Three Kodak technologists will be honored this week for significant imaging innovations that have helped to advance the entertainment industry.
Press Release from Kodak
HOLLYWOOD, October 26, 2009-Three Kodak technologists will be honored this week for significant imaging innovations that have helped to advance the entertainment industry. The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) will recognize the achievements of the three Kodak technologists - Drake Michno, Richard Wheeler and Nestor Rodriguez - at its annual Honors and Awards Ceremony, to be held October 29 here at the Hollywood Ballroom of Renaissance Hotel. SMPTE is the industry's leading society for the promotion of new technology and innovation in visual entertainment.
"I am always thrilled when an esteemed industry organization such as SMPTE recognizes the excellence of Kodak's technical community," says Gary Einhaus, vice president and chief technology officer of Kodak's motion picture division. "Through the years, Kodak technologists have collaborated with our customers to bring great innovations to the motion picture industry - including color film, sound, and digital intermediate systems. We have continually improved the quality of our products to create a rich and flexible palette for our customers to use to tell their stories."
Michno, a research fellow for Kodak's motion picture Media Design Division, will receive one of the Society's highest honors: the Technicolor/Herbert T. Kalmus Gold Medal. This distinguished technical award, which dates back to 1956, recognizes Michno for his work on the creation of advanced silver halide-based imaging elements used for image capture in the motion picture and television industry. Spanning a 32-year tenure at Kodak, Michno's participation has resulted in several novel camera origination films which have received Oscar® and Emmy® Technical Awards. Michno's research also directly supported the creation and launch of Kodak's VISION3 line of motion picture camera negative films, a new technology platform that allows film emulsions to process light more effectively and record greater detail in the highlights. An author of 23 separate patents, Michno is currently engaged in design and integration efforts directed toward increasing the performance and utility of future generations of Kodak color negative films.
"To be selected as this year's recipient of the Technicolor/Herbert T. Kalmus Award from SMPTE - a dynamic and critical component of the entertainment industry - is an exceptional honor," says Michno. "However the efforts acknowledged by this award would not have been possible without the participation of many dedicated colleagues, past and present, whose contributions were essential to the success of these endeavors."
Kodak's Rodriguez, a senior technical associate, and Wheeler, a senior principal scientist, were recipients of last year's SMPTE Journal Award, and will again be awarded a SMPTE Journal Certificate of Merit in recognition of their most recent article titled "Integrated Calibration and Management of Color, Tone, and Image Structure in a Digital Intermediate System." This piece describes a system and method for automatically creating calibration functions that convert color, tone, and image structure into a common exchange space, providing features that allow the user to accurately preserve the imaging attributes of existing motion picture film images, or to create custom renderings that are faithfully reproduced when the images are displayed on film or digital devices.
Rodriguez's most recent work in R&D for Kodak's Entertainment Division has been leading several technical teams in developing new digital product technology and workflows for motion picture and TV related to both film and digitally originated images. Wheeler is also with the R&D group of Kodak's Entertainment Division where his current work is focused on optimizing the design of digital intermediate systems and digital workflows for motion picture and television applications.
"While technology, innovation and marketplace dynamics continue to evolve at an ever-increasing rate of speed, some things will never change," adds Einhaus. "From our customers' perspective, the motion picture business will always be about telling stories in which the technology is transparent, where the technology works behind the scene to enable the filmmakers' creativity. That's where Kodak scientists continuously strive to serve this industry - by providing the best solutions across the evolving workflow and helping those technologies work seamlessly together in order to bring a filmmaker's vision to the screen, more faithfully, efficiently, and at the highest levels of performance."
About Kodak's Entertainment Imaging
Kodak's Entertainment Imaging Division is the world-class leader in providing film, digital and hybrid motion imaging products, services, and technology for the professional motion picture and exhibition industries. For more information, visit www.kodak.com/go/motion, or follow Kodak Motion Picture Film on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Kodak-Motion-Picture-Film/40524618557
About the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers
The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) is the leading international technical society for the motion imaging industry. As an internationally recognized and accredited standards-setting body, SMPTE develops standards, recommended practices and guidelines and spearheads educational activities to advance engineering and moving imagery. Since its founding in 1916, the Society has established more than 600 standards including the physical dimensions of 35mm film and the SMPTE time code. More recently, it codified the MXF file format to support the exchange of professional AV content and crafted the Digital Cinema Standards, which paved the way for digital movie theaters. Headquartered in New York, SMPTE is comprised of engineers and other technical specialists, IT and new media professionals, filmmakers, manufacturers, educators and consultants in more than 65 countries. They are joined at SMPTE by more than 200 sponsoring corporations, principal players in content creation, production and delivery for all platforms and in entertainment hardware and software. www.smpte.org.
