Our Work

To write the script and produce this video episode of Entertainment Engineering Television (EETV) featuring Cirque du Soleil, editors from Entertainment Engineering flew to Las Vegas in 2008 and met with Keith Wright and Erik Walsted, technical managers at the time for the Cirque production of “KA.”

Getting a private, behind-the-scenes tour and interviews was an extremely important part of the process for writing a story about the motion-control technologies used in the KA stage. We approached this as an editorial story first, then developed it into a video.

With the consent of Cirque du Soleil, we were able to mention the company Parker Hannifin and the “role” their hydraulic products played in controlling the massive KA stage featured in our story. Parker ended up sponsoring the video, and supporting its distribution through their own internal distribution channels.

This episode of EETV was included in Parker’s OnTV, a video newsletter the company produced. They also published a printed newsletter, which mentioned the episode of EETV to thier global network.

Motion Capture In Planet of the Apes Movies

2011's Rise of the Planet of the Apes necessitated a push into the new realm of on-set performance capture. By contrast, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes exists very much out of doors in the cold, wet ape domain of Vancouver. Although the four-part series on Planet of the Apes movies is only about 1,500 words, it took several years to write. What most people don’t initially see or realize about this series of brief stories is the time it took the editor to gain the trust of the people at WETA Digital, so he could interview the technical people. It was not enough to just understand the recent technical progress in digital filmmaking and know what questions to ask about the supporting software and hardware. Once we gained the trust of WETA Digital, we got a rare look into the craft of film-making using motion capture technologies, sometime referred to as “performance capture.” By comparing 2011's Rise of the Planet of the Apes with the later released Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, we were able to show how motion-capture systems helped film-makers.

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Entertainment Engineering - Kung-Fu Panda

While researching a story about Hewlett-Packard computers and servers used to make the movie Kung-Fu Panda, our editors found a second engineering story about the man behind the movie’s main character Po.

Po struggles with becoming a master of kung fu. But not many people know that Mr. Ping, Po’s goose father and the owner of a noodle shop in the movie, is voiced by James Hong.

Hong himself is actually the son of a noodle maker, whose father had a noodle shop, just like the character he voices in the movie. And so, as a kid, Hong made noodles.

Hong totally understood the experience that Po was going through because Hong’s family wanted him to be an engineer. He decided to pursue a career in acting, much like the character Po pursues his dream of becoming a kung-fu master instead of taking over his father's noodle shop.

Military Engineering Report

This editorial item was prepared specifically for the publication Engineers’ Guide to Military & Aerospace. It describes concepts that are important for the publication readers to know about maintenance of military aircraft. The by-line was given to an engineer at the client who helped identify the concepts and develop the piece with our editors. In addition to serving the needs of readers, the piece also helped establish the client as an authority on aircraft maintenance and raise thier visability among thier targeted audience. The story ended up earning three pages within the magazine when published and was mentioned on the publication's cover.