Stockland Martel

For the third and final installment of my series of interviews looking at the making of Wired’s September 2010 motion cover, I talked with Hugh Milstein and Tim Wilcox of the LA-based postproduction company DigitalFusion, who worked with Scott Dadich, Wired’s creative director, and Carolyn Rauch, Wired’s photo editor, on translating Scott’s design into motion. (Click here to read my interview with Art Streiber and here for the one with DP/editor Adam Grossman.)

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Joel McHale on the cover of Wired's September 2010 iPad edition. Photo by Art Streiber.

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Early experiments with motion covers lead to working on Wired’s September issue.

“Internally, we had been putting some samples together of moving covers and editorial content for magazines, foreseeing that the natural evolution for them was going to be these tablet devices like the iPad. Several of our samples were using footage that Art Streiber had shot for this very purpose, so we were eager to get these in front of influential eyes to show them the potential of what could be accomplished in this medium.

Art was working on the Joel McHale shoot with Scott Dadich, the creative director of Wired, and had mentioned that Scott should take a look at what we had been up to, perhaps implementing our motion cover concepts into the Wired magazine application that they were developing for the iPad. We joined them on the set for a demonstration, and within the next day or so, Scott was asking us to assist in bringing their cover starring Joel McHale to life, in essence creating the first moving cover ever done for the iPad.”

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The assets and how they worked with them.

“We were given PDF and InDesign files of the cover of the digital edition of the magazine and an edited cut of the footage that was to be composited over it. Scott’s idea was to have the cover slowly build in to play up the on the gag of Joel McHale joking about the waiting time for the app to download, so our animation accentuates that slow lengthy download. We worked closely with both Scott and Carolyn Rauch, the photo editor of Wired, as well as making sure the tech specs were in line with the needs of Adobe for programming and implementation into their pipeline for creating the application.”

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Hugh Milstein (left) and Tim Wilcox of DigitalFusion.

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Why having a film background was essential.

“[Producing a motion cover] is uncharted territory and a departure from the pace and timeline that magazines are used to. One of the things that we bring to the table is not only a longstanding understanding and transparent working relationship with photographers and the magazine industry, but deep roots in the feature-film side of the business, as well. Myself and Tim Wilcox, our creative director of CGI and interactive technology, both cut our teeth in the production world. Tim has spent the last two decades moving from visual FX to the art department on the preproduction side as a concept designer. This understanding of workflow is going to be instrumental in bridging the gap between traditional editorial processes and live-action material, graphics, and effects.

The challenges are subtle, as this is a visual medium just as photography is. It is, however, a more collaborative process, just as a film would be, in the sense that there is more of a creative team involved. There is a different approach to a shoot in as far as planning for how the scripted footage will be edited and integrated with any type of other moving visual elements, whether for a cover, editorial, or advertising needs, so as to fulfill the vision of the creative director and team.”

What DigitalFusion does: from photo management and CGI/interactive to working on book projects with shock rocker Marilyn Manson and actor Viggo Mortensen.

“DigitalFusion has entered its second decade as a premier provider of production and rental, postproduction, and software for our industry. We focus on products and services that support photographers in their business of making and selling compelling images and content. Kodak use to say, “You push the button; we do the rest,” so multiply that in today’s Internet and tech world, and that’s where we live.

DigitalFusion has been advancing some new trends in the industry, and our lab and technical staff have been working very hard to support these new initiatives. Recently, we’ve made significant improvements in software with our cloud-based DFStudio online photo-management service, and it’s really exciting to see individual photo studios and entertainment companies base their professional workflow on our platform. We’ve also added direct manufacturer camera sales to our company. CGI and interactive is also an exciting arena for us to work in, and brings opportunity for us to collaborate and partner with creatives and photographers looking to develop moving and still images.

Our client and project base is diverse and ranges from the personal art project to commercial advertising campaigns. Our digital techs are on set daily with the world’s best photographers, helping to set the bar for on-location capture and processing. We’ve recently done capture or post work on campaigns for Verizon, the iPad, Fox Photo Galleries, HBO’s True Blood, and Virgin America. We have major archives inhouse that we are capturing and archiving for the Frank Sinatra Estate and the Dan Eldon Creative Visions Foundation, as well as Sony Television archives. This past year, the Redbook, by Carl Jung, and Taschen’s Magic 1400′s to 1950′s were both published and represent a huge leap forward in mobile fine-art capture technology that we’ve mastered.

We’re also proud to work with many publishers to perfect their photographic content and have recently worked with Marilyn Manson with his watercolor series and a newly released book by Viggo Mortensen called Canciones De Inverno from Perceval Press. We even had time to work on the graphics for a new skateboard line for Pink Lava—very cool.

Our company has also been an industry pioneer in creative technologies, and the new motion cover for Wired magazine, directed by Art Streiber with Scott Dadich, begins to show the types of new jobs that will be available to photographer/directors in the coming years. It’s a very exciting time for our industry!”

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