Ken Beckman to head HD and Electronic Cinema at Lobitos Creek Ranch

Half Moon Bay California: Ken Beckman a 30 year veteran in the film and video industry has joined the studio at Lobitos Creek Ranch to establish the High Definition and Electronic Cinema department. Beckman was staff producer at the legendary Xerox Parc research center in Palo Alto California from 1978 until 1986. Subsequently he has worked for ILM, Lucas Digital and Apple among his many clients focusing his career on digital technology for feature and independent film/video production.

Beckman is a member of the SMPTE DC28 Digital Cinema Technology standards committee that has been convened to develop the standards and protocols for the entire Electronic Cinema workflow. His efforts will help develop recommendations from camera origination through Post-Production and encompass the display aspects of feature and other HD presentations.

"I’ve worked with Ken since the seventies" commented Steve Michelson, Executive Producer at Lobitos Creek Ranch, "he brings an extraordinary perspective to the practical decisions necessary for the wide range of considerations including aspect ratios, formats and workflow processes we must develop for individual projects"
At Lobitos Creek Ranch Ken will be responsible for designing and supervising the workflow procedures for all projects that require or combine Widescreen 16X9 and Full Frame 4X3 media in either High Definition or Standard Definition.

"Our industry is in an exciting period", states Beckman. "at the Ranch we recognize the need for an entirely different approach for producers faced with the daunting choices of Electronic Cinema. Our goal is to streamline and provide a cost-effective workflow on any project. It’s so easy to miss important steps in all of this and the costs of not figuring things out correctly are higher than ever."

Beckman will manage an already crowded field of HD and SD formats including Sony’s SR and DVCAM, Panasonic’s DVC Pro 50 and the new entrants including Panasonic/Apples HD DVC Pro 100 and JVC/Sony’s new HDV format.

Recently completed at the Ranch for Producers David Bott and Gary Reber has been the Home Theater Cruise DVD. The project has been the studios first HDV post-production job using the new JVC HDV format. Editing was completed using Final Cut Pro. "The workflow on a project like this is a case in point" states Beckman. "The original material was shot at 720/30P and the editing was done in standard definition prior to the creation of an uncompressed version for the DVD encoding".