
The Hollywood Professional Association (HPA) has revealed details for a reimagined Supersession set for February 18, the Tuesday of the 2020 HPA Tech Retreat . For the first time at the Retreat, this year's Supersession will present a live production from acquisition through post of a short movie, in near real-time. The culmination of the production will be a screening of The Lost Lederhosen at the day's conclusion. Joachim JZ Zell, Vice President of Technology at EFILM, is at the helm of this year's event.
The HPA Tech Retreat, celebrating its 25th year in 2020, is comprised of the main conference program, TR-X, the Innovation Zone and the Supersession. The entire event, which takes place at the Westin Mission Hills Golf Resort & Spa in Rancho Mirage, CA from February 17-20, is filled with networking, conversation, and noncommercial exploration of important trends.
Seth Hallen, President of the HPA, said, This year we wanted to deliver truly unique programming and demonstrations and ultimately try and showcase some production and post production workflows that have not been seen before. Given the caliber of the Tech Retreat attendees, we know this is an ambitious mission but under the leadership of JZ, a group of talented filmmakers and technologists have come together and have done some incredible prep work on this project that will be showcased at the Tuesday Supersession. We are extremely excited about this live production demonstration and can't wait for February 18.
Zell said, Supporting artists in telling their stories has become an incredibly challenging endeavor that demands constant attention to the evolution of the tools, distribution, and creative landscape. It seemed to us that our attendees would be interested to see how we could produce a film, in near real time, at the Supersession. The HPA Tech Retreat is experimental, expert driven and experiential, and we were able to pull in an incredible lineup of people and equipment and workflows to make it happen.
The short boasts a full crew of talented experts: Steven Shaw, DGA, ASC (director); Roy Wagner, ASC (cinematographer); Peter Moss, ASC, ACS (camera operator); Sam Nicholson, ASC (VFX camera); Barry Goch (editor); Michael Cioni (frame.io,); and Steve Morris (Skywalker Sound), among many other industry experts. In developing the idea, Zell approached past winners of the HPA Engineering Excellence Award: Blackmagic Design, Canon, Colorfront, RED, Pixelworks, and CalMan Monitor Calibration, all of whom wanted to participate. They were followed by other preeminent technologies, including Panavision, The Foundry, AVID, and Frame.io. To prepare for this experiment has required extensive planning and preproduction. Fifteen of the film's 20 scenes were shot in advance in Los Angeles. The final 5 scenes will be shot on a train set built in the conference space incorporating the Stargate powered virtual production stage that enables real-time in-camera VFX. The production will finish in front of the live audience at the Westin. Los Angeles locations included the ASC Clubhouse, Jameson's Pub (familiar to HBA members) and the virtual production stage of Lux Machina utilizing the Unreal Engine of Epic Games. Six different cameras from ARRI, RED, Panavision, Canon, and Blackmagic Design, and lenses from Panavision, Zeiss and Sigma are used in the production.
Mark Bender, chief drone pilot, will produce the aerials for the movie.
HPA Tech Retreat attendees will watch the action unfold directly next to them, in the conference area. A virtual pre-production meeting will take place, followed by attendees watching scenes shot live on two large screens in the room showing output from a witness camera and the live camera feed.
When the Supersession breaks for lunch, the data wrangling and management that has been ongoing during the morning production will continue. Live editing and visual effects management will be ongoing throughout the day. The afternoon session turns fully to post- production, editing and visual effects. Nuke compositing and Resolve color grading with dailies processing and audio mixing will be in place, all using a hybrid cloud/on-prem storage workflow. The material shot prior to Supersession will be downloaded from the cloud. On location, a frame.io 5G transmitter will deliver images straight into editorial, but the footage will also live on local storage. Zell notes that studios are increasingly dipping into 5G networking.
The production will work in ACES, shooting in 4K, 6K and 8K, and shifting between SDR and HDR by switching the ACES ODTs. All the data will go into the Amazon Web Services Cloud and the Microsoft Cloud, which will distribute relevant footage to the various collaborators, including AVID, Colorfront, frame.io FCP and Blackmagic, for dailies processing. Zeiss lenses will provide metadata to speed up the VFX work. A colorist will use FilmLight's Truelight for on-set color, Live Grade for on-set color in Hollywood and Blackmagic's Resolve for the final color. The Skywalker sound team will create a 7.1, 5.1, Stereo and immersive sound Ambidio version.
The shoot has brought the major companies to Palm Springs, including Ambidio, ARRI, Avid, Blackmagic Design, Canon, Epic Games' Unreal Engine, Filmlight, Final Cut Pro, Flanders Scientific, frame.io, Mark Bender Aerials, Panavision, Pomfort, ProTools, RED, Roscoe Lighting, Sohonet, Sony and the Foundry with Nuke.
The finished film will be screened for the HPA audience at the close of the event. A projected cinema version will be shown in the conference room while other 8K and HDR versions will be shown on the days after in the innovation zone.
The HPA Tech Retreat is a limited attendance event, strictly capped at 700 guests, and it will sell out. Registration is open for both day passes and full co
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...