February 1
Milla "Resident Evil" Jovovich stars as the character 'Violet' in writer/director Kurt "Equilibrium" Wimmer's upcoming sci fi feature "Ultraviolet".
Wimmer scripted the role of Violet for Milla after being impressed with her look in "Resident Evil".
Wimmer is noted as the cowriter of both "The Recruit" and the recently updated version of "The Thomas Crown Affair".
Premise of "Ultraviolet", set in the late 21st century, focuses on a subculture of humans who have been modified genetically by a vampire-like disease, giving them enhanced speed, strength and intelligence.Because these new creatures are set apart from ordinary humans, conflicts push the world to the brink of war between the human government and the enhanced populace.
"Ultraviolet" locations included Shanghai, China on a budget estimated at $30 million.
July 2, 2005
The upcoming feature "Ultraviolet", with a premise focusing on a subculture of genetically modified humans, used Sony's e-VTR's enhanced file transfer capabilities and Orbital Data's TotalTransport technology, to speed the backhaul of dailies.
Physical tape assets were transferred as data files, eliminating the delay of moving content from location to production sites.
Sony's e-VTR concept is based on a plug-in board that enables Sony MPEG IMX studio decks to become a device on an IP network.
Once physical videotape assets are ingested into the e-VTR, the content is converted into data files on play-out. These files can be remotely viewed, controlled and transferred on any common networked computer.
In the case of "Ultraviolet", the Internet was used to transfer the content from the Hong Kong set to the Los Angeles production offices. "The days of shipping digital dailies have ended," said Richard Pierce, CEO and Chairman of Orbital Data.
"We are proud that our TotalTransport technology working with Sony's e-VTR has made long-distance media file transfers an economic and practical reality." The e-VTR-based process of daily distribution for "Ultraviolet" began with multi-angle takes being recorded onto several tapes by two Sony HDCAM SR(TM) decks, for playback in 23.976Hz.
The HDCAM SR output (1080/23.976 HD signal) was converted to a 480/59.94 SD signal, and all the takes copied to MPEG IMX tape for ingest into a non-linear editor via SDI connection. Once the scenes to be reviewed as dailies were selected, an edit decision list was sent to an e-VTR deck equipped with the e-VTR Manager Application Software and compiled for transfer.
The compiled dailies were then sent over a wide area network from an e-VTR in Hong Kong to an e-VTR in Los Angeles, where an identical cloned MPEG IMX tape was created.
