By Adrian Pennington

Over the last 25 years the HPA Tech Retreat has become a place for the media and entertainment tech community to preview and test out new ideas in the company of more than 500 peers.

The hallmark of the event is the interaction of tech executives from broadcasting, the Hollywood studios, technology vendors and creatives. In Palm Springs (where the event has been held prior to COVID), this would take place from “breakfast roundtables, all-day sessions to propping up the bar at midnight,” says Leon Silverman, HPA past president and board member, and MovieLab’s Advisor for Strategy and Industry Relations.

“HPA Tech Retreat 2021 will be the same but also entirely different,” Silverman continues. “We wanted to create a conference that has the same thought leadership at its core but unlike some virtual conferences, which are pure webinars, we don’t intend to make people sit in front of a computer for hours on end.”

Accommodating that and making it have real meaning is being accomplished by providing vital content, networking opportunities, breakout rooms (“where you can sneak off and have a private conversation”) and the demonstration of production’s near-term future.

Last year’s Supersession, the making of Lost Lederhosen, showed how virtual production and remote cloud technologies could be applied to content creation. It proved remarkably prescient.

“The 2020 HPA Tech Retreat Supersession sparked aha! moments among people who weren’t necessarily either clued into where some of the industry trends were going, such as migrating to cloud, or those who had not followed the tremendous advances in remote tools,” Silverman says. “While it underscored the idea that creative, connected, collaborative network-based production was coming, no-one could have foreseen how the global pandemic would accelerate it.”

While this year’s two-day Supersession builds on that work, the demonstration is an order of magnitude more challenging.

JZ

Day one, hosted by Joachim “JZ” Zell, will illustrate how seven filmmakers have worked through the pandemic in London, Dubai, Mongolia, Mexico City, Brisbane and Hollywood pushing the limits of remote technology, cloud and collaboration tools. Aside from stress testing health and safety protocols, some of these directors were located in different cities to the actual production.

“A lot of what we’re demonstrating on the first day is how the cloud is now integral to workflows where, because of lockdown, filmmakers can’t be in close proximity to each other,” says Silverman. “At the end of Day 1, attendees will have a status report on what can be done remotely today.”

Supersession Day 2 is presented by HPA in partnership with MovieLabs. This is all about where we are going next. It’s the roadmap to a destination first articulated by MovieLabs in the fall of 2019 in its “Future of Media Creation,” which has been referred to as “Vision 2030.” It outlined an aspiration for production applications to move to the content and not, as currently, for content to be pushed and pulled and duplicated back and forth to applications absorbing time and effort and cost.

“We are not there yet,” Silverman says. “Many people walked away from last year’s Tech Retreat thinking 2020 is the new 2030. While on the surface there is a lot of cloud capability and a lot of work has been done on cloud connected collaborative production, there is a lot of vital foundational work that needs to be created before this vision becomes a practical reality.”

Among gaps that the HPA Tech Retreat will expose will be the need to deliver genuine interoperability between different environments.

To this end, Silverman promises what he calls an “outrageous scenario,” which will take a production from editorial through VFX, sound, color and distribution live in front of the virtual audience. Day Two, aptly titled “Live from the Cloud – Without a Net,” will role play what happens when a last-minute change happens in content and how it might be delivered more efficiently using emerging technology.

For instance, the demo will showcase how to leap directly to the post process from set with the ability to create and send proxies from camera to cloud and to route large files over 5G to wherever they need to be.

Some surprises are being kept under wraps (who doesn’t like surprises?) but Silverman promises this will be a day to remember. “No one has tried to do anything like this. It is super-bold but is right on the money with what has made the HPA Tech Retreat so important to the industry.

“Anybody can do a crazy demo, but we want to understand how what we do today is going to evolve to become more practical and more efficient,” he continues. “We want the industry to understand where this is going, what work needs to be done, the role MovieLabs plays and how they can participate in the conversation.”

An army of tech leaders and innovators will participate in the challenging day. “The event will introduce a number of concepts and principles that MovieLabs has been working on with its studio stakeholders with a goal of setting the stage for a larger conversation with the global content creation industry,” Silverman says.

Supporting the Supersession is a strong conference schedule, programmed by Mark Schubin. This includes sessions on the latest in virtual production, the impact of the pandemic on opera, thoughtful exploration of critical topics from security in the cloud, to deep explorations of workflow and AI, among many more.

The HPA Tech Retreat 2021 will also inaugurate a new content portal available on the HPA website. HPA Engage will be the repository of all HPA event content and a living resource for members. HPA members who register for the event will have access to Engage for the whole year, while non-members who register for the Tech Retreat will be provided one-year free HPA membership and will similarly take advantage of the library.

“This is a watershed moment. The need to share and experience something together is more important than ever because we can’t go to those fire pits after the event and debate as we used to do,” Silverman says. “Now, anybody around the world with an interest in the future of media and entertainment has an opportunity to attend HPA Tech Retreat 2021 and can join the conversation. We are going to ensure that, even without the firepit, the information exchanged, debated and explored will be unlike any other event this year or any other Tech Retreat we have ever held.”

Adrian Pennington is a UK-based journalist, editor and commentator in the film and TV production space. He has co-written a book on stereoscopic 3D and edited several publications.