Question. Park Road Post Production has chosen SGO to carry out the production and post-production flows for the majority of the stereo work for ‘The Hobbit’, a major Hollywood super-production. Why has the Mistika system trumped its competitors in the audiovisual sector?

Answer. Firstly, it is extremely exciting that Mistika is going to play a key role in Park Road’s work and that a Spanish technology company such as SGO is participating in this major movie production. The main reason why our post-production system has been chosen is that it’s the only system in the market capable of turning around Red Epic stereoscopic material at a high frame rate, adapting to the speed and quality required for this movie. What that means is that SGO is the only company that can process the recorded images in real time at a speed of 48 frames per second, which is twice as fast as normal (24 frames/second). Furthermore, it improves the final product for images shot in three dimensions. All of this ensures that ‘The Hobbit’ will make it to the big screen with a higher quality finish than anyone has seen to date.

Q. SGO, and you yourself, specialize in integrating information technologies to create and handle video material in two and three dimensions. What led you to set up this business?

A. I founded the company in 1993 under the name “Soluciones Gráficas por Ordenador” (SGO). The original idea was to use information technology to support the audiovisual sector and the world of the moving image. Today this is nothing new. However, in 1993, the vast majority of systems did not use these sophisticated computer systems. At that time, the world of computers and the audiovisual content sector were completely separate. We realized that applying computers to the audiovisual sector had an important future, so we created a company with this in mind.

Q. Mistika has been used for ‘The Hobbit’, but it has also been highly successful in other major movies and projects such as ‘The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn’ by Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson. How did you end up developing your own technology and becoming a global leader?

A. In the early 1990s, the technologies being used to create audiovisual content were highly limited, closed systems, which were conceived and developed from the perspective of the video signal. These systems did not take advantage of computer technology. I thought about creating a company that would integrate different technologies to provide audiovisual solutions, but from the perspective of computers instead of approaching it in terms of the video signal. Initially we worked with existing products that could be integrated to provide solutions for the movie industry, but since we are nearly all IT people, we decided to create new products to cover gaps in the market. In 1998 we began to develop our own technology that would complement the other services we had and that would enable us to offer a comprehensive solution to our clients in the audiovisual sector.

"The Hobbit" film scene. Source: Park Road Post Production

Question. Park Road Post Production has chosen SGO to carry out the production and post-production flows for the majority of the stereo work for ‘The Hobbit’, a major Hollywood super-production. Why has the Mistika system trumped its competitors in the audiovisual sector?

Answer. Firstly, it is extremely exciting that Mistika is going to play a key role in Park Road’s work and that a Spanish technology company such as SGO is participating in this major movie production. The main reason why our post-production system has been chosen is that it’s the only system in the market capable of turning around Red Epic stereoscopic material at a high frame rate, adapting to the speed and quality required for this movie. What that means is that SGO is the only company that can process the recorded images in real time at a speed of 48 frames per second, which is twice as fast as normal (24 frames/second). Furthermore, it improves the final product for images shot in three dimensions. All of this ensures that ‘The Hobbit’ will make it to the big screen with a higher quality finish than anyone has seen to date.

Q. SGO, and you yourself, specialize in integrating information technologies to create and handle video material in two and three dimensions. What led you to set up this business?

A. I founded the company in 1993 under the name “Soluciones Gráficas por Ordenador” (SGO). The original idea was to use information technology to support the audiovisual sector and the world of the moving image. Today this is nothing new. However, in 1993, the vast majority of systems did not use these sophisticated computer systems. At that time, the world of computers and the audiovisual content sector were completely separate. We realized that applying computers to the audiovisual sector had an important future, so we created a company with this in mind.

Q. Mistika has been used for ‘The Hobbit’, but it has also been highly successful in other major movies and projects such as ‘The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn’ by Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson. How did you end up developing your own technology and becoming a global leader?

A. In the early 1990s, the technologies being used to create audiovisual content were highly limited, closed systems, which were conceived and developed from the perspective of the video signal. These systems did not take advantage of computer technology. I thought about creating a company that would integrate different technologies to provide audiovisual solutions, but from the perspective of computers instead of approaching it in terms of the video signal. Initially we worked with existing products that could be integrated to provide solutions for the movie industry, but since we are nearly all IT people, we decided to create new products to cover gaps in the market. In 1998 we began to develop our own technology that would complement the other services we had and that would enable us to offer a comprehensive solution to our clients in the audiovisual sector.

"The Hobbit" film scene. Source: Park Road Post Production