PROFILE • MAY 21 , 2001
Multimedia Production on the Mac
Star Wars Chronicled
[Page 2 of 3]

CM: Tell me about your studio: What made you decide to put together your own? And how did you decide on the Mac as your platform?

Orphanos: It's not a studio, but more like a nice size room that we shoot in. It is located in our office area and is nothing short of a miracle. As long as we have between three and four feet from the main camera, we can shoot the green screen anywhere. We've managed to develop our own "homemade" lights, but we still use C-stands, spring clips, stingers, quadbox's and a green screen. For our clients, depending on what it is, we rent a studio space for the duration of the shoot.

There is an in-house staff of about four people with a few freelancers coming in for certain things.

In addition to news and on the scene reports,
TFN Digital includes features on the people
behind the technology of Star Wars.

Choosing the system was the hard part. At first I was actually looking at one of the lower-end Avids and the Media 100s, but then a friend showed me Final Cut Pro at his office and demonstrated its capabilities.

Sold.

So I built up the first system and used the video clips it came with to practice editing. FCP is great for logging, cutting, importing and exporting. Apple's latest DV codec, which I think was included in System 9.1 and QuickTime 5 preview, really showed a nice improvement.

After Effects is our workhorse on the motion graphics, although most of the compositing we have been doing for the first seven episodes of the show had been in FCP. Episode 8 was the first time I used AE and the difference matte filter to pull the key ... whew! That took me about an hour to figure out! I only started using After Effects/FCP/Photoshop about a year ago, but I have been catching on very quickly.

CM: Why streaming media? Certainly an awful lot of would-be Web video efforts have failed. What's your position? And why QuickTime?

Orphanos: It's amazing isn't it? Many Web video efforts failed because of too much money being spent on marketing and inexperience in the development/ production process, as well as a lack of understanding about the Internet entertainment medium. One thing that a lot of companies do not understand is that being media savvy—not necessarily hip/cool—is a very important element in creating something with visuals. The marketing that can be done with video on the Web is almost beyond the limits, but you need to develop the right formula for it. Whether you have high-speed access or not, if the content is worth it, people will wait for the download. The bandwidth excuse is beginning to wear thin, and, if you look at some of the reports over the past year, the consumer high-speed base tripled in the U.S. I can't wait to see what it is like this year.

When I would run into different people from the financial world and told them what I was doing, they would always ask about the kind of technology I was using. I told them it was existing technology that guaranteed to deliver, whatever format was usable for your end user.

QuickTime was the natural choice because it is on nearly every operating system in some way, shape or form. The quality of the QuickTime has always had a better look than the other media players, and the player itself is less obtrusive. One thing I must admit is that Windows Media Player and Real Media Player have improved dramatically. One of my favorite shows on the Web to watch is DMN TV, and that is a great example of Web video being put to good use.

Spoilers reveal clues about
upcoming Star Wars movies.

So how does Orphmedia get the juicy bits they put into their shows? "Our information is basically condensed from theforce.net site, and we also get exclusive spoilers from Joshua Griffin, [who] runs the Episode II section of tf.n. I do the copy for the news section, and of course I have the other people on the show like our Creative Producer Robert McNeil providing some news/interviews."

TFN Digital is produced and directed by Peter Orphanos. For more information on Orphmedia, visit http://www.orphmedia.com. To view TFN Digital, visit http://www.theforce.net/digital. For more information on theforce.net, visit http://www.theforce.net.

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