Sustainable resumption of the production and post production industry service sector are the key objectives of the Industry Recovery Task Force created by the Hollywood Professional Association.

The Hollywood Professional Association (HPA) has unveiled a series of virtual programs to provide the production and post-production industry with critical technical knowledge and offer opportunities to build community both during and beyond the COVID crisis. Created and moderated by industry leading volunteers along with HPA staff and leadership, the first webinars began with a focus on the key skills and technology necessary for remote workflow, and the content will continue to center on topics of critical interest to the industry.

As part of the organization’s efforts to provide professionals with interesting content, Hollywood Professional Association has organized a second session of its IMF 101 Tutorial Session (NAB Show Express). The online-only event is for those interested in learning how the Interoperable Master Format (IMF) standard simplifies next-generation content mastering, QC, management, manufacturing and delivery. During the event, on May 11, 2020,  participants will learn about IMF through:

• an overview of IMF use cases and technology
• tutorials using some of the latest IMF products on the market
• live Q&A with experts

A Task Force to help the industry

Now HPA, the trade organization serving the professional community providing expertise, support, tools and infrastructure for the creation and finishing of media content, has announced the formation of the HPA Industry Recovery Task Force. The task force will focus on the sustainable resumption of the production and post production industry service sector with the aim of understanding how to enable content creation in an evolving world impacted by the pandemic.

Seth Hallen, HPA president, noted the motivation to the launch of this important industry effort, “Our focus is to understand how to get our industry back to work and how to do it in a way that provides an ability to not only safely create global content, but to also understand the long-term impact to workflows, technology as well as to the people and our business community as we navigate through these unprecedented times.”

The key objectives of the HPA Industry Recovery Task Force are:

• To serve as a forum for collaboration, communication, and thought leadership regarding how to resume global production and post-production in a sustainable fashion.
• To understand and influence evolving technical requirements such as the impact of industry remote collaboration, ‘work from home’ and other workflows which have been highlighted by the current crisis.
• To provide up-to-date information and access to emerging health and safety guidelines that will be issued by various governments, municipalities, unions, guilds, industry organizations and content creators.
• To provide collaborative support and guidance to those impacted by the crisis.

Build a more resilient industry for tomorrow

In outlining this initiative that will now begin to be organized and coordinated within the Hollywood Professional Association community as well as with industry colleagues and organizations, Hallen continued “It has always been core to the mission of HPA to connect and collaborate with the larger content creation community. In these challenging times, we have both an obligation and an opportunity to help navigate, educate and lead our industry. But we will not be doing this alone. Our goal is to partner with other key professional associations and organizations to be able to speak with the knowledge of both our HPA community and the larger industry to find the best plans, ideas and path forward so as we emerge from the crisis of today. Through this effort, we expect to help define and build a more resilient industry for tomorrow.”

Over the next few weeks, the Hollywood Professional Association will announce details of a number of initiatives and industry participants who have already begun to exchange ideas and plans for next steps.

In closing, Hallen said “The HPA represents a community of incredibly talented, innovative and focused  people and organizations. Together, we are confident that we will find safety, solutions and strength to resume the creation of content that has been helping the world weather these very trying times. We are open to new ideas and participation from across this community and look to a time, hopefully soon, that our industry is once again safe and strong and poised for future. Please join us.”