The Hollywood Professional Association (HPA) Awards Committee has unveiled the winners of the 2021 HPA Awards for Engineering Excellence. The HPA Awards, including the HPA Award for Engineering Excellence, will be bestowed on November 18 during a live gala at the Hollywood Legion.
The winners of the 2021 HPA Award for Engineering Excellence are:
- The Arch Platform – Arch Platform Technologies. The Arch Platform allows users to spin up powerful cloud-based digital content creation facilities for visual effects, post-production, virtual production and other collaborative creative endeavors in under an hour.
- OpenColorIO v.2 – Autodesk. Autodesk has led a major rejuvenation of the widely used open source project OpenColorIO, the first major upgrade in the decade since its original release. The new version, OpenColorIO v2, includes the following contributions from Autodesk: Development of state-of-the-art color processing technology; Leadership of the re-birth of the project and help in transitioning it successfully into the Academy Software Foundation; and greatly improved support for ACES, providing the industry with a free open source ACES implementation capable of very high quality real-time processing and complete support for the Academy/ASC Common LUT Format (CLF).
- Nuke – The Foundry. Nuke® is a node-based compositing toolkit that gives artists the power and flexibility to create with confidence. Flexible, efficient, feature-packed, and highly customizable, this toolset delivers film-grade results fast for compositors, lighters and animators.
- NearTime – Mo-Sys Engineering. NearTime from Mo-Sys Engineering is a workflow for virtual production, meeting the key requirements of cast and crew to see the full effect of the shot on-set in real-time, delivering a higher-quality version of the shot, completely automated, and in a timescale which matches the practical requirements of the production – "near-time."
Honorable mention was awarded to Colorfront LLC for Colorfront Streaming Server and Deluxe for Deluxe One Dub.
The HPA Awards recognize creative artistry and innovation in the professional media content industry. A coveted and highly competitive honor, the Engineering Excellence Award rewards outstanding technical and creative ingenuity in media, content production, finishing, distribution, and archive.
The process to be considered for an HPA Engineering Excellence Award included a pre-recorded video presentation, followed by a Q&A with the judging panel and the submitters. Judging took place online again this year, with a blue-ribbon panel of judges.
HPA Awards Engineering Committee Chair Joachim Zell said, “This year’s entries showed us again that the companies from our industry are creating innovative, thoughtful products and solutions for new problems, some of which were brought on by the circumstances of the past year, and others addressing non-pandemic problems. Judging day presentations reminded us of the breadth and depth of expertise and creativity in our industry, showing us what is possible for us to accomplish. Congratulations to the winners, and all the entrants, all of whom have much to be proud of.”
Full Lineup Set For AFI Fest; Official Selections Span 44 Countries, Include 9 Best International Feature Oscar Submissions
The American Film Institute (AFI) has unveiled the full lineup for this year’s AFI Fest, taking place in Los Angeles from October 23-27. Rounding out the slate of already announced titles are such highlights as September 5 directed by Tim Fehlbaum, All We Imagine As Light directed by Payal Kapadia, The Luckiest Man in America directed by Samir Oliveros (AFI Class of 2019), Zurawski v. Texas from executive producers Hillary Clinton, Chelsea Clinton and Jennifer Lawrence and directors Maisie Crow and Abbie Perrault, and Oh, Canada directed by Paul Schrader (AFI Class of 1969). A total of 158 films are set to screen at the 38th edition of AFI Fest.
Of the official selections, 48% are directed by women and non-binary filmmakers and 26% are directed by BIPOC filmmakers.
Additional festival highlights include documentaries Architecton directed by Victor Kossakovsky; Cheech & Chong’s Last Movie directed by David Bushell; Devo directed by Chris Smith about the legendary new wave provocateurs; Gaucho Gaucho directed by Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw; Group Therapy directed by Neil Berkeley with Emmy® winner Neil Patrick Harris and Tig Notaro; No Other Land directed by a Palestinian-Israeli team comprised of Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor and Hamdan Ballal; Pavements directed by Alex Ross Perry; and Separated directed by Errol Morris. Notable narrative titles include Black Dog (Gou Zen) directed by Guan Hu; Bonjour Tristesse directed by Durga Chew-Bose with Academy Award® nominee Chloë Sevigny; Caught By The Tides directed by Jia Zhangke; Hard Truths directed by Mike Leigh with... Read More