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SAPPHIRE PLUG-INS AT HBO:
THE SUBTLE INGREDIENT FOR A BLOCKBUSTER RECIPE
With over 38 million subscribers, Home Box Office (HBO) is America's most successful premium television network. HBO has developed a reputation for offering quality movies, innovative original programming, provocative documentaries, major concerts and championship boxing events. HBO Studio Productions acts as a technical and creative resource for most of the promotional programming for all the HBO channels. And one of the secret ingredients to their successful recipe: Sapphire Plug-ins from GenArts."The toolset in Sapphire Plug-ins is just like a well-balanced recipe. It's a collection of special ingredients that each play a key role in enhancing the overall flavor of the end product," says Dominic Ambrosio, Director of Post Production at HBO Studio Productions in Manhattan.
"We chose Sapphire for a number of reasons: first, they have a great market reputation, and in this industry you don't get a good reputation unless you truly deserve it. Second, the software is straight forward and easy to learn and we find most people become proficient within a week. And last but not least, it's a true productivity-enhancing tool: we've saved time and money using Sapphire Plug-ins because it offers tools that are very deep, yet also fast and very easy to operate," adds Ambrosio.
HBO has been using Sapphire Plug-ins on all of the department's editing systems -- 12 Avid Symphony systems in total -- a little over a year now. All 20 editors make daily use of GenArts tools such as Edge Rays, Blur Motion, Glow Edges, Lens Flare and Diffuse to create a multitude of backgrounds, transitions, color and title effects to complement the very strong color correction capabilities of their Symphony systems.
"You'll find that almost every HBO promotional project, trailer, sports promo, documentary work, feature piece, teaser and sports feature that comes out of this department has probably been touched by Sapphire Plug-ins one way or another," concludes Ambrosio.
About GenArts' Sapphire Plug-ins
Sapphire Plug-ins provide digital artists with a collection of over 200 state-of-the-art image processing and synthesis effects. They fully and seamlessly integrate into a number of editing and compositing systems including: Adobe After Effects and Adobe Premiere; Apple Final Cut Pro and Shake; Avid Media Composer, Xpress, Xpress DV, Symphony and Avid|DS; Discreet combustion, flint, flame, inferno, fire, and smoke. Sapphire Plug-ins offer a comprehensive suite of tools and effects that can transform any film or video clip. They are resolution-independent, include multi-processor support for faster rendering, and run on Windows, Mac, Linux, and Irix. Effects in the package range from everyday tools such as Glows, EdgeRays, LensFlare, Glint, Blurs and RackDefocus, to more exotic effects like Lightning, FlysEye, JpegDamage, HalfTone and Textures.About GenArts, Inc.
Based in Cambridge, Mass., GenArts, Inc. is a premier provider of digital visual effects plug-ins for the film and video industry. Introduced in 1996, Sapphire Plug-ins have become an industry standard for high-end visual effects creation at leading studios, broadcast and post production facilities around the world. They are widely recognized for their unrivaled quality and ease-of-use, and have been used extensively to create an array of feature films such as The Matrix, The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars-Episode I and II, Spider-Man, Ice Age, Pearl Harbor, Final Fantasy, Dinosaur, Titanic, Armageddon, Planet of the Apes, Contact, Star Trek and Godzilla. Additional GenArts product information can be found at http://www.genarts.com.Contact:
GenArts, Inc.
1-617-492-2888
info@
©2003 GenArts, Inc. All rights reserved.
GenArts and Sapphire Plug-ins are trademarks of GenArts, Inc.
All other trademarks mentioned herein belong to their respective owners.