The Sohonet team headed to the heart of Oxfordshire for the HPA Tech Retreat last week, held at the Heythrop Park Hotel. The retreat, like its counterpart in Palm Springs, aims to inform and inspire its attendees. I think we can all agree that you once again fulfilled the brief! Thanks HPA team!
As a brief introduction to this event for those of you who have not heard of or attended it before, the HPA Tech Retreat happens annually in Palm Springs in Feb and in Oxfordshire in early July. The retreats, which draw attendees out of the city to remote (and very nice) locations, feature workshops and seminars led by leading figures in the Media & Entertainment sectors.
Panels & Talks
The Supersession
This year the show featured a Supersession talk from Pixar’s Post Supervisor Eric Pearson, who lifted the lid on the creative and collaborative work that goes into versioning the incredible Pixar movies that regularly hit our screens. We also got a chance to hear from the team behind the BBC’s BAFTA award winning Planet Earth II series, gaining insight into some of the challenges inherent in creating such phenomenal content.
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Remote Collaboration Panel
Our favourite talk (we’re
obviously not being biased here) was moderated by Sohonet’s CEO Chuck Parker and featured Darren Woolfson, Group Director of Technology at
Pinewood Studios, Ray Mia, Executive Vice President & Head of Advanced Media at
Universal Music and Roy Trosh, Group Technical Director at
The Mill. As moderator, Chuck questioned whether remote collaboration could revolutionise the production process. The hot topics? Why the shift to remote collaboration? What has accelerated this trend in recent years? And crucially,
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Innovation on Display
Aside from the stage floor, Sohonet could also be found in The Innovation Zone, this time showcasing our real-time remote collaboration tool
ClearView Flex and demonstrating how innovative third party tools such as
Bluescape and
Optika can be integrated to provide the ultimate visual collaboration workspace.
(Read more here). The Innovation Zone was buzzing as usual, with awesome technologies being showcased by the likes of Dolby, CODEX, GrayMeta, Pixelogic, Sony Digital Cinema, Sundog and much more.
Good Times Aplenty!
As always, there was a real camaraderie amongst the individual exhibiting and speaking at the show, and we’d like to thank all of you that entered ‘Sohonet’s Drone Competition’! We managed to get most of you to don a Sohonet hat and tweet your images to the wider world! Congratulations to Fiona Hurst who won! For the rest of you, check out some of our favourite Tweets below!
