DSA Case Study:
Typecast Films | Seattle, USA

Cost was a barrier to entering the Blu-ray market until Typecast found NetBlender’s DoStudio

Academy Award-nominated documentary film authored with DoStudio

Founded in 2005, Typecast Films is a Seattle, WA distributor & producer of quality independent films that challenge cultural and political assumptions about some of the underrepresented peoples and cultures of the world. They aim to present audiences with films featuring international perspectives and experiences not often explored in modern cinema.

Their first major foray into Blu-ray is via their Academy-award nominated documentary film, Iraq in Fragments. The company partnered with Volo HD for HD production work and BD encoding. Iraq in Fragments is visually driven and was a very successful DVD release, so Typecast was eager to find a way to release the film in a high-def format.

“Blu-ray is currently the only viable high-def platform for independents to release their film content,” said Joshua Warren, Director of Media and Production at Typecast. “While many experts are claiming that digital downloads will quickly wipe out optical discs, the fact is that we can not easily get our content distributed though iTunes, Xbox Live Marketplace and other download services because they are closed distribution platforms with intense competition for bandwidth. Packaged media works well for non-Hollywood content.”With their prospects for digital distribution dashed, Typecast turned to Blu-ray. Cost was originally a barrier to entering the Blu-ray market until Warren found an economical, yet professional solution with NetBlender’s DoStudio and Inlet Technologies’ Fathom.

“It was very important to the integrity of ‘Iraq in Fragments’ that the Blu-ray encode be faithful to the color and depth of the original film master. The film has a unique blend of color, modern cinematography and editing – the dynamic nature of the film makes for a very complicated job for an encoder,” said Marshall Riser with Volo HD. “We’ve been very impressed with the quality and detail achieved with the use of Fathom.”

I knew of NetBlender from their work on HD DVD,” says Josh Warren. “DoStudio is a much needed alternative to the expensive, proprietary systems that dominated the market when Blu-ray was introduced. Relying on your replicator to author your disc can be a very expensive endeavor and rarely yields the creative results you desire. We wanted to control the creative authoring process and keep the costs in check. DoStudio allowed us to do that.”

As Blu-ray expands around the world, fueled in large part by non-Hollywood type content, many independent producers like Typecast are considering the jump to Blu-ray

“If you’re thinking about it – do it soon,” counsels Warren. “I think the industry really needs more varied content coming out on BD in 2009. Besides, many documentarians and other filmmakers are using HD cameras to shoot their newer work. BD is a lot more cost effective than a film print (40k) or servers and hosting.”

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