Five SMPTE Members Earn Academy Awards for Scientific and Technical Achievement

The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers(R) (SMPTE(R)), the worldwide leader in motion-imaging standards and education for the communications, media, entertainment, and technology industries, today announced that five SMPTE members have been recognized with prestigious awards from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). The Academys Scientific and Technical Awards honor the men, women, and companies whose discoveries and innovations have contributed in significant, outstanding, and lasting ways to motion pictures.

"Science and technology are fundamental to the filmmaking process, and were so pleased to see SMPTE members recognized and honored by the Academy for their pioneering work in this area of the motion picture industry, said Barbara Lange, executive director at SMPTE.

SMPTE member Florian Kainz is part of the team that earned a Technical Achievement Award Academy Certificate for the architecture and development of the Zeno application framework. For more than a decade, Zenos flexible and robust design has allowed the creation of a broad range of Academy Award(R)-winning visual effects toolsets at Industrial Light & Magic (ILM).

SMPTE members Joshua Pines, David Reisner, and David Register together earned a Technical Achievement Award Academy Certificate for their role in the development of the American Society of Cinematographers Color Decision List (ASC CDL) technology. The ASC CDL unifies color correction principles for use on- and off-set, providing for the faithful reproduction of color values across a variety of color-correction devices. This technology provides basic image-processing mathematics that translate the lift, gamma, and gain settings to a set of common color values to help preserve the cinematographers intent throughout production.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Kristen Bell, who co-hosted the ceremony with Michael B. Jordan, said, "I might want to quit acting and work with those guys; they are so cool."

For making technological contributions that have brought credit to the industry, SMPTE Life Member Peter W. Anderson, ASC received the Gordon E. Sawyer Award, an Oscar(R) statuette.

"Without the art, what would the science be? Without the science, what would the art be? said Anderson, who was presented his award by Douglas Trumbull. Trumbull has been a keynote speaker at several SMPTE conferences.

The 2013 awards were presented at the Academys Scientific & Technical Award ceremony at the Beverly Hills Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif. An excerpt from the ceremony was included in last nights Oscar ceremony broadcast.

Further information about SMPTE is available online at www.smpte.org.

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