“The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug” preview applauded at IBC Awards

PanARMENIAN.Net - The debut of the current trailer for Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug in high frame rates and in stereoscopic 3D highlighted the IBC Awards, held Sunday September 15 night at the International Broadcasting Convention, The Hollywood Reporter said.

The preview received enthusiastic applause from the technically savvy audience, which this week is exploring advancements in cinema and TV technology at the conference. During the ceremony, Jackson was honored with the organization’s highest honor, the International Honor for Excellence, whose previous recipients have included James Cameron and Jeffrey Katzenberg.

Jackson is in postproduction on his movie and was unable to attend the ceremony, but he spoke to the guests via a videotaped message. "I can not energize my imagination without the support of technology," he said, urging the crowd to "please keep [technical development] going." During the ceremony, Jackson’s postproduction company, Park Road Post, also received an IBC Innovation Award (disclosure, I was a member of the jury).

Park Road Post won the award in the content creation category for development of the postproduction workflow of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, the first major feature to be finished at a high frame rate of 48 frames per second and in stereoscopic 3D. The award was presented to Park Road Post's Phil Oatley and Tony Pratt, along with Miguel Angel Doncel and Geoff Mills of key collaborator SGO, which manufactures the Mistika postproduction system that was a core piece of the postproduction.

IBC Innovation Awards were also presented in the categories of content management and content delivery. RTÉ In Ireland, with technical partners TMD and Eurotek, claimed the content management prize for its FAST (file acquisition and server technology) project for its transition to a file-based workflow, and Japan Commercial Broadcasters Association with technical partners NTT Communications, Fujitsu and Juniper Networks were recognized for nationwide SDN for uncompressed HDTV in Japan in the content delivery category. A special award was additionally presented to research project Vision Cloud.

This year’s IBC Awards also celebrated 100 years of Indian cinema with the Judges Prize. Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan accepted the award Friday at IBC; the video was screened during the ceremony.

As part of the celebration, an eight-minute clip of Bombay Talkies was screened during the ceremony.