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As part of its plan to allow the Hollywood studios it
represents to move production workflows into the cloud, Motion Pictures
Laboratories (MovieLabs) has published tools to help developers and producers
create and communicate workflows in a way that can be implemented and
understood across the industry.
The initiatives include the first version of a common
ontology and a first release of a Visual Language for Media Creation.
The Ontology for Media Creation
MovieLabs explains that the need for a common ontology has
been driven by the complexity of media creation, in which different production
participants and software tools rely on unique sets of concepts with various
definitions. This, it says, risks introducing confusion and error when the same
word has different meanings in different contexts or tools.
The Ontology for Media Creation (OMC) provides a conceptual
framework and a set of defined terms to enable both people and software to
communicate unambiguously with greater data interoperability.
“Software-defined workflows are a fundamental part of the
2030 Vision which MovieLabs launched two years ago, envisioning a future where
all production processes take place in the cloud with streamlined and more efficient
creative workflows,” commented MovieLabs CEO Richard Berge in a news
release.
“In order for software-defined workflows to be integrated
into the production process, all pieces of the workflow need to communicate
with each other in a predictable manner. We created the ontology to aid the
communication between humans, machines and automated processes. The adoption of
the ontology will deliver consistent communications which will save time within
the production process and also reduce the chance of misinterpretation and
error.”
Visual Language for Media Creation
Building on the OMC, the Visual Language for Media Creation
(VLMC) is a set of mechanisms and conventions for human-to-human and
machine-to-human illustration of elements in a media workflow.
“Technical diagrams can differ greatly between
organizations, and sometimes even within the same organization,” Berger
explained in a separate news release. “We found so much confusion and
wasted time happening when describing workflows created by different
contributors. We designed the Visual Language with the input of the industry to
establish common conventions for describing and literally drawing workflows.
While we were primarily focused on media creation, we have found it to be
useful for diagramming a wide range of workflows including distribution. It’s
an important step for the industry to get on the same page on how to
communicate consistently.”
The Visual Language includes documentation, visual elements
(in various file formats), best practices and examples. It also includes a
first wave of icons for commonly used industry terms e.g., scene, take, slate
and prop. The package is available on the MovieLabs website under a
creative commons license allowing any organization to download and implement
and/or modify them.
Its use is voluntary but has the backing and input of
DreamWorks Animation, Marvel Studios, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures,
Universal Pictures, Walt Disney Studios and Warner Bros.
“We are all familiar with the term ‘snowflake
workflows’ in production and the challenges that it presents, but the VLMC is
able to provide a standardized way of expressing those workflows, so that we
can remove the ambiguity from the ways people like to express the methods of
production,” commended Bill Baggelaar, EVP & CTO, Technology Development,
Sony Pictures Entertainment and EVP & GM, Sony Innovation Studios, in the
press release. “By providing a consistent and robust model for workflow design,
everyone can be on the same page quickly.”
Shadi Almassizadeh, VP, Motion Picture Architecture and
Engineering, Walt Disney Studios, agrees: “We were frustrated with the lack of
standard conventions for workflow representation. When looking at applications
from different companies, many hours have been wasted learning new visual
languages each time. By standardizing how we all draw these diagrams, we can
cut down on ambiguity and inconsistences and focus on other substantive
issues.”
For Paramount Pictures, Tony Guarino, EVP, Worldwide Technical
Operations, declared: “Having a unique set of iconography for the creative
industries at last allows us to use common shortcuts for regularly used items
of equipment, tasks or participants in our diagrams.”
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