No Doubt about that, Richard. But whichever way we look at it, it's still video. Made by a lighting company or not, it's very obviously Video. Calling it "Digital Lighting" just makes the video people who usually do this and the producers/directors who advocate the old ways such as Profile, think lighting people have come up with a term that they can use to sneak around and take control instead of just announce it honestly.Originally Posted by richbell
There are a few directors and producers who won't even consider it because they don't think lighting people should be doing video. On the other hand, there are a few that think it's great and what they love about it is the flexibility to change things on the spot. As I've stated before, I've been asked on many occasions "how is this lighting?" I always try to respond honestly and simply say it's not. Nothing more to say.
Let me tell you a little story, Richard, that you may find interesting and pertain to what I'm saying. This last weekend I received a frantic call from Ecuador, it was the Director for Miss Universe telling me that the content for Gloria Estefan was totally botched and needed to be completely replaced. He had so wished that they had used Catalyst for the job but they went with Profile instead because of the politics involved. Long story shorter, He asked me to produce the content to be played on Profile for the Gloria Estefan performances because the producers hated it. I agreed to do it. I did it in AE and FCP and sent it via Satellite to Ecuador to Dbeta and played back on Profile. In no way was Catalyst involved. It was just video being replaced by video.
The end of this story was that the producers were so incredibly happy with 'the Video' that I sent them that now they want to come down to my house to check out Catalyst to use for video as an alternative to Profile because Profile can't make radical changes to a whole song within a few minutes. No mention of Digital Lighting is ever made. I stopped using that term soon after I first hear it because it's not straight forward and it does sound sneaky as if it were something else than video.
The editing of this show took me in excess of 22 hrs, 9 hrs of rendering, and 2 hours of mastering and checking, not to mention the time it took for my wife to take the masters up to LA to get Sat fed to Ecuador. A process that would have normally taken me no more than an hour tops with Catalyst. And now they know...
If you market it as video that it controlled by lighting and has the same flexibility and power as lighting does with regards to immediately being able to change the look, you will have much better results because people will know what it is and they will love it because it's video that is way more flexible than the current TV based video servers out there. That would certainly help my cause. There are still video people who come up to me saying "what is this catalyst thing?". I still get calls from producers who say "so explain to me what Catalyst is, is it some lighting thing or is it video" I think the term "Digital Lighting" is so off the mark that it confuses people.
As a major proponent of this technology, the two main selling points for me have been 1) The incredible flexibility to be able to change the video as fast as I'm able to change the lighting, which is fast in comparison to the old way - having to spend all night re-editing a piece, master it to dbeta and test it (A real pain in the ass), and 2) the complete integration of video with the lighting to create a merged cohesive environment driven by 1 vision rather than a multitude of chefs in the kitchen baking up their own cakes.
Best,
Christian
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