MovieLabs, Hollywood paint picture of the future of media creation
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Editor
| 20 August 2019

Non-profit technology research lab Motion Pictures Laboratories MovieLabs), together with the Hollywood studios which go to member studios, has published a new white paper presenting an industry vision for the future of media creation technology by 2030.

The lab is jointly run by Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Universal Pictures, Walt Disney Pictures and Television, and Warner Bros. Entertainment. Its paper, jointly authored by MovieLabs and technology leadership teams from Hollywood studios, paints a picture of future technology and discusses the need for the industry to work together now on the required ‘innovative’ new software, hardware and production workflows to support and enable new ways to create content over the next ten years.

The 2030 Vision paper lays out key principles that will form the foundation of this technological future, with examples and a discussion of the broader implications of each.

These include: all assets are created or ingested straight into the cloud and do not need to be moved; applications come to the media; propagation and distribution of assets is a ‘publish’ function; archives are deep libraries with access policies matching speed, availability and security to the economics of the cloud; preservation of digital assets with the future means to access and edit; every individual on a project is identified and verified, and access permissions are efficiently and consistently managed; all media creation happens in a highly secure environment that adapts rapidly to changing threats; individual media elements are referenced, accessed, tracked and interrelated using a universal linking system; media workflows are non-destructive and dynamically created using common interfaces, underlying data formats and metadata; workflows are designed around real-time iteration and feedback.

“While the next ten years will bring significant opportunities, there are still major challenges and inherent inefficiencies in our production workflows that threaten to limit our future ability to innovate,” said MovieLabs CEO Richard Berger. “We have been working closely with studio technology leaders and strategising how to integrate new technologies that empower filmmakers to create ever more compelling content with more speed and efficiency. By laying out these principles publicly, we hope to catalyse an industry dialogue and fuel innovation, encouraging companies and organisations to help us deliver on these ideas.”

The white paper is available to download at www.movielabs.com