With Louisiana bent on luring all of the movie-making business it can, LONI could be the state's star behind the big screen.
Louisiana might make its ultrahigh-speed computer network available to production companies to promote growth in the movie industry. The move could speed the movie-making process in this state.
Digital footage, like dailies or extremely large digital animation files, could be transferred from Louisiana to Los Angeles in a matter of seconds or minutes rather than hours or overnight.
"The state of Louisiana has the most robust and complex fiber optics network in the country right now," said Les Guice, Louisiana Tech University's vice president for research and development. It can transmit data thousands of times faster than a typical high-speed Internet connection, he said.
The network is called LONI, an acronym for the Louisiana Optical Network Initiative. It connects Louisiana research universities to other universities in many U.S. states.
Louisiana's network will be online by mid-January, Guice said.
LONI's primary function is providing computer power and connectivity for data-heavy scientific research, but officials have set aside a small portion of LONI's use for economic development.
Emphasizing that no commitments have been made to the film industry, Guice suggested that LONI offers intriguing possibilities. "We think that it would be the type of thing that would make Louisiana more attractive to the film industry."
"There is a very sincere interest to make this of value to the economy of the state," he later added.
Guice had a brief conversation with Lampton Enochs, a Shreveport-based movie producer. "We could get in a situation where it could assist in transmitting dailies, work that is done in Louisiana that needs to get to producers and editors in L.A.," Enochs said.
Enochs sees LONI as a piece of the infrastructure -- along with soundstages and crew workers -- that could further enhance the state's movie and TV production industry.
"It would expedite the workflow," said Gary Strangis, co-founder of TurnKey Louisiana, a production services company. "The new technology is particularly intriguing as the entertainment industry evolves into a digital environment as opposed to film."
Bernie Laramie, also a TurnKey co-founder, agrees that LONI has great potential. Digitally based dailies technologies are being tested by the private sector, he noted.
The main asset LONI would offer the film industry is bandwidth, but how the film industry would tap into it is uncertain. Essentially, if a production company is not connecting to LONI's ultra-fast bandwidth through a equally fast connection, it can't utilize the full speed of the network.
Establishing a connection to LONI at one of the state's research universities -- like Louisiana Tech in Ruston or LSU Health Sciences Center in Shreveport -- likely would be costly.
"I'm not sure the economics make sense," Laramie said. "But the technologies to move this are in place."
Robinson Film Center also is looking into LONI. The Shreveport nonprofit plans to open its two-screen theater and film education center downtown in December 2007.
LONI's bandwidth can support HD-quality, two-way video conferencing. Theoretically, Robinson Film Center could host live prescreening question-and-answer sessions with filmmakers who are in other states. The video could be projected onto a movie screen.
John Grindley, executive director of Robinson Film Center, will meet with officials Friday to discuss LONI's possibilities. "It's important for us because it adds another layer to our mission and it makes us a center point for technology."
Grindley also wants to learn how costly it would be to connect to LONI. The closest server is three miles away, at LSU Health Sciences Center. "We're trying to figure out who would pay for that, whether it be grant money or some other source. Some of the 'what ifs' are not answered yet."
Publish Date:
12-12-2006
