HP Halo Helps Bring the Kingdom of Far, Far Away to Life
HP Halo has fundamentally changed how DreamWorks Animation does business by not only shortening the company’s production schedules, but also allowing it to marshal the best talent available while eliminating the lost productivity due to travel. Says Katzenberg, “Halo enhances collaboration. It enhances creativity. It allows much great spontaneity. Shrek the Third is being made in Redwood City; it’s being made in Glendale,” adding that “You always want to be as close to the decision as you can, and this allows you to be pretty much anywhere.”

During the making of Shrek the Third, the latest feature in the Shrek series, DreamWorks Animation again looked to HP Halo to travel less and collaborate more. The ability of Halo to blend the virtual and the real, creating a setting where relationships can be built and ideas can take shape is crucial to DreamWorks’ business. Specifically, DreamWorks has termed this ability to have back-and-forth, realtime discussions as “audio chaos.” This chaos is particularly important for artists and storytellers who see the ability to interrupt one another as a crucial part of the creative process.

HP’s Halo Collaboration Studios and Remote Graphics Software enabled the collaboration of dozens of cross-site artists between DreamWorks Animation’s studios in Glendale and Redwood City. Halo studios played a key role in the collaborative efforts on every part of the filmmaking process -- from story development through production to planning final film release.

HP Halo Collaboration Studios also allowed production teams to share valuable resources and talents at each site to review storyboard and visual development pitches and participate in artistic collaboration meetings. For example, when designing the pattern for Queen Lillian’s dress, artists were able to share actual fabric swatches using the high-definition document camera and collaboration screen. By placing the swatch on the table and zooming in on it with the camera, the team was able to capture the textures and exact colors of the fabric and reproduce them on the big screen.

Darren Podrabsky.

A Powerful Partnership
Partners since 2001, HP and DreamWorks Animation are working together to bring a new dimension to both animated film production as well as revolutionizing how companies around the world do business. With HP Halo, companies can transcend time and space to collaborate in realtime with colleagues and partners around the globe. Just as DreamWorks Animation has leveraged HP Halo to speed production times and gain access to talent located around the globe, Fortune 1000 companies such as PepsiCo, ABN AMRO Inc. and Novartis can utilize this technology to make fast, sound strategy decisions and to communicate with globally dispersed industry experts.

In short, Halo is an experience, not a physical space. It is an experience represented by real-time, natural, personal connections that allow executives to be in more places in one day, to be engaged in more team discussions and to be more involved in the decisions that impact their business. However, a true understanding of the possibilities of Halo can only be gained by experiencing it for yourself. I’d like to personally invite you to experience Halo in one of our demonstration centers, so you can begin thinking about what it can do for your business.

Darren Podrabsky is the marketing manager for the HP Halo Collaboration Studio. He brings 10+ years of marketing experience at HP to this position. Prior to this assignment, Podrabsky served in a variety of marketing and business strategy functions at HP, including worldwide category manager for digital projection systems. Podrabsky has also served as a future product manager and current product manager in the inkjet business unit. Prior to his marketing roles, Podrabsky was a senior buyer and business process analyst. The HP Collaboration Studio represents the latest startup venture that Podrabsky has played a significant role in developing.