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The Red Herring January 1998

Go west, young military applications developer
The ever-increasing popularity of special effects has brought government labs to Hollywood by Luc Hatlestad

Its affection for pointless sequels and end-less variations on the buddy-cop theme aside, Hollywood can be an innovative and resourceful place when it needs to be. And when it comes to using special effects, the industry will throw every-thing at the problem. Where once filmmakers routinely passed off ordinary household items like milk bottles as spaceships or simulated torrential storms with fans and garden hoses, they now rely on more sophisticated help. By working with developers of military, medical, and scientific applications, the movie business is pushing the envelope of what it can depict on film. Hollywood is looking outside itself more and more for new technologies and it likes what it sees.

Disaster dividends

The founders of Arete Image Software (MS) never dreamed that their software would be used to propel a bedraggled Kevin Costner around a watery planet, but this is exactly what happened. MS's parent company, Arete Associates, has been around for about 22 years, primarily as a hardware and software developer. Its staff of applied physicists create oceanic and atmospheric condition monitoring products for clients including the U.S. Departments of Defense and Agriculture.

In 1995 Arete spun off AIS, which moved to Los Angeles. AIS's remote sensors are placed in-satellites, on seacraft, and on the ocean floor to track the behavior of ocean currents and meteorological phenomena. This work became the technological basis for much of Waterworld, and AIS has most recently employed its sensors on the sets of Devil's Advocate and Titanic. This crossover from government and military research into Hollywood is not uncommon. With the Cold War over and defense spending plummeting, many technologists who cut their teeth in government-funded research labs have been forced to look for different ways to pay for their research. And government scientists are in demand: as recent summer blockbusters like Independence Day have shown, there's plenty of need for technology that can simulate warfare and natural disasters.

These technologists, however, can have a tough time making the transition from the steady pace and guaranteed paycheck of federally subsidized research into the frenetic world of startup markets. Most research scientists don't know the first thing about creating and marketing a business plan. And analysts say that the government is often unaware that it possesses a marketable technology. "Hollywood is at the leading edge of technology and the challenge for the government is to get the information out when it has something film-makers might want,' says Peter Cowen, president of Strataplan, an investment and analysis company in Los Angeles. "The communities speak two different languages, and the government doesn't always know what it has in the first place."

Washington émigrés must also adjust to the free market. "The difference is in how things are procured," says Rick Heebner, vice president of sales for MS. "The government tells you how much you'll sell your product to them for, but in Hollywood, like elsewhere, you have to set your prices based on the market"

Real-time motion pictures

Another company that's made the transition from the public to the private sector is Ascension Technology. Ascension began in the mid-'80s as an Air Force-funded project that developed helmet-mounted sights for tactical aircraft. The technology has evolved into remote sensors that allow filmmakers to track a model's full-body motion for use in character animation. The company has used the sensors in collaboration with MediaLab and Pacific Data Images, among others. "We can capture naturally subtle human characteristics in real time," says Ascension vice president Jack Scully. "And if you don't need realtime motions, you can tweak the results to make a character's movements more exaggerated and cartoonish"

Echoing many other companies interviewed for this story, Mr. Scully says that Hollywood's demanding requirements keep the creative process flowing. "A lot of pressure comes from the movie people to make our sensors wireless, so the model can jump and twist around without getting caught in the cables," he says. "And eventually we want to make the product more turnkey so that we can get it into more studios and animation houses"

Other technologists who have worked in both sectors agree that while government is demanding in its own regimented way, the creative and marketing dynamism of Hollywood fosters a greater sense of urgency to improve. Andy Sheldon, a manager for applications marketing at Silicon Graphics, one of Hollywood's well-established players, says the creative wants and needs of the movie business are limitless. "Entertainment is one of the most stringent industries of all because models become more complex, bandwidth needs increase, and creativity constantly expands to fill the capabilities of the machines," he says.

Always looking for new talent

And just as part of the daily routine for some Hollywood types is scouring the "trades" for interesting stories, the industry also combs the research labs looking for innovative technologies like the high-density data-storage products being developed by Norsam Technologies. Norsam was born at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, where its scientists had been working in the secure intelligence arena. The company has developed a laser with a 50-nanometer-wide charged particle beam that will enable data to be stored in much greater densities than ever before possible. (CD and DVD lasers are 800 and 350 nanometers, respectively.)

Norsam's first product is a system for archiving analog images, and the company is working on a digital version that it projects will be able to pack 330GB of information on a two-sided disc. Norsam president and CEO John Bishop says this version maybe two years away from market readiness, but that hasn't stopped several motion picture studios from approaching Norsam for help with their storage and archiving problems. "Data storage is just like sex; you can never get enough," jokes Mr. Bishop.

Hollywood's interaction with the labs hasn't been one-way: just as the movie business has actively co-opted technology from government and other industries, filmmakers' creativity has sent much inspiration in the other direction as well. Mr. Sheldon of Silicon Graphics says that technology his company developed for Hollywood is now used in computer-aided design, oil and gas exploration, and the analysis of everything from auto parts to sneakers. "Photo realism has been a mainstay of Hollywood that the industry has brought into the realm of creating everyday objects," Mr. Sheldon says.

With each summer's rollout of ever more elaborate effects-based movies, the obvious question is, Will the money run out on these big-budget projects? Readers may recall the commonplace prediction that Waterworld's disappointing returns spelled the end of such costly special effects blockbusters, yet the $200-million-plus Titanic is this season's most hyped release.

The last tycoons

One reason Hollywood can continue making these behemoths is that, as in the rest of the high-tech industry, when capabilities increase, costs fall. "If we were to shoot Waterworld with the technology we now have, we could cut its budget by at least one-third," says MS president and CEO Stanton Rutledge. And analysts agree that the movie industry is unique in its willingness to spend money if it thinks it can get big returns. "Hollywood has always had the luxury of having a certain number of people and studios flush with cash, and recent investments in special effects have come back to them multifold," says Mr. Cowen.

But he also cautions that Hollywood is as prone to downturns as any other sector, as evidenced by recent shakeouts in the effects arena. "Sometimes there's a lull because there's a finite number of major players in the industry," he says. "Only a few big houses understand the technology; and people look to them to test it and see if it's a hit before they make the leap and adopt it themselves."

Overall, though, the use of effects in films is clearly on the rise. Mr. Cowen sees a sort of reversal of the transition from lot-based shoots in the '40s to location-based shoots in the '70s: the next decade, he says, will see a shift from location-based film-making to more reliance on simulation, as was used for crowd scenes in movies like Titanic and Braveheart. "We'll see cost savings in doing simulation, and once people have invested in special effects, they'll be more likely to use the technology again later," he predicts. "There will still be lot-and location-based shots, but younger directors will be hip to the new technology, and simulation will take a piece of the pie."

With military research and defense spending in remission, it's a pie from which the new government entrepreneurs would very much like a slice.

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