ednet Provides Network Links for Titanic

Academy Awards a Celebration of Technology

While ednet's contribution to the phenomenally successful film may not be as visible as the work on the special effects wizards and set builders, the unique networking services supplied by ednet saved director James Cameron valuable time, travel expense and further stress. His hard work and focused leadership paid off with Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture. Additionally, the record breaking film picked up nine more Oscars, and ednet technology may have played a role in several of the other award winning crafts: Sound, Sound Effects Editing, Musical Score, and possibly even Film Editing.

Geoff Burdick at James Cameron's production company, Lightstorm Entertainment, contacted EDnet with a challenging set of requirements: Provide technology solutions that would allow Mr. Cameron to be able to edit his next picture at his Malibu compound, and still a) supervise work at his Venice, CA special visual effects studio, Digital Domain, b) supervise sound work at Skywalker Ranch in Northern California, c) participate in the scoring sessions at ToddAO Scoring in Studio City, CA, and d) supervise dialogue replacement at various ADR studios wherever they might be needed.

Many discussions and many months later, Titanic was finally under way and ednet's specialized network services were deployed at various sites for the duration of the production and post-production phases. Mr. Cameron was able to continue constant editing at his home base in Malibu, while utilizing ednet's specialized network services to participate in music recording sessions going on at ToddAO Scoring in Studio City, where James Horner's Oscar winning score was captured by mixer Shawn Murphy. ednet provided Dolby Fax audio equipment, ISDN lines and other technical engineering to transmit CD quality audio for Cameron's step by step review and approval. ednet also provided a T-1 link for Lightstorm Entertainment's VTEL video codecs, enabling Cameron to have 30 frame per second video contact with the music production team.

During the same period, without leaving Malibu, Cameron was able to audition and comment on sound design and sonic effects, featuring the Oscar winning Sound Effects Editing of Christopher Boyce and Tom Bellfort. Sound effects mixes were sent from Skywalker Sound in Northern California. That facility, thirty-five miles north of San Francisco, the post production facility at George Lucas' Skywalker Ranch, has used ednet's services since 1992. A special small-room 6-channel cinema monitoring system was supplied by TMH Labs of Los Angeles to provide playback in the sound room at Cameron's Malibu outpost. The accompanying video was locked in sync by a Colin Broad Model IS-1 ISDN Synchronizer integrated into a seamless end to end solution by ednet.

In the weeks leading up to the final audio mix, the crucial sound effects and dialog premixes were prepared by the team that would win the Oscar for best Sound, Gary Rydstrom, Tom Johnson, and Gary Summers at Skywalker Sound. Their mix room is equipped with six channel Dolby Fax equipment from ednet to allow distant directors to listen in on their work, should the need arise.