The Australian film industry sees fibre infrastructure as sufficiently important to warrant the creation of a lobby group aimed specifically at improving access to broadband Internet connections for film makers and production studios.
Judi Tucker, executive director of the Film Industry Broadband Resources Enterprise (FIBRE) says the group has been successful in reducing the cost of broadband to film and television studios by as much as 30 percent in the last 12 months, thanks in part to a close relationship with telecommunications provider Uecomm.
"We are signing up customers, and now have seven companies connected in Brisbane, the Gold Coast, Sydney and Melbourne. Basically we offer a virtual private network on Uecomm's backbone, so that studios can transfer large media files from their specific locations," Tucker says.
FIBRE was established with a Federal Government grant of AU$600,000 over two years, and aims to expand its reach and the extent of the cost savings to industry, eventually becoming self-sustaining.
Having spent more than a decade developing technical solutions for visual effects, Guy Griffiths is also tackling the "tyranny of distance" and its effect on the Australian film industry. As director of research and development for Animal Logic, the Australian visual effects studio that shot to fame after its work on the science-fiction thriller The Matrix, Griffiths and his team are used to dealing with the cutting edge of production technology. His most recent effort has been leading Animal Logic's R&D team to create a technology that allows Animal Logic's creative crews to have secure, real-time discussions with overseas clients via tele-stream, fast speed or standard internet connections. The Client Review Tool (CRT) permits both parties to see with precision, the current status of work from anywhere in the world.
"Film making is a very distributive process, a lot of work is done on location, and now improvements to communications are making the logistics of making a film easier to control," Griffiths says.
Griffith's R&D team's invention recently enabled Animal Logic to work jointly with 'Moulin Rouge' director Baz Luhrmann on the creation of a television promotion for his Broadway production of 'La Boheme', which was broadcast in the US. What was unusual about the collaboration was that Luhrmann was in Northern Africa, and the collaboration was conducted over a regular phone line.
"It's not any flash new kind of compression software, it's actually pretty straight forward," Griffiths says, mysteriously. "At some point all film production and distribution will go digital, it will be networked and there will be all sorts of new distribution channels that open up as well. Having said this, there are all sorts of economic reasons why it won't happen over night." And for once the television broadcasters are ahead of the game, with SBS's post production coordinator Tim Woolmer confirming the company has hade fibre optic infrastructure installed throughout its premises since the 1990s. "Digital film production technology basically provides creative people with the flexibility", says Griffiths. "The next hurdle is getting fast cheep bandwidth between here and our collaborators, and getting hold of skilled artisans, who know how to use the technology."
These words would be welcome tidings for young tech-savvy directors such as Wendy Dent, as if would appear the years of working unaided to produce her own films will ultimately pay off.
"Just because you have a word processor doesn't make you a poet," says Dent. "But, it does mean that those people who are can produce and publish their own work, and that's important."
This concludes ZDNet Australia's "Film to fibre" special coverage. Click here for part one - The movie metamorphosis or part two - Price and proliferation.
