Festival de Cannes 2008: Star power, HP powered

HP technology is helping transform the way artists, studios and broadcasters create and distribute film while new devices like HP notebooks are merging home theatre with mobility so you can view your movies whenever you want and wherever you want.

In fact, HP has been a driving force in the world of movies for 70 years. One of HP’s first film-making customers, in 1938, was the Walt Disney Company. HP Model 200B resistance-capacity oscillators contributed to the lifelike sound of music in Disney’s now classic "Fantasia."

Today, this partnership with the film industry continues with HP providing technology and services for content creators at every step of the production process – adding fine detail to animated films (“rendering”), restoring film classics, and helping organise, digitise and make accessible the film archives of major studios and industry organisations such as the British Film Institute.

By bringing the benefits of supercomputing to the entertainment industry, HP seeks to push the boundaries of creative filmmaking and to make the job of bringing dreams to life a whole lot easier.

For the first time HP is playing host to the legendary Studio Harcourt at Cannes. Founded in Paris in 1934, the Studio Harcourt immortalised stars such as Marlène Dietrich, Salvador Dali and Jean Cocteau. Cannes film-makers and movie stars will have their photos taken there throughout the Festival. They will be edited and retouched on HP 5500 workstations and printed on the HP DesignJet Z3100 – a printer that has revolutionised the colour experience for graphics professionals.

At Cannes’ elegant Le Majestic Hotel, HP will offer Festival attendees a first-hand look at HP's latest digital entertainment solutions – from MediaSmart HDTV’s and MediaSmart Servers to the ultimate in gaming platforms, the HP Blackbird 002. The custom-designed space incorporates a screening room, lounge and bar.

The presentation at the Festival de Cannes of DreamWorks animation’s latest animated feature, Kung Fu Panda, is one of the Festival highlights.

HP has provided long-time partner and Shrek creator DreamWorks Animation with a full suite of state-of-the-art technology and services to bring to life some of the most stunning and complex scenes ever created in an animated film. Thanks to HP, animators can create features like hair, skin, clothes and water ever more realistically. HP Halo Collaboration Studios and Remote Graphics Software make it possible for animators and film-makers to collaborate as if they were in the same room together even if they are physically working in the four corners of the world.

The result of an unprecedented collaboration between the two companies, the HP DreamColor Technology computer display generates the industry’s first combination of true 30-bit colour – enabling a range of 1 billion colors – in an LED-backlit LCD. This is the backlighting commonly used in small, inexpensive LCD panels that cost a fraction of high-end, studio-quality LCD displays.

“For decades, storytellers have struggled to manage color in an accurate and consistent manner,” said Jeffrey Katzenberg, chief executive officer and director, DreamWorks Animation. “Quite simply, when we make a movie about a big, green ogre, our concern is that our ogre is the same colour of green throughout the film. HP has truly changed the game with its new display, giving DreamWorks Animation full visual fidelity across the board for the first time.”

The world leader in home and office printing, HP is exploring the potential to digitise all types of publishing – personalised direct mail pieces, fine art reproduction, point-of-sale posters and even super-wide billboards.

At Cannes, HP is creating a real-world panorama of print communications for the Festival. As the official provider of graphic arts, HP prints and produces most of the posters, signage and printed mementos on its Indigo, Designjet and Scitex printers.

HP powers the Festival de Cannes and its creative spirit by providing technology tools for everyone – whether they are everyday consumers or epic filmmakers.