The Case for Electronic Script-Based Collaboration

Metadata

Publisher: SMPTE — White Plains, NY, USA
Doc Type: Journal Article
Content Type: Original Research
Abbreviated Title: SMPTE Mot. Imag J.
Volume: 123, No. 7, pp. 27–33
Abstract: Modern media production workflows involve specialized teams operating during different phases of the production process in different locations. The media themselves are digital but managed by singular media asset management systems in each location. Due to structural gaps in the overall flow of metadata, collaboration relies on informal methods. As a result, individual media fragments are hard to retrieve, reuse of content is expensive, and the overall production cost is inflated. The key to solving this problem is to enable concurrency and systematic interaction between the story-editing and the actual production processes. This will reduce production cycle time, minimize time to market, and have a positive influence on overall production cost. An electronic embodiment of the script, the most canonic description of the content in the form of a scenario or a rundown, plays an essential role in the overall orchestration. By definition, the script contains all essential information to accurately describe the content. By mapping audiovisual media with the story elements and by subsequently embedding the essential metadata in the files, content becomes consistently manageable throughout the entire process and beyond. This paper discusses the key characteristics of a collaborative workflow, the underlying architecture, and the design requirements of an electronic script that can be used to integrate the workflow.
Publication Date: 2014-10-01
DOI: 10.5594/j18468
ISSN: Print: 1545-0279 | Electronic: 2160-2492
Link: https://doi.org/10.5594/j18468
Author(s): Maarten Verwaest
bio
Maarten Verwaest is founder and chief executive officer at Limecraft, an intelligent workflow solution designed to host the most demanding workflows in feature film and television. During his tenure at VRT as a system architect, between 1999 and 2010, he was the design authority for several large-scale production automation and integration projects, including the VRT Digital Media Factory. As a program manager for the R&D department VRT-medialab, he led the design and the implementation of an innovative system for production of television drama, including 3D previsualization and postproduction automation. Capitalizing on these lessons learned, Verwaest founded Limecraft in 2010. Limecraft has hosted several hundreds of productions in the areas of feature film, television drama, and documentary in throughout Europe and the U.S. Verwaest is the author of several distinguished publications and is often invited as a speaker to conferences. He holds a degree in physics.
Luk Overmeire
bio
Luk Overmeire obtained an MSc in electronics engineering from the University of Ghent, Belgium. Before joining VRT, he was a research engineer in Alcatel Bell, working on software-based services and asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) digital filter design, respectively. In 2002, he joined VRT's research and innovation department where he first performed research in the signal processing area such as metadata-based video encoding and rate control. From 2007 to 2011, he led the competence group focusing on media production and audiovisual content processing at VRT-medialab. Since 2012, he has been technology expert and program manager in the VRT R&D department currently focusing on automatic annotation, search and future production technologies. Overmeire is a member of several European Broadcasting Union (EBU) working groups. Since 1996, he has been involved in patent applications and authored several papers presented at international conferences. He can be contacted at luk.overmeire@vrtmedialab.be.
Erik Mannens
bio
Erik Mannens has been a research manager at iMinds-MMLab since 2005. Before joining iMinds, he was a software engineering consultant and Java architect for more than a decade. His major expertise is in metadata modeling, semantic web technologies, linked open data, big data analytics, broadcasting workflows, iDTV and web development in general. Since 2008, Mannens has actively participated in W3C's eGov standardization working groups, including Media Annotations, Media Fragments, and Provenance.
Cedric Lejeune
bio
Cédric Lejeune is a workflow specialist for high-end visual effects and D-Cinema and sets production pipelines and trains people all around the world. He started Discreet in 2000 as a Smoke assistant, working on TribalX a complex full CG/MoCap production for children. He later he became application engineer for Post-Logic, supporting a wide range of products such as animation, infrastructure, effects, color grading. Lejeune was in charge of the implementation of the first industrial Digital Intermediate (DI) pipeline at Éclair Laboratories in 2002. In 2006 he founded, Workflowers, to develop consulting and training services, accompanying film labs in the transition to digital and helping post-production to step into the cinema world. Lejeune is a member of the CST, and lectures on technologies and network infrastructures for content creation at the Université de Valenciennes. He is an Autodesk Certified Instructor on Lustre, a member of the Discreet Knowledge Unit, and a color science instructor at the International Colorist Academy.
Copyright: © 2014 Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, Inc.

Bibliographic Reference(s)

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4. Lukk H. EBU Production Technology Seminar , Geneva, Switzerland , Jan. 2013 . EXTERNAL
5. European Audiovisual Observatory , “On-Demand Audiovisual Markets in the European Union , https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/news/demand-audiovisual-markets-european-union-smart-20120028 . EXTERNAL
6. SMPTE 380M , “Television-Material Exchange Format (MXF)–Descriptive Metadata Scheme-1,” http://standards.smpte.org/ . EXTERNAL
7. Van Rijsselbergen D. et al., “Movie Script Markup Language,” Proc. 9th ACM Symposium on Document Engineering , ‘09 , pp. 161 – 170 , 2009 . EXTERNAL
8. IPTC NewsML-G2 , http://www.iptc.org/site/News_Exchange_Formats/NewsML-G2/ . EXTERNAL
9. AMWA , “Advanced Authoring Format (AAF) Edit Protocol,” http://www.amwa.tv/downloads/specifications/aafeditprotocol.pdf . EXTERNAL
10. SMPTE , “Interoperable Media Format (IMF),” http://standards.smpte.org/ . EXTERNAL
11. AMWA , “AS-11 MXF Program Contribution,” AMWA , January 2012 . EXTERNAL
3. Van Rijsselbergen D. et al., “Enabling Universal Media Experiences Through Semantic Adaptation in the Creative Drama Production Workflow,” Proc. 10th International Workshop on Image Analysis for Multimedia Interactive Services , London, U.K. , pp. 296 – 299 , 2009 . EXTERNAL

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Maarten Verwaest, Luk Overmeire, Erik Mannens, and Cedric Lejeune; The Case for Electronic Script-Based Collaboration, SMPTE Motion Imaging Journal ( Volume: 123, Issue: 7, October 2014); SMPTE, 2014. Available at https://doi.org/10.5594/j18468

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Maarten Verwaest, Luk Overmeire, Erik Mannens, and Cedric Lejeune; The Case for Electronic Script-Based Collaboration, SMPTE Motion Imaging Journal ( Volume: 123, Issue: 7, October 2014); SMPTE, 2014. Available at https://doi.org/10.5594/j18468

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<span class="citation">Maarten Verwaest, Luk Overmeire, Erik Mannens, and Cedric Lejeune; <cite>The Case for Electronic Script-Based Collaboration</cite>, SMPTE Motion Imaging Journal ( Volume: 123, Issue: 7, October 2014); SMPTE, 2014. Available at <a href="https://doi.org/10.5594/j18468" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://doi.org/10.5594/j18468</a></span>

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Maarten Verwaest, Luk Overmeire, Erik Mannens, and Cedric Lejeune; <cite id="bib-10-5594-j18468">The Case for Electronic Script-Based Collaboration</cite>, SMPTE Motion Imaging Journal ( Volume: 123, Issue: 7, October 2014); SMPTE, 2014
<span class="doi">10.5594/j18468</span>
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