Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: F-T Member Ted Costas To Receive Academy Award

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Posted by Michael Coate (Member # 757) on 01-25-2007, 08:20 PM:

Congratulations to film-tech member Ted Costas!

Press Release:

quote:

Dolby Employees to Receive Academy Award in Scientific and Technical Category for Environmental Film Initiative

San Francisco, January 25, 2007-Dolby Laboratories, Inc. (NYSE: DLB) announced today that three employees, Ioan Allen, Senior Vice President; Ted Costas, Director, Distributor Services; and Martin Richards, Principal Staff Engineer, will receive an Academy Award® in the Scientific and Technical category to recognize their leadership in the cyan movement, an industry-wide environmental effort to convert silver-based 35 mm film to cyan dye analog soundtracks. The Scientific and Technical Academy Awards will be presented on Saturday, February 10, 2007.

"Dolby is extremely honored the Academy has recognized the company's commitment to both the environment and the industry as a whole," said Tim Partridge, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Professional Division, Dolby Laboratories. "Ioan, Ted, and Marty's leadership in the cyan dye movement demonstrates Dolby's dedication to scientific innovation beyond enhancing sound and video technology for the industry."

The cyan dye movement was conceptualized through technology described in a Dolby patent, which was donated to the film industry. In 1998 the Dye Track Committee, led by Dolby staff and including representatives from film stock companies, film laboratories, film distributors, and exhibitors, was formed to lead the conversion movement. Until recently, analog soundtracks were placed on film by a silver application procedure that used millions of gallons of water a year and tons of chemicals, some caustic and hazardous. For nearly a decade the Dye Track Committee worked to coordinate a change from the silver addition process to pure dye cyan soundtracks and with theatre exhibitors to equip theatres with the required red light readers to play back the cyan dye soundtracks on projectors.

"The huge success of the cyan movement is due to the dedication and collaboration of many individuals in the film industry, and we are proud to be among a group of distinguished colleagues that are receiving this special award this year," said Ioan Allen, Senior Vice President, Dolby Laboratories. "It has been a pleasure being part of this industry change."

Dolby Laboratories has won ten Academy Awards for various achievements in the film industry. In addition to the Academy Award in the Scientific and Technical category, the company is proud to announce that all movies nominated this year for Achievement in Sound Editing and Mixing utilized Dolby® Digital sound technology. This marks the 29th consecutive year that films released with Dolby audio technologies have earned Academy Award nominations for outstanding sound quality.

Nominees for Achievement in Sound Editing include:

Apocalypto (Buena Vista)
Sean McCormack and Kami Asgar
Dolby Digital

Blood Diamond (Warner Bros.)
Lon Bender
Dolby Digital

Flags of Our Fathers (DreamWorks and Warner Bros., distributed by Paramount)
Alan Robert Murray and Bub Asman
Dolby Digital

Letters from Iwo Jima (Warner Bros.)
Alan Robert Murray
Dolby Digital

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (Buena Vista)
Christopher Boyes and George Watters II
Dolby Digital

Nominees for Achievement in Sound Mixing include:

Apocalypto (Buena Vista)
Kevin O'Connell, Greg P. Russell, and Fernando Camara
Dolby Digital

Blood Diamond (Warner Bros.)
Andy Nelson, Anna Behlmer, and Ivan Sharrock
Dolby Digital

Dreamgirls (DreamWorks and Paramount)
Michael Minkler, Bob Beemer, and Willie Burton
Dolby Digital

Flags of Our Fathers (DreamWorks and Warner Bros., distributed by Paramount)
John Reitz, Dave Campbell, Gregg Rudloff, and Walt Martin
Dolby Digital

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (Buena Vista)
Paul Massey, Christopher Boyes, and Lee Orloff
Dolby Digital

The Scientific and Technical Academy Awards will be presented at the Beverly Wilshire hotel in Beverly Hills, California on Saturday, February 10, 2007.

The 79th Annual Academy Awards will be televised live from Hollywood's Kodak Theatre in high definition and Dolby Digital 5.1 by the ABC Television Network on Sunday, February 25, 2007 at 5:00 p.m. PT / 8:00 p.m. ET.

About Dolby Laboratories

Dolby Laboratories (NYSE: DLB) develops and delivers products and technologies that make the entertainment experience more realistic and immersive. For four decades Dolby has been at the forefront of defining high-quality audio and surround sound in cinema, broadcast, home audio systems, cars, DVDs, headphones, games, televisions, and personal computers. Based in San Francisco with European headquarters in England, the company has entertainment industry liaison offices in New York and Los Angeles, and licensing liaison offices in London, Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, and Tokyo. For more information about Dolby Laboratories or Dolby technologies, please visit www.dolby.com.

Posted by Cameron Glendinning (Member # 3516) on 01-25-2007, 09:27 PM:

Congratulations on your great work Ted Costas! [thumbsup]

Posted by Paul Linfesty (Member # 214) on 01-25-2007, 10:20 PM:

It's a bit odd that Dolby would brag about all the oscar nominated films utilizing their technology. After all, ALL films from the U.S. distributors utilize Dolby, don't they?

Posted by Joel N. Weber II (Member # 3530) on 01-27-2007, 02:18 AM:

quote: Paul Linfesty
It's a bit odd that Dolby would brag about all the oscar nominated films utilizing their technology. After all, ALL films from the U.S. distributors utilize Dolby, don't they?

Back around 1993 or 1994 there were at least a handful of films with DTS timecode and DTS disks, and analog tracks that would be played through the Dolby A decoder on a theater's sound processor. I think Sneakers and Toy Story may have been examples of this, but I might be misremembering. At that time, I suspect the Dolby A patents had expired, but not the Dolby SR patents.

The name Dolby is presumably a trademark, and encoding with non-Dolby equipment and calling it a Dolby soundtrack would probably be trademark infringement. But I believe US trademark law says that this depends on how agressively Dolby chooses to defend their trademark.

Somewhere I've seen films (probably several years ago) that listed some non-Dolby name in the credits for the soundtrack format; I assume this would be because they were using some alternate vendor after the patents had expired, and needed to avoid trademark infrigement.

But I wouldn't be surprised if most of the revenue these days comes from DVD sound licensing, and being able to say that your soundtrack format is used on virtually all theatrical releases might be useful in arguing that you should get royalties for every player of 5" optical movie discs sold. Dolby Digital is required for DVD players; DTS isn't. I think at least one of blu-ray or HD-DVD requires players to support both Dolby Digital and DTS.

Posted by Louis Bornwasser (Member # 3063) on 01-27-2007, 07:46 AM:

My understanding is that all films are mastered Dolby and that other formats get a dupe of the Dolby. This happened about the time dts changed its level specification for subs. Louis

Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 01-27-2007, 07:39 PM:

Yes. Well then.

Congratulations Ted. [beer]

Posted by Lyle Romer (Member # 1266) on 01-27-2007, 08:19 PM:

There were a few DTS only releases (mostly from Universal and MGM) in the mid 90's that had "DTS Stereo" as the analog track. I believe this was just a Dolby-A soundtrack without the license fee paid. There were a couple of pre-digital sound releases that were "Ultra-Stereo" but I'm not sure what encoding process they used.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 01-27-2007, 09:29 PM:

Congrats to all you guys on the award but you know winning a major indystry award for anything to do with Cyan this has got to give Guttag a major stroke [Roll Eyes]

quote: Lyle Romer
There were a couple of pre-digital sound releases that were "Ultra-Stereo" but I'm not sure what encoding process they used.

Ultra Stereo built their own encoding systems and last I heard from Clint they still exist. I also am pretty sure that's what Jack Cashin won the Oscar for the design of.

Mark

Posted by Louis Bornwasser (Member # 3063) on 01-28-2007, 05:35 AM:

Congrats also!!

Isn't it fine that, now that Digital (audio) is well accepted; analog has been improved so that there is not a great difference? Many still opt analog in non-critical situations. Louis

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 01-28-2007, 11:31 AM:

Louis,

In some rare cases the analog is actually better!! Sad that many don't bother to listen to it.

Mark

Posted by Ron Curran (Member # 3631) on 01-28-2007, 04:52 PM:

Agreed, Mark.
In the first two spools of our print of the Queen, the Dolby Digital track is slightly out of synch so we switched to SR which is in synch and sounds at least as good.

We should try it more often.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 01-28-2007, 09:34 PM:

Congratulations! [thumbsup]