Adelaide technology company Cospective wins Emmy award for Game of Thrones technology
AN Adelaide company, which has been a key contributor to the global success of American fantasy drama television series Game of Thrones, has won the top honour in TV for its technology.
AN Adelaide company, which has been a key contributor to the global success of American fantasy drama television series Game of Thrones, has won an Emmy award for its technology.
Glenside company Cospective, which was spun out Adelaide visual effects success story Rising Sun Pictures in 2004, is the winner of an Engineering Emmy award for its cineSync technology.
cineSync is a software application used by production, post-production and visual effects companies around the world to review and approve high resolution, high frame video in sync.
Cospective (formerly known as Rising Sun Research) won an Academy award for technical achievement in 2011 for the work it has done on the Harry Potter and Marvel film series, among others.
On television, it has been used for the production of all seasons of HBO’s Game of Thrones, including the eighth and final season currently being worked on by at least 20 different visual effects companies around the world.
Game of Thrones VFX associate producer Adam Chazen said cineSync had helped with managing multiple vendors in multiple locations, overcoming distance and language barriers.
“cineSync is an essential tool for Game of Thrones. We have people working all over the world so the ability to look, point, and draw on the same image is invaluable. cineSync helps to take away the guesswork and ensures everyone is on the same page,” he said.
How To Get Away With Murder, The Walking Dead, Altered Carbon, A Series of Unfortunate Events and Lost in Space are some of the other productions that cineSync has been used for in television.
The American Emmy Awards recognise excellence within various areas of television and emerging media.
“Our business has grown as a result of the growth in television budgets, scales and viewership thanks to what is happening on Netflix, HBO and Amazon, among others,” Cospective chief executive Rory McGregor told The Advertiser.
“There are at least up another 40 shows under production just for Netflix, which is supporting the growing use of our technology,” he said.
“Game of Thrones would be our biggest single production customer in television while the Marvel series keep us in business on the films side,” he said.
“Supervisors, producers, directors, editors and more the world over have been able to hugely alter their workflow: productions no longer to meet in the same physical location, or get mired in reams of email feedback chains when iterating on a visual element of a show.”
Mr McGregor said HBO made use of cineSync when working concurrently on Game of Thrones’ Season 7 battle scenes.
“The Loot Train sequence and the Frozen Lake battle. While one sequence was shot in Spain, the other was in Northern Ireland. cineSync ensured the production team could review dailies and discuss post, despite the creative team being split up across the northern hemisphere,” he said.
“The television industry is more global today than ever before, with flagship shows shot across numerous locations and post-production companies contributing diverse skill sets from across oceans. cineSync bridges that gulf.
“It fuses creative workflows across the globe, ensuring effective collaboration from concepts through to final edit.”
Cospective licenses the use of its technology to all the parties working on any production, charging them in US dollars.
Cospective is owned by Rising Sun Pictures’ founders Tony Clark, Wayne Lewis and Gail Fuller.
Mr McGregor said Cospective’s four employees will travel to Los Angeles for the 70th Engineering Emmy Awards on October 24.
Top shows and performers were honoured separately at the Emmy Awards on September 18.