DM Fest Talk

Recently I was asked to give a short talk and participate in a panel discussion on “Digital Production” at the Digital Media Fest here in Singapore. The other panelists and speakers in my session were - David Sproxton, Co-Founder & Producer of Aardman Animations Ltd (UK), Kenneth Liang, Executive VP of TV Channel 5 Programming and Production of Mediacorp and Stefano Virgilli, Director of Ultimate Video FX and Manager of Adobe User Group Singapore.
The other speakers in the fest included Timo Vuorensola, founder and producer, Energia Productions Ltd (Finland) who is currently making the indie film ‘Iron Sky’ and Hugh Hancock, Founder and CEO, Strange Company (UK), the man behind the Machinima Project.

A great bunch of people doing some revolutionary work. I will be doing a write up detailing the other talks and the growth of Web 2.0. For now, here’s the talk I delivered.


How do you then express something as abstract as an Idea? Often times words cannot do justice to a great idea.. The mind has its own language which may not necessarily translate the IDEA in its most potent form when articulated through verbal communications. What words fail to do, the hands empowered with the right tools, can speak the best of all.
The consumption of media has been growing exponentially such that there are now more storytellers and eager audiences than there ever has been in the history of mankind. This is not an evolutionary process. Rather, there is a continuous revolution. Entertainers are constantly seeking for new dimensions to tell the story better and to make the IDEA come across in ever more exciting ways. We are living in the Digital Media era, where visual communication is at its most exciting, with the internet rocketing it to stratospheric heights.
Digital technology has empowered every single man woman and child with story telling capabilities never before possible. . A couple of years ago if an independent filmmaker wanted to make a film he would have to consider bearing the costs of a film camera with all the additional costs of processing etc. Today, consumer cameras shoot High definition for a fraction of the cost. For a higher production values filmmakers can even look at the relatively inexpensive RED camera which will shoot at up to 4K resolution, allowing for amazing visual quality to be enjoyed by all. Projects like Machinima, which brings real-time gaming technology to the desktop user to tell a story in the way he or she imagines.. Its unbelievable and amazing at the pace at which the industry is moving. This convergent technology bringing real time animation, lighting, rendering and story telling on the same table is revolutionizing the way we experience and consume media. Soon we will be making cinema at the speed of thought and we are quite close to achieving it. We have come a long way from cave paintings haven’t we?
With the current advancements and growing popularity of stereoscopic entertainment, audiences are placed in a space where the audio visual information is getting closer to our senses. Over the last 12 months most of the popular CGI, compositing and color grading tools have included a well balanced and convenient stereo work flow, thus indicating the direction at which the entertainment industry is moving, a couple of well known game publishers have already started a huge amount of development in the field of stereoscopic imagery. Though stereoscopy has been around from the 1800s it has been slowly developing itself with technology to bring convenience to the viewer .
All this growing technology at our fingertips brings artistic expression to the masses and the visual information that one experiences is overwhelming. Through this evolution, one factor has always remained at the utmost priority which can decide the making or breaking of the medium. Content. Story.
At the end of the day, all the technology, medium and formats are just tools to convey your story. You can have the best of the gizmos but if your story fails to keep the viewer hooked, everything is useless. As artists, at times we get seduced by the advancements in computer graphics and media and start exploring and showcasing the abilities of the tool, which is fine to familiarize ourselves with this new toy but lets not forget that this is an art form, a medium to express our idea. it is still the idea and story that is more important than subsurface scattering and HDRI. Those are just aspects of the technology. If you have amazing lighting and textures but a story that falls on its face, then you have no audience but yourself and some technology driven artists who are there only to gauge how long each frame of yours took to render. But at the same time you have sphere that is brought to life with brilliant story telling. You are a winner.
We have always made ‘realism’ our benchmark. Realism will always be a factor of story telling but will not be the prime goal. Keeping your audience engaged in your idea of reality is a lot more important and promising. Give your idea a life of its own. A reality of it own. Idea is always first, technology is second. With every advancement we are marking pages in history, lets give our audiences something to remember.