cine.net Spells Harry Potter Success for Rising Sun
02 November 2004
The high-speed cine.net broadband network played a crucial role in Australian digital effects specialist Rising Sun Pictures winning visual effects work on the next Harry Potter film.
In a contract potentially worth millions of dollars and dozens of jobs, Rising Sun Pictures will develop computer-generated special effects for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. The company has recently completed work on blockbuster films including The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, The Last Samurai and Paycheck.
Rising Sun Pictures director Tony Clark said cine.net had played a critical role in winning the contract. "When you come from Australia, so far from Hollywood, you need to provide a better service than is available in the US," he said.
"The speed of cine.net, combined with Rising Sun’s client review software 'cineSync', allows our work to be viewed in Los Angeles and London faster than work from suppliers based in those cities."
Based on the national Tier-1 private data network built by Agile Communications, cine.net is a dedicated super-fast broadband network designed to meet the needs of film companies. The network transfers data at speeds as fast as one gigabit (Gb) per second, enabling companies to send gigabytes of film images to studios in Hollywood or elsewhere in a matter of seconds.
Set up with $500,000 in funding from the Government of South Australia to cover capital costs, cine.net was designed to assist screen media companies to serve national and international clients. Inaugural customers include Rising Sun Pictures, Kojo Group, the Adelaide Motion Picture Company, the SA Film Corporation and Integrity Data Systems.
cine.net, which is operated by Cinenet Systems, offers a range of connection options, at 2Mb per second (Mbps), 10Mbps, 100Mbps and 1Gbps. It also provides low-cost data exchange between Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney.
Agile Communications CEO Simon Hackett said the film industry had a business need for speed that could take full advantage of the capacity offered by Agile's national broadband network. "cine.net is way beyond residential technologies like ADSL and is now in the hands of the industry best able to use it to its full potential," he said.
Founded in 1995, Rising Sun Pictures employs about 40 people at offices in Sydney and Adelaide. The company recently completed $3 million of visual effects on the soon-to-be-released Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.
Internet age telco Agile Communications, the wholesale partner to national broadband innovator Internode, was the first SA-based company to gain a national telecommunications licence, granted in May 1998. Using Internet Protocol-based technology the carrier achieves price-performance points unavailable through traditional carrier networks.
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