It's always been my view that our work should be what we're judged on, I can write extensive posts extolling the virtues of how amazing our conversions are but really the way for anyone else to decide is simply to watch one and see what they think... but that aside let me tell you a little story from last year that I'm hoping you'll find interesting...
ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD
We believe our efforts in 3D conversion are pretty good, considering the limitations that we face and certainly I'm aware before we released any 3 blu-rays there was a great deal of scepticism that any individual could create a decent 3D conversion.
One of the first things I started doing was creating a collection of short form content which I thought could be legally shared without infringing on anyone's copyright - either publicly available materials like film trailers and short music videos or even a friend's short film that we could use to demonstrate where we were going.
In fact my very first attempt was the original trailer from "The Shining" (it looked okay, although nothing near what we can achieve now) and I managed to track Phil down when I found a sample clip he'd done and asked Alex who this guy was?
Anyway this led to us (predominantly Phil & I) having a go at converting film trailers that interested us when we had time to spare, which have been regularly shared on our YouTube channel - anything from trailers for old classic horror movie through to the latest superhero ones. And we have gained a great deal of really positive feedback from these endeavours.
But. you can imagine my surprise when, early last year, a MAJOR Hollywood studio (probably best not to name names) got in touch having seen some of our output and wanted to have " A CHAT". As the initial contact via email seemed relatively friendly in tone, as opposed to a legal "Cease & Desist" letter, we were really excited to imagine that senior Hollywood execs had even seen anything we'd converted, never mind the fact that they wanted to chat to us!
So I ended up having a video conference with an executive at this Hollywood studio wondering what they could possibly want? Did they want to employ us to do a conversion for them? Did they want us to take down the trailers? Did they want to offer us jobs? So many questions!
WHAT'S YOUR SECRET SAUCE?
In the end, it came down to them seeing what we had done and liking it, then wondering if we had developed some secret AI tool which was creating that level of quality as an output. Interestingly they spoke widely about the different depth estimation AI models at length and they were fully aware of how these potentially automated future systems were developing. Does this mean we'll see more 3D form the Hollywood Studios? Who knows? I guess if there's money to be made they'd do it.
Anyway I had to admit that we didn't have some top secret AI Model and in fact the quality of our conversion work was simply down to good ol' hard work and putting in the hours to create the best results deliverable (at least best achievable without the vast teams of vfx experts and suitable budget)! Needless to say we had a good chat but neither of us really came away with what we were after - we would have loved to have come away with a major studio giving us a shot at a conversion, even just a little one, and they would have liked to come away with an amazing AI tool, so they wouldn't need the vast teams of VFX experts to create quality conversions!
The main takeaway for us though was Hollywood saw our conversion quality and liked it. In fact they liked it enough to WANT IT!
WOW. Let me say that again: Hollywood saw our conversion work, and liked it!
HERE'S LOOKING AT YOU KID.
Maybe one day we'll be in a position to kick down those barriers and get a chance to get our hands on some of what Hollywood's film vaults hold... but for the time being we'll have to stick to the Public Domain Classics, and giving them a fresh lease of life in glorious Stereoscopic 3D!
If you'd like to see some of our converted trailers do head over to our YouTube Channel and check out the multitude of FREE 3D content we have on offer, film trailers, music videos, clips and more...
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