The Dell Precision Media & Entertainment business has had a busy summer! In July, we introduced our world’s most powerful mobile workstations and gave a few select press a tour of our customer Tippett Studio showcasing how they use our workstations for visual effects on movies such as Ted, Twilight and many others!
We also had a strong presence at Siggraph including demos in the NVIDIA, AMD, Intel and Autodesk booths just to name a few. With our partner, NVIDIA, we held a networking event for the media & entertainment industry called Limelight with Dave Story, CTO of LucasFilm as the keynote to showcase our latest Dell Precision workstations running the top M&E software from Autodesk, Adobe, Assimilate, Eyeon, Dassault Systèmes, and many others.
Throughout the summer we’ve been continuing to work with the video professionals in our advisory panel to solicit feedback on our Dell Precision workstations powered by NVIDIA Quadro professional graphics and Adobe Premiere Pro software for video editing. These video pros have continued to blog about their experience switching from Apple Mac and Final Cut Pro based workflows. Here are a few of their latest blogs and quotes about their experience:
- Tom Baurain summarizes his experience working with his Dell Precision T5500 tower workstation equipped with NVIDIA Quadro pro graphics in his latest blog A Continuing Journey. He says, “The entire experience with Dell thus far, as in the past, has been wonderful. Looking back, testing the T5500 really led me further down a path I was already on. A path of platform agnosticism – caring less about “brand loyalty” and more about who can offer me the best solution for the type of work I do.”
- In Continuing Tales of an FCP Switcher – CS6 workflow, for now, Walter Biscardi talks about Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 and the workflow they’ve developed for a current broadcast series. With their new Dell and Adobe Premiere based workflow with NVIDIA Quadro GPUs, they leave everything raw and native as it came in as much as they can. He says it saves a lot of time initially and with some very fast “big iron” systems, quote, “We have cut our back end render times down to essentially real time. Our 27 minute shows render in about 28 minutes.”
- In Tom Olsen’s latest blog, Dell SMB, he talks about his latest project that he tested with a Dell Precision NVIDIA Quadro-equipped workstation and Adobe Premiere software. He edited a promotional video for PFLAG’s Care with PRIDE™, a new campaign in partnership with Johnson & Johnson and Walgreens to help support their “Cultivating Respect: Safe Schools for All Initiative” and the work being done by PFLAG chapters in their communities. He said “the system worked really well and was very fast and efficient. I am really getting comfortable with using a PC and so far it has been able to do as good a job as my MacPro.”
With strong support from partners like NVIDIA, Dell’s commitment to the media & entertainment market has also gained some traction within the press community. Two recent examples include The Hollywood Reporter’s article “Siggraph 2012: PC Makers Target Media And Entertainment Market” that discusses Dell’s, along with other PC vendors, aim at grabbing a bigger stake in the media and entertainment space, citing our video editing advisory program as an example; and Post Magazine’s piece, “Repertoire Productions: TEDx San Francisco & Dell Mobile Workstations” about one of our video editing advisory panelists switching from an Apple MacBook Pro to Dell Precision mobile workstations.
Guest Blog Series
Today we are excited to introduce a guest blog series on Direct2Dell that will share stories from video professionals testing our hardware and Adobe software. Over the next few weeks, they will provide candid testimonials, via video and blogs, about the benefits and challenges of switching their video editing workflows. In addition to their experience working with the new technology, we will also highlight some cool projects these pros have produced on their Dell workstations equipped with NVIDIA Quadro pro graphics.
The first video professional you will hear from next week is Geoff Belinfante who is the Sr. VP & Executive Producer at Phoenix Communications. As the manager of his company, Geoff is going to share the business reasons behind his decision to make the switch to Dell and the benefit he’s seen to date. In the meantime, here is some background on Geoff as well as the other video pros that are planning to share their story with you.
- Geoff Belinfante, Sr. VP & Executive Producer, Phoenix Communications: Geoff has been involved in the Television business for more years then he cares to admit. He began his career as an Advertising Agency producer and quickly became involved with sports when the agency where he worked acquired a PR firm whose primary client was Major League Baseball. Shortly, Belinfante and some colleagues left to form MLB Productions for Major League Baseball where he developed such shows as This Week in Baseball, ESPN Baseball Magazine, Pennant Chase and The Baseball Bunch. In 1985 the company became known as Phoenix Communications and added the National Hockey League to the list of professional sports it serviced. Also in 1985 Belinfante helped launch Sports NewSatellite, a syndicated sports highlight service that provided broadcast stations in the US and Canada with highlights of over 10,000 sporting events each year. While hockey and baseball have since taken their production business in house, to this day, SNS, with Belinfante as Senior Vice President and Executive Producer, continues to service 200 television stations with sports highlights.
- Nick Peterson, Director, NXT Dream: Nick has done everything from Feature film, Short films, Episodic Television, commercials and music videos. During the summer of 1998, Peterson worked on the tiny crew of five as a set builder/animator on the first ever stop-motion IMAX film More (1998) which was nominated for a 1998 Academy Award® for Best Animated Short Film. Soon after, he acted as writer, producer, and director of the stop-motion short film MuM (1999). MuM (1999) received enormous critical acclaim at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival and went on to screen in over 40 festivals worldwide and garnered a College Emmy Award and three Best Short awards. Peterson's first live action short film Cookies for Harry (2001) starring Frances Bay (Happy Gilmore (1996), Blue Velvet (1986)) screened in numerous festivals around the world and aired on the Discovery Channel's "TiVo Takes" and the Sci-Fi Channel's "Exposure." Prior to 2006, Peterson worked at Image G studios for five years as a VFX Producer designing and executing complex motion control shots for directors 'Sam Bayer', Olivier Gondry, Gore Verbinski, and McG. His work has also been seen in television shows such as "CSI: Miami" (2002) and "House M.D." (2004)
- David Bourne, Owner, Bourne Media: David Bourne loves computers and cameras almost as much as he loves the outdoors. His ideal day is spent outside with a video camera in hand, then he heads back to the studio to create stories that connect viewers to the natural world. His latest passion is to show other nature-based professionals how to tell and promote their own visual stories online.
- Cory Jamieson, VFX Producer Inspire Studios: Cory has a background in editorial and post-production. As Co-owner of a boutique visual effects house, Barnstorm VFX, he continues to develop more efficient integration between post-production and visual effects workflows. Cory began his life in post-production editing and producing featurette content for DVDs, including Cloverfield and Mission Impossible III, among others. He made his way into television, transitioning into visual effects on the series Ugly Betty. He has since worked on such shows as Body of Proof, In Plain Sight and The Big C, to name a few.
We invite you to follow the series to learn about the benefits and challenges of moving to a new digital content creation workflow and join the conversation on Twitter at the #DellWorkstation hashtag.