Title:
Digital Media Tools for Moving Image Production: Present and Future

Speaker:
R.P.C. Janaka Rajapakse
Graduate Institute of Animation and Film Art, Tainan National University of the Arts, Taiwan
Department of Media and Image Technology, Tokyo Polytechnic University, Japan

Abstract:
The moving image production process is a continuously evolving one as digital technologies emerge enabling new types of creativity. Digital technology’s increasing power and spread into all areas of modern life give the opportunity for production of moving images to be used in a wide range of technologies and contexts. Digital media devices and communication techniques have made the medium more accessible than at any other time. These novel digital technologies are providing moving-image makers and their production teams with real-time, interactive environments and breakthrough workflows, transforming the way they plan and create realistic movies. Using the latest 3D software, gaming and motion capture technology, they can explore, define, plan and communicate their creative ideas in new, more intuitive, visual ways helping them reduce risk, eliminate confusion and address production unknowns much earlier in the filmmaking process. In other words, modern digital technology blurs the boundaries between the traditional CGI(computer graphic imagery) assisted production process and introduced new space that would enable to direct the computer graphic processes as effectively as users could direct live action. This digital production space can be considered as a virtual production space. The roots of virtual production process lie in the experimental work of the digital media industry.

Virtual production process represents a significant metamorphosis in the use of digital technology for making moving images, enabling greater creative experimentation and broader collaboration between crafts. It transforms previously cumbersome, complex and alienating digital processes into more interactive and immersive ones, allowing them to be driven by the animators themselves. As a result, novel digital production process is helping filmmakers to bridge the gap between the real world and the world of digital performers, props, sets and locations. It gives them the freedom to directly apply their filmmaking skills in the digital world . whether for the hands-on direction of computer generated characters, or to plan a complex shoots with advanced pre-visualization by using interactive virtual camera controls. The future production process blends several, previously distinct, digital technologies and workflows from the creative technologies and digital cinema.

This speech concerns core components of the present and future production processes, such as advanced pre-visualization, digital acquisitions, real-time performance capturing, 3D animation engines, intuitive modeling systems, stereoscopic 3D display, hardware-accelerated rendering and advanced theater content creations (4DX).