Mac OS computers with firewire and
QuickTime
just in terms of reliability and simple
simplicity just keeps life much less
stressful than it might otherwise be
they just work you bring them in you
plug them in you set somebody in front
of them it's pretty easy we we like
Final Cut Pro for a couple reasons it
does have a lot of power but it's not so
intimidating that you can't put somebody
who's volunteering in front of it and
and give them the guidelines and have
them do a good job the other benefit of
it is the people who come to work on it
they get the experience of working with
a professional media authoring tool and
they also get some tutelage from the
senior on-site producer they basically
get a lot of valuable experience it
would be very tough for them to get
otherwise in addition they have the
ability to claim or use the footage in
their demo reels if they wish so they
get credited with the work that they do
on the piece when it's presented and
then they have the option to use it to
leverage into other other work later on
and that's it's pretty it's a pretty
rare opportunity if you don't already
have that background in your resume it's
tough to sort of get the first break to
get it and so it's a really great place
for people who are trying to get the
experience to build it up so this is
just kind of a this is another short
example of a piece that I think somebody
who is relatively first time you know
videographer did a couple years ago and
yeah so it's it's short but it's it
talks to the things that Scott was
mentioning earlier about trying to
really capture the the salient you know
key moment of a particular event
thank you you want to be near me marry
me
I mean what if they know right off crime
that brings up very important point
which is Owen first of all thank my wife
here he was doing an introduction in Q&A
at the Paramount Theater which is one of
Austin's sort of oldest movie spaces and
[Music]
well there you have it oh you might have
known noticed that all these pieces have
like a motion bumper sort of graphic
thing on the front of it
well it's something we've tried to do
for the last three years is basically
make one for interactive and one for
film on one for music and we'll
basically just take a finished motion
graphics piece that a friend of mine was
doing for us and we'll just drop it in
we'll put it on all the different
editing stations say Oh before you
finish up we need to drop that in and it
just becomes easily part of the final
cut movie so let's talk a little bit
about the delivery aspect of this in
terms of what the goals are with
actually making the media available and
the goal was do you have basically we
recognize that not everybody has DSL or
even ISDN source of lines we still feel
like there are enough people out there
that have slow connections that we need
a low bandwidth version of the media but
we'd also like to provide a really good
experience where people really do have
the fast connections so we want both
high and low bandwidth versions and
obviously we want this to play in as
many platforms as possible and of course
we get that with QuickTime because it
can play in a variety of different
browsers on Mac OS and Windows it's
perfect for what we need and you get the
the standard user experience no matter
which platform you're using or what
browser we also get the benefit of we
want the playback to begin as as quickly
as possible we don't want the guy to go
click on a link and then wait and watch
progress bar there are also cases we
want some basic content
detection with the media where you can't
just sort of arbitrarily download it and
go post it for wherever you want we
really want people to come to the South
by Southwest site to get this media also
we didn't want any particular licensing
restrictions in terms of whatever
technologies we use to to produce the
media and deploy it
so basically mpeg-4 and AAC actually fit
the bill but very well for us it does
well at low bandwidths and high
relatively high bandwidths it's
certainly available to sit in QuickTime
it's on Mac OS and Windows and since
we're delivering as a QuickTime movie we
get all those nice things like we can
get progressive Bama and fast start and
we can disable saving and all the
standard things that you get as part of
using QuickTime as your deployment media
so in terms of preparing the media and
in keeping with the keep it simple sort
of philosophy we really don't do a lot
of filtering and we're always starting
from the same media so we don't need 50
different settings who are always
starting from DV and we have a low
bandwidth setting that we used in
cleaner and those are the parameters for
those who are curious it's basically
just the standard sort of postage stamp
video that you would get on a on a 56k
modem but it's mpeg-4 it looks pretty
good and you have pretty decent audio
with it for high bandwidth we went to a
quarter screen 320 by 240 and it's full
frame rate and you get very nice stereo
sound and in fact the clips that we've
actually been viewing here are the exact
same high bandwidth clips that we
encoded for the show so they're not
something we did special for the show
it's just what you see up on our website
so that's what we've been watching here
today and it looks pretty good
so I think Scott touched on this a
little bit earlier we do try to do some
basic automation cleaner six has the
ability to basically add drop folders
where you can take your source media
drop it in and just have it sort of
automatically run through whatever
settings files you're using we use the
full resolution DV media output from
Final Cut Pro just drop it into a
desktop folder the editor doesn't really
have to know anything about it it gets
picked up and processed and dropped into
a review folder for the quality reviewer
to come and look at we do we also get
film trailers for the people that are
doing premieres and we'll encode these
in exactly the same way so that are the
high end low bandwidth versions of the
film trailers as well they're available
during the show so if you want to check
out to see what what's worth seeing in
terms of the premieres what you know
what kinds of things match your tastes
you can go check those out and they're
available before actually before the
show doing the show and after the show
as well and one thing I did want to
point out is we have been experimenting
with mobile media and it's a very
important aspect to some of the future
directions that Scott will talk about
later something we played with is kinoma
now this this isn't part of QuickTime
but it is a QuickTime movie exporter so
it fits very nicely into the QuickTime
centric flow that we have in terms of
the production and you know it will run
on standard Palm OS devices you know
things like the trails will play it any
of the Sony devices and it's it can be
targeted for basically for playback on
any color device so you can you don't
have to worry about whether it's going
to play on a particular version of Palm
OS or a particular model cannot will
actually take care of all that for you
the interesting thing about this is that
I'll be palm devices by law
have the IR transceiver so once somebody
has this they can actually beam the
media to another device at the show they
can you know hey this is a very cool
clip or hey you might want to go check
this out they can actually just beam it
to somebody they can look at it they can
share it it kind of just proliferate on
its own throughout the show you can also
download these things from the net if
you've got a web enabled phone you can
pull these things down and play them in
the player when the questions you might
have is well gee why kinoma why not 3gpp
we're very keen on being able to do 3gpp
stuff currently we find that there's
actually more people with palm devices
that tend to show then people with 3gpp
probably not a big surprise to most
people in here so we are doing the
economic stuff right now but to go to
the 3gpp or say h.264 in future really
doesn't perturb our workflow at all it's
just it's another QuickTime plug-in we
can use the same production flow we've
been using it's it's really no change so
it's quick time really makes this very
very convenient portion and very
flexible
okay future directions as Gary was
saying the three 3G is definitely
something that we've been interested in
a long time and given the sort of
content sizes the two-minute movie the
30-second movie we think that this is
going to be you're really not a very
difficult transition for us in terms of
our projected production change
I think we'd also like to get into some
more sort of full live broadcast stuff
but there's only so many volunteers and
only so much equipment and basically
there's just we have to dedicate more
resources more equipment and better
talent to basically put and say yeah
we're going to do just the live
broadcast the thing is because we use
sort of volunteer camera people
everything they shoot is not
I mean you know right now we've got
about 500 hours of footage from the last
four years we did 200 of that this year
and I haven't really been able to watch
for log at all definitely not and then
there's some great stuff and there's
some just atrocious like why were you
filming the floor and in the thing about
you know we basically have to put a
higher quality sort of production team
on on the lab stuff but it's definitely
something we're working towards and
something we'd like to to do in the
future we we also have been we did RFID
stuff for the first time this year and I
think we'd also like to continue to look
how our sort of badging and
authentication systems because we you
know we have the whole access control
thing how we can get that to play with
the delivery of our of our digital media
you know say in some sort of kind of DRM
model so really like let's see where we
can take it kind of in the future but
right now we continue to make our
content available for free to anybody
and that that's been pretty well and I
suspect that until sort of bandwidth
overhead and things like that become a
problem we'll continue along that route
because we're trying to promote these
artists and these filmmakers before
during and after the event and and
that's what we use these tools primarily
for so lots of lots of possible things
to do in the future and we're just
trying to figure out how we can come out
at different angles and utilize the new
technologies for a huge real-time sort
of deployment kind of you know it is a
case it's a built-in case study because
every year we're trying new things oh
that can't work or wow that kind of work
you know and that's just sort of how
we've developed and I find that
integrating new technologies available
especially you know along the lines what
we've been using now is is a great
thing for our attendees to see because
they're there in the entertainment
industry and they're thinking oh my god
what are we going to do you know with
all this new stuff how are we going to
play and digital space with the
relationships we have so so I mean just
some closing remarks that that we'd like
you to go away with here is that you
know as we talked about at the outset of
the session South by Southwest really
has kind of a different problem than
perhaps a lot of you are used to it's
it's really about trying to process a
lot of media at a very good quality
level very quickly with high turnaround
and to make it simple you know to keep
things very easy very simple very
reliable so that things don't break down
during the show because it is a very
compressed time scale it can be very
stressful so quick time really kick
guilt helps us with this with this
problem because I think one of the
things that perhaps people miss about
QuickTime is that if you just do the
simple things with the tools that Apple
has that the bass quality level is
really quite impressive yes you probably
could make some some better video output
or perhaps a better compression what
perhaps you've seen today but just what
you do out of the box or the very simple
stuff with fairly untrained people or
novices is really quite amazing and
QuickTime really makes that possible and
it South by Southwest with the kind of
resources we have they will really want
to be possible that something like
QuickTime well it is the the learning
curve for the people that are doing the
work - because oh I've played with that
oh I'm familiar with that so we've got a
whole lot of people that we work with
who have already used the products are
already familiar with you know trying to
put their stuff out there and so we kind
of follow along those lines because
there's already enough to do and with
getting our volunteers who have never
worked together before except maybe the
year before
all sort of in this rapid production
environment and working together and
answering each other's questions and and
so the less obstacles and the less
variables we introduce to this situation
the better off we are and then we also
have the headway with with the tools to
to increase quality and as people become
better or as we get returned volunteers
from years I asked their skills increase
the tools are the same it scales as
their capabilities and experiences scale
now I guess the other point we'd like to
leave you with is just you know hey it
really is easy to integrate QuickTime
technologies and Apple technologies with
some of these open source solutions that
are out there it takes a little research
on the web but there's really some
amazing things that you can do
integration wise that are may seem sort
of intimidating to start with but really
with a little bit of Investigation you
can do some incredible things as David
is certainly shown with the with the
iTunes playlist stuff that that we
deployed this year and with that we have
a parting clip of john landis talking
about digital tools in filmmaking
I learned early on there's no such thing
as the artistry of filmmaking because
this is interesting about film film is
not art people don't understand that
film is craft filmmakers are craftsmen
just like carpenters but a carpenter can
make a chair that becomes art in the
carpenter can be Charles Eames or
Chippendale but the vast majority of
chairs are just that chair and they're
sturdy and they function they sit on
them you know I have a very dear friend
who's a great filmmaker named David
Cronenberg and David actually considers
himself an artist and he's one of the
few filmmakers I know who can seriously
discuss his work as an artist and not
sound like a pot I mean he's very
serious about it and David brilliant
then how would I do that David and I
come off like a jerk you know because I
know a lot of filmmakers very famous
filmmakers who discuss their work like
that I think oh shut up
like who nevermind all right little bit
more people always go how do you feel
about the lack you know the fact that
there won't be film in 10 years and
there won't it's just well that's what's
happened self making as a craft is so
new and we're talking about something's
100 years old 100 years old
I mean sculpture painting you know I
mean they they've had a lot of time you
know filmmakers not 100 years and so the
the equipment's evolving all the time
and I think the biggest change in film
was probably talking and the first time
that happened that was a shattering blow
that I personally don't think film has
ever recovered from sound absolutely
because before sound film was completely
international but and sound came in and
made it the Tower of Babel and it just
it's that
anyway but in terms of tools they're
tools and I think everything's kind of
how you use it thanks very much