Welcome to Indian Wells, an offshoot of Palm Springs, CA. So why is the first day’s “Super Session” titled “Snowflakes with an Increasing Chance of Clouds“? As moderator Leon Silverman said, modern post workflows are like snowflakes because no two are alike, and they change as soon as they hit the ground.

Starting out with the folks responsible for the post on “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”, who talked about their unique 4K conform workflow using many different industry standard tools that don’t normally go together. (Check out Oliver Peters’ in depth look at their workflow) And continuing with Warner Bros. Next Generation Workflows, I could see that the subject was well labeled. It’s good to know I am not alone in navigating a constantly changing post-production universe.

Then to try something a little different, I hopped over to the ATSC 2.0 conference. This was in a room filled with brilliant engineers, so of course I found it dryer than desert air outside. You can view a PDF of the Powerpoint here if you feel so inclined.

So I escaped and returned to the main hall in time to catch folks from Disney, Sony pictures and Technicolor describing how they are restoring classic movies from their archives. Seeing before and after shots from movies like Lawrence of Arabia were amazing and really made me appreciate their efforts.

The day ended in the demo room pictured above. What you should notice about this picture is that there are no flashy signs! This is intentional. It is purposely meant to not be a sales event. Unlike NAB, you can get up close and personal with the products without heavy sales pitches. For example, Sony has a new archiving solution that uses a cartridge containing 12 Bluray disks. It is scalable from an individual unit for smaller operations, up to full robotic installations for networks and studios. With 50 year projected lifespans, if they price it right they will be poised to break the LTO monopoly.

It’s educational to run into so many luminaries in the post world, and find that we are all dealing with the same issues. This is a great event and should be a part of anyone in post’s annual routine.