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Reader SurveyHave Server, Will Travel
Oct 1, 2006 12:00 PM, By Michael Goldman
Independent filmmaker Lance Weiler — known as something of a self-styled technical iconoclast — adopted a guerrilla approach to both making Head Trauma and exhibiting it. Weiler and DP Sam Levy shot with multiple Panasonic AG-DVX 100 and DVX-100A camcorders, jury-rigging their own filters, aerial rigs, and special effects, and then edited picture and sound in Apple Final Cut Pro. They bumped up their DigiBeta master to a 24p HDCAM at Shooters Post and Transfer, Philadelphia, and added a professional mix at Skywalker Ranch, Nicasio, Calif.
Weiler took the movie on a 15-city theatrical run at independent cinemas equipped with digital projectors, leading up to its DVD release late last month. In some theaters, he played the movie from an HDCAM deck to older 2K projectors, but for others, he carried a portable, prototype digital media server to play the movie through newer 2K projectors, including Digital Projection, as a VC1-based digital file. At press time, the IndEx digital media server was slated to come to market by the end of year.
Tim Harader, a longtime Microsoft digital media executive and founder of IndEx, designed the product specifically for filmmakers like Weiler.
“IndEx is a miniature custom movie playback server,” Harader says. “It comes in a suitcase. You carry it to the theater's projection booth, plug it into the theater's digital sound processor and projector, hit play, and show your movie, without any menus or media players showing up on the screen. And it scales the imagery up or down for HD playback, depending on the quality of the projection system in the theater.”
Weiler says that using the IndEx server to play Head Trauma created an image with rich color saturation and nice blacks. “The image looked great. In terms of theatrics, it gave by far the best presentation of the film,” he says.
