Director's friend
director's friend was a Cologne company that wrote digital film history with its development of a portable hard disk recorder (df-cineHD). In 2001, a modified version was used for the production of the HDTV feature film Russian Ark , the first film to be recorded directly to hard disk. This technique made it possible to realize the film in a single take (96 min.).
history
director's friend was founded in 1998 by Erhard Giesen and Dirk Meier to develop a portable computer for digital film editing. In 2000 they received the “Pick of Show” award for their portable editing system df-silver at the largest trade fair for broadcast and film technology (NAB) in Las Vegas. A year later, they presented the world's first uncompressed digital recording directly from an HD camera at the same trade fair. For this purpose, they had developed the df-cineHD and the prototype of a digital film cassette called “HDreel”, for which they received the German Innovation Prize from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media in January 2002 . At the NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) in 2002 director's friend showed together with the Viper FilmStream Camera from Thomson the uncompressed recording of RGB data (“4: 4: 4”) and received the “Pick Hit” award for this. Recording in full resolution without undersampling was the model for the HDCAM SR format developed by Sony. With its technological approaches and workflow ideas, the company director's friend laid the foundations in the field of high-resolution digital film production, but had to file for bankruptcy in 2003.
Web links
- director's friend in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Nida-Rümelin awards innovation prize 2002 . Spotlight: Film from February 4, 2002. Online at mediabiz.de.