Day 1 Wednesday 10th October
Screen 1, Cambridge Arts Picturehouse Cinema
9.30 am Registration and coffee
10.15 am Welcome and Introduction
Conference Organisers Saint John Walker FDMX, Dr. Christine White, Anglia Ruskin University
10.30 – 11.30 am Keynote Speaker
Dr. Lev Manovich, Director, Visual Arts Department, University of California, San Diego (UCSD)
New media theorist and author Lev Manovich will be talking on the topic of visual resolution and about his new work with 4k Cinema.(4,000 horizontal and over 2,000 vertical pixels) and next generation displays.
Dr. Manovich is embarking on a series of projects with visualisation and computer graphics researchers, in order to develop cultural applications for these displays, which have a resolution of 24 times that of a standard broadcast TV signal.
11.30 – 12.30 pm What exactly is HD?
A keynote by BBC HD research department
Steve Wallis, Head of Business & Operations, High Definition TV, BBC & Ian Potts, Senior Producer, Factual programmesKey BBC personnel at the forefront of HD will give us the inside knowledge on how one of the worlds greatest boroadcasters is dealing with High definition.
Ian Potts, Senior Producer, BBC Factual programmes will introduce us to HD- a jargon-busting, demystification of what HD is, and just how much it changes things.
Steve Wallis, Head of Business & Operations, High Definition TV will give us a look at how BBC's HD trial channel has been working, and will explain what the key issues are for broadcasters. The BBC have conducted many tests and experiments with the different flavours of HD. Steve will explain why broadcasters are investing so much in the art and technology of HD.
Lastly Ian Potts will talk about HD filming, and the choices available if you want to shoot HD for the BBC. We'll examine the kind of cameras out there that pass muster.
12.30 – 13.30 Lunch
During Lunch you are welcome to stay in the auditorium and view a further selection of HD originated work by the BBC, including some favourites you may have seen in Standard Definition, but were actually filmed in HD. You’ll be able to see for yourself what the HD difference really adds to the viewing experience.
13.30 – 14.45 Perception and Pixels
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HD: No Mercy
Terry Flaxton, Creative Research Fellow in High Definition Imaging, Bristol University
“As the light falls at dusk and you are driving along, you might notice that the tail lights of the car that you are following seem much brighter than usual. Also, there is a moment when the traffic lights seem too bright and too colourful. The simple explanation for this phenomenon is that you are witnessing your brain switching between two technologies: They are Rods which were manufactured for the insect eye to detect movement - and there are also between 6 and 7 million Cones. Keeping this in mind it is becoming apparent to those that work at the extreme horizon of High Definition something similar happens when a certain level of resolution is reached”
-
The Film Look and Beyond HD
Peter Swinson, Technical Consultant to Motion Picture Industry
"Why do images shot on film have a quality that other media find so hard to achieve? The answer seems to be that over a 100 years film has been honed to match the human subconscious visual system. But is HD the limit for image quality? No. Today the industry is moving towards 4k, providing images four times sharper than HD”
- From Pixels to Perception
Professor Graham Finlayson, University of East Anglia, CTO Im-Sense Ltd. - Eye to Portapak to HD
Gail Pearce, Lecturer in Contemporary Media Art Royal Holloway, University of London
“Beginning with definitions of perception and investigation into blind spots and the brain, I propose to refer to early video art and the expectations surrounding it in the seventies. How did the world become rectangular? As a practitioner drawn to working with low-tech technologies I hope to explore some of the reasons we enjoy the smudge and blur of the past as much, if not more, as the gloss and shine of the newest technologies”
Chair Dr. Christine White
“For about the last 10 years, the digital camera market has been obsessed with the number of pixels. Yet, the need for so many pixels is questionable: digital cameras now have around twice the number of colour receptors that we ourselves have. Our approach is not to focus on the number of pixels but mathematical algorithms that deliver images that look like those we ourselves remember seeing”.
14.45 – 15.00 Break
15.00 – 16.15 The Next Generation is our generation: Playing
........with HD
With the advent of the PS3, Wii, and Xbox, the Games industry has already bitten the bullet of changing practice to accommodate HD technology. What issues and challenges did it throw up?
- HD and Creative Issues
John Clark, Art Director, Sony Computer Entertainment (SCEE)
Martin Binfield, Senior Animator, Sony Computer Entertainment (SCEE)The arrival of HD has encouraged an appetite for detail that creates serious logistical demands for game developers. Sony Cambridge artists John Clark and Martin Binfield will present an anecdotal account on the effect of HD on Next Gen game production at SCEE and in the process touch on a number of creative issues stemming from these new technologies. Not the least of these is the effect resolution has on representation; it clearly affects the methods we use in production but how much will it affect actual subject matter?
- History of Visual Developments in Games
Dan Rubenfield, Games Designer, Sony Computer Entertainment (SCEE)“The games industry has always focused on the cutting edge of emerging and new technology. But this isn't always a blessing... Focusing on the history of visual developments and design methodologies, this talk will cover the production changes and new design focus required as display technologies push from the early 1980's to the 21st century”.
- Dangers of the HD era for the game development industry
Imre Jele, Head of Game Content for RuneScape, JagexThe greatest Hungarian illusionist, Rodolfo's famous catch phrase was "Watch my hands, I'm cheating!" It seems to be more and more important to have such honesty in the HD era. HD is a logical step in the graphical evolution path. But the very nature of this improvement might be the biggest enemy of games. HD can lead the industry in false directions, delaying or even destroying our hopes to become a true media to deliver important messages, to be a form of art or even our core purpose: providing fun.
Imre will try to present a more grim side of the HD story; analyzing how the inappropriate use of this amazing technology can harm the game industry and looking into the reasons why HD products can fail.Chair Saint John Walker
16.15 – 16.30 Break
16.30 – 17.00 Seamless Effects: the real and the spectacular in
..........today’s films.
....... ..Paul J. Franklin, VFX Supervisor, Double Negative
More and more of what we see on the screen is presented as a seamless image, but we all instinctively know that it is a composite of lens based imagery and CGI. HD means more pixels to wrangle - a more alluring and convincing spectacle. But also a more insidious realism. Paul J. Franklin demystifies some of the tools in the VFX armoury and shows examples of how the language and tools of VFX will meet the challenge of HD
17.00 - 18.00 Break
18.00 - 19.15 Realism/Expression
Greater resolution, greater possibilities? Is the technological agenda suffocating or empowering us?
- HD Times: realism, reverie and the unsettled medium in contemporary screen culture
Ivan Phillips. Senior Lecturer in Digital Culture, School of Film, Music and Media, University of Hertfordshire"The fact that HD seems to have been written into a mythic world-view (promoted by industry, government, etc.) suggests that its ability to genuinely unsettle and challenge might be sacrificed to the commercial need for stability, predictability, more-of-the-same-but-better.
The creative uncertainty that accompanied earlier media innovations – who knew what a novel was for in 1700? or the cinema in 1900? or a computer in 1950? – might be lost to a determination to remain on the road most profitably travelled". - Another kind of realism
Simon Payne, Senior Lecturer, Department of English, Communication, Film and Media Studies. Anglia Ruskin UniversitySimon Payne will introduce a programme of contemporary experimental films and videos that provoke certain questions regarding realism and resolution. The screening will include films by Neil Henderson and Jennifer Nightingale, who also teach at Anglia Ruskin University. Henderson and Nightingale’s work explores light, duration and frame-based structures that are particular to film - an increasingly specialised medium in the age of digital technology. Payne’s videos involve digital aesthetics, but the colour fields that he uses challenges assumptions regarding high-definition.
- Definitive Stories: new forms of expression?
Steve Littman, University for the Creative Arts
Peter E Richardson University of DundeeThe ‘Definitive Stories’ project investigates the deployment of High Definition technologies in an exhibition context. The research posed the question: Will HD technology deployed in an exhibition context, generate new forms of expression for artist/filmmakers?
Consequenctly, inviting artists and filmmakers to work with HD technology new approaches to the artefact itself have emerged; several of the participants have developed new techniques in their personal practice as a result of the project.
Chair: Alan Peacock
19.15 - 21.00 Special Free HD Cinema Screening
........A UK first! An exclusive Showing of BBC’s EARTH
Not in cinemas until November 16th!
Thanks to distributors Lionsgate, we have a unique showing of the BBC’s greatest nature/wildlife film ever, Earth. This is a newly mastered cinematic version of the award-winning BBC television series Planet Earth, originally shot in HD, and has never been seen cinematically until now! At MEGAPIXEL you’ll be able to see the full 90 minutes in HD, for free!
With an unprecedented production budget of $25 million, Five years in production, over 2,000 days in the field, and using 40 cameramen filming across 200 locations, shot entirely in high definition, this is the ultimate portrait of our planet capturing rare action and impossible locations with frequent use of super-slow-motion and amazing motion-controlled time-lapse cinematography.
Megapixel would like to thank Matt Smith from Lionsgate and Jon Thompson from The Worx for their efforts to secure this great exclusive for Megapixel.
Conclusion - Day One
Day 2 Thursday 11th October
Screen 1, Cambridge Arts Picturehouse Cinema
10.00 – 11.00 Film Art and HD
So what of the artist’s agenda? After the technologists have finished defining HD, is the artists role circumscribed? Or are there ways that artists can intervene, subvert or challenge the technologist’s agenda?
- Artist generated HD
Grahame Weinbren, International media artist and filmmaker - New Image technologies and the film artist
Professor Malcolm Le Grice, Experimental Film maker
Weinbren is currently collaborating with software engineer Isaac Dimitrovsky on the development of LimoHD, a low-cost full uncompressed high definition cinema technology, designed primarily for his own projects. Grahame will be showing examples of this unique HD system and discussing the technical limitations and shortcomings of commercial HD, whilst emphasising the importance of artist-generated tools.
Le Grice’s practice has spanned the advent of a range of analogue and digital media and here he gives his perspective and critical analysis of the current HD-led mania for ever higher quality images, more realistic visualisation and simulation, and examines what tactics moving image artists might use to comment or circumvent such an agenda, and exploit these new image technologies.
11.00 – 11.20 Break: Coffee and refreshments
11.20 – 12.30 CGI Worlds I
We can now build imaginative worlds with 3D software and technologies that mimic light and movement- and yet can lead to vastly different end results.
- Creating Viva Pinata
Ryan Stevenson, Senior Concept Artist, Rare
The award-winning Viva Pinata was very much Ryan’s vision, and it’s stylish and colourful sensibility points to other worlds that are brought into being by Next-Generation technology, avoiding convincing simulation and sleek physical mimicry. Here Ryan shares his artistic practice, from smudgy sketchbook to final gameplay
- Capturing light rays: High Dynamic Range Images in practice
Brian Tyler, CEO, ArtVPS
The suspicion amongst Art Directors and creatives for the ‘synthetic’ look of 3D imagery is eroding, partly because of the technique of high dynamic range images (HDRI): for instance in the Car Industry 3D models in location shots are now fully accepted as equivalent to ‘real’ photography. Is this the thin end of the wedge?
12.30 – 13.30 Lunch
Over Lunch we hope to be premiering BackStrikesEmpire, a two screen installation by IGLOO, an artist collective led by interactive designer Bruno Martelli and choreographer Ruth Gibson. Shot on HDV and filmed on location in Western Australia and New South Wales, this piece shows how artists are using this format to challenge notions of the reality of nature.
13.30 – 14.15 CGI Worlds II
- A Decade of CGI
Mike Milne, Director of Computer Animation, Framestore-CFC
Mike Milne has worked for 25 years in computer animation, starting in the early 1980s. In 1992 he started the computer animation department at Framestore CFC, and was the creative force behind 'Walking with Dinosaurs'. Here he gives an audit of CGI and how the advent of HD may alter its trajectory.
14.15 – 15.00 Cyborgs and the Uncanny
- Those cyborg moments: thoughts about ‘high definition’ in an Age of Information
Alan Peacock , Programme Tutor: Postgraduate Media Programme, University of Hertfordshire
Much of the discussion about ‘high-definition’ looks to various ‘resolutions’ (such as pixel density, datastore capacity, processor speed, etc) referencing an ‘Age of Representation’ and its model of the senses which sits at odds with contemporary understanding of perception and attention, and which is markedly distinct from the nature of the ‘Age of Information’ that we currently inhabit.
- A stroll through Uncanny Valley
Jeremy Mulvey, Research curator, Anglia Ruskin University
First of all the aim of visual representation is not to fool people- nobody has ever accidentally walked into a painting. We want to participate as viewers in the act of representation – we enjoy willingly suspending our disbelief. The key issue that is crucial here is the one of empathy. It is not whether the animated characters are accurate or even believable that matters: it is simply whether we care about them or not.
Chair Dr. Christine White
15.00 - 15.20 Break
15.20 – 16.30 HD: the Cinematographers take
It’s often portrayed as a fight between Film and HD, with evangelists on either side. But the story is not so simple. Film makers are only too willing to appropriate whatever will get their vision on to the big screen. Here we cut through the hype thanks to award winning Director of Photography and Author of the essential “High Definition Cinematography” textbook, HD Guru Paul Wheeler. Paul will tell us how HD is changing the face of film and TV and will attempt to demystify the technologies of high definition and 24P cinematography, laying out the REAL advantages and disadvantages of HD versus film
16.30 – 17.00 Plenary/Wrap/Panel session
Times and Speakers accurate at time of going to press. Latest update 27th Sept.
