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Rich Trus, Ottawa

Rich Trus, Ottawa

  • Страна: Ottawa, Канада
  • Пол: мужской
  • ВКонтакте: 281602924
  • Университет: Вуз: Carleton University , 2020, Очное отделение, Студент (магистр)
    Факультет: Arts and Social Sciences
    Кафедра: History
  • Деятельность: Carleton University
  • Религия: Orthodoxy
  • Языки: English
  • Книги: I Love You (Edward Monkton); I Need You (Jane Lark)
  • Аудиокниги: Самосбор. Завтра (Киаран); Узы (Игорь Шанин)
Rich слушал аудиокниги
  • Музыка: News from globeandmail.com Lights, camera, software! http://www.globeadvisor.com/servlet/ArticleNews/story/GAM/20030816/TRUS16 Saturday, August 16, 2003 Vancouver's Richard Trus's new computer program is going to revolutionize how movies get made, and make him a very rich man in the process, MICHAEL POSNER reports MICHAEL POSNER Richard Trus carries an Oscar on his arm. Not the golden statuette, but a tattoo in blue. He had it done 10 years ago, a totem of his ambition. He wants to win an Academy Award for technical achievement. The achievement? A piece of software he designed and personally wrote -- all eight million lines of code -- that may be the holy grail for a film and television industry in crisis. A 34-year-old native of Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., now a resident of Vancouver, Trus extravagantly claims his program, dubbed Studio Pipelines, will shave 30 to 50 per cent off current, below-the-line costs of production. Below-the-line means, essentially, discretionary spending: sets, catering, film stock, processing, wardrobe, publicity and post-production improvements Even if he's half right, Trus will not only earn his Oscar; he'll revolutionize the industry and probably make himself a billionaire. If you think that sounds far-fetched, think again. He's already been told by the Academy that the software is being considered for an Oscar nomination next spring. For years, studio executives have dreamed of finding a computer-based program that could help them exercise more control over runaway costs. Other software companies have marketed programs that handle various elements of production, but no one has yet been able to integrate them all in one seamless whole. The task, Trus concedes, was monumental. Investing $2-million of his own money and sleeping an average of three hours a night (often on a friend's sofa), he has created software that, for the first time, links 181 separate modules, from budgeting, scheduling and storyboarding to dailies and post-production. How badly does the industry need something like this? Badly. Costs of production have become so high that studios and networks are cutting back. The problem, says Trus, "is that there has never been a relationship between these various modules. Now, when you take a scene out of the script, you'll instantly see the effect it has on the schedule and on the budget." Trus says he's done demos of the program for four major Hollywood studios and already had three offers to be bought out -- he owns 98 per cent of the company; family and friends own the remainder. The full-court demo takes two weeks to walk through. The typical response he says, is "oh my God, " followed a day or so later by "do you realize how big this is?" The entire program is downloadable to a Palm Pilot, so that a producer on set can see instantly the cost effect of any change. At the click of a mouse, for example, producers and directors can break down a shooting script scene by scene, shot by shot, seeing exactly what props will be required, what actors, what extras, as well as sound and lighting requirements. "We have 512 camera set-ups to choose from, " Trus explains. "You see them 3-D, so you can select the camera set-up you want and storyboard it out. The advantage is the producer sees immediately what the shot is going to look like and what it's going to cost." And, he claims, the cost savings are leveraged exponentially: "One dollar saved here becomes $100 there." Trus says he can dramatically cut the volume of film footage used, reduce the number of shooting days, and the costs of transfer to video. He expects the Studio Pipelines software to manage $1.2-billion in film production over the next 18 months in British Columbia alone. He says provincial officials told him that if he were to take his company elsewhere, it would be the equivalent of Microsoft leaving Seattle. Rob Egan, president and CEO of BC Film, the film-financing arm of the provincial government, says he attended a one-hour demo of Trus's software and came away "impressed. On the face of it, there would seem to be a wide range of potential uses. I'm not an expert in technology, but it would seem to be exciting." So is the potential money. Trus says he wants to become a partner in productions using the software. Thus, in an $80-million production, for example, he'd be taking three to five per cent of the projected cost savings -- or between $2.4 and $4-million. A graduate in computer science, business administration and communications from Brock University, Trus has always evinced a precocious aptitude for high tech and a can-do attitude. He says his outlook was shaped largely by his father, a 35-year employee of General Motors. "He got a gold watch on retirement and he gave it to me. I carry it with me. Like, 'this is what I did. D
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