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HPE news. Tech insights. World-class innovations. We take you straight to the source — interviewing tech's foremost thought leaders and change-makers that are propelling businesses and industries forward.
AUBREY LOVELL
Hey, Bird. I see you are somewhere new and exciting today.
MICHAEL BIRD
Well, Aubrey, I thought I’d give you a quick call as I’m somewhere pretty special…
AUBREY LOVELL
Hang on. Michael, is that the Disney logo behind you?
MICHAEL BIRD
You got it in one!
I am currently at Disney’s StudioLAB to kick off the first episode of a mini-series marking HPE’s 10th birthday.
AUBREY LOVELL
Being a big Disney fan, I am so jealous, what an amazing place to be, shall we do the intro?
MICHAEL BIRD
Sounds good.
I’m Michael Bird.
AUBREY LOVELL
I’m Aubrey Lovell
And welcome to Technology Now from HPE.
AUBREY LOVELL
Welcome to The History of HPE in Ten Objects, a four part mini-series to celebrate our 10th birthday as a company.
MICHAEL BIRD
That’s right. Over the next four weeks, we are going to be looking back at how we got to where we are today from our origin story selling oscillators out of a garage in Palo Alto to our modern-day innovations and the future of technology.
AUBREY LOVELL
Now each week, we are going to be looking at a different aspect of the company: Innovation, Compute, Networking, and New Frontiers.
And this is episode one: Innovation.
MICHAEL BIRD
In our first episode, we return to where it all began – a little company you might have heard of called Disney.
AUBREY LOVELL
Now, normally at this point in the show, I would be taking a dive into the history surrounding our topic of the week but this is a special episode so I’m going to leave it up to our guest to tell us how we got to where we are today. So Michael, who are we talking to this week?
MICHAEL BIRD
So as I mentioned at the beginning of this episode. I visited The Walt Disney Studios StudioLAB in Burbank, California where I spoke with Alice Taylor who is the director of StudioLAB about the relationship between our companies and how our 85 year collaboration has impacted innovation and storytelling.
MICHAEL BIRD
Alice, thank you so much for joining us.
ALICE TAYLOR
It’s a pleasure to be here.
MICHAEL BIRD
So Alice, we will get into what StudioLAB is in just a moment, but to set the scene a little bit, our companies have been working together for 85 years at this point so can you tell us a bit about the relationship between the Walt Disney Company and HPE? Like maybe a bit of a whistlestop tour…
ALICE TAYLOR
I mean the story really goes all the way back to the founding of Hewlett Packard, right? A relatively young Mr. Disney needed specialist equipment for his new movie and he sourced it from two guys working out of a garage in Palo Alto. So over the years, Disney continued to make movies and at the same time, the world has slowly digitised.
This affected both animated films and live-action too and back in 1982, we released a movie called Tron which was the first movie to use a computer to control all of the processes during the shoot – camera adjustments, superimposed graphics and that sort of thing – and for that, we used the HP-9826.1
In the world of animation, as we moved from hand drawn to animating on computers, we used HP Workstations as it, as they could handle the graphics intensive nature of our work.
And more recently, we’ve transitioned to High-Performance Artist VDI – or Virtual Desktop Infrastructure. This came in late 2019 and actually meant that we were in a really good place to respond in the least disruptive way for our staff when remote work became the norm.
MICHAEL BIRD
Wow. So I guess our stories are really quite linked together. Aren’t they?
ALICE TAYLOR
Yep. There's a whole history there.
MICHAEL BIRD
And currently, where we’re sat right now is inside something called StudioLAB. Could you tell me a little bit more about that? And I guess, like, what do you do here?
ALICE TAYLOR
Yeah. So yeah. This is the StudioLAB. Our official line is that “StudioLAB is The Walt Disney Studios' advanced development division for innovation in creative technologies” and what that boils down to is basically we are here to find new ways of storytelling using emerging technology.
MICHAEL BIRD
Yeah that’s pretty cool – now obviously technology is what we’re all about here on Technology Now, of course
So can you tell me a bit about the sorts of technologies which we are working on together?
ALICE TAYLOR
Yeah, sure. I mean I think one of the most interesting ones would be that Virtual Digital Infrastructure which I just mentioned.
MICHAEL BIRD
Could you give us a quick rundown of what that is?
ALICE TAYLOR
Yeah. I hope it’s relatively self-explanatory but VDI is basically a virtual desktop which is hosted on a server rather than on your personal computer which means that if you have access to the server, then you can access your virtual desktop from anywhere. That means you could in theory use any device to access your desktop either in the office or at home or anyone else.2
MICHAEL BIRD
Ok that all makes sense so why was VDI so useful at Disney StudioLAB?
ALICE TAYLOR
Well back in late 2019, we hosted an Innovation Summit here at StudioLAB for the studios which was themed around VDI which was emerging at the time. We invited everyone from all of the different Disney animation studios to participate and share information about what we deemed important at the time and the Artist VDI we were discussing differed from the way VDI was regularly deployed as it needed to be low latency, and demanded a much more powerful graphic processing.
So the virtual nature of this approach allowed us to relocate Artist workstations out of physical offices, at the studios and into a data centre which not only led to a quieter office, but more importantly, enabled flexible and remote working. Artists could log on from home, and could do their work around potential family commitments they might have and then hosting workstations in a data centre also meant that instead of having to buy a load of hardware which may not be being utilised at 100%, we could buy an amount of compute instead, shared across the artists as and when they needed it, so that’s a much more efficient way to run. It was totally win-win for the Studios – the artists had better experience and the Studios were spending their money more efficiently.
So the third big win – I mean I mentioned 2019 so maybe you can see where this is going – but it was something that we couldn’t have predicted but using VDI meant that we were in a really good place to respond rapidly and effectively when that pandemic hit.
MICHAEL BIRD
And that’s Because you already had the infrastructure in place for remote working?
ALICE TAYLOR
Exactly. You’ve hit the nail on the head.
Everything went remote with Covid as you know, but we had already been looking into it becuase virtualising the system we needed to accelerate our plans anyway and then in the pandemic, it just meant that we could, we could move fast instead of having to come up with something brand new and a new response.
Obviously people would have had to have decent infrastructure at home to connect to VDI but because their workstations were virtual, it meant that they could access them from wherever they were. If artists were living somewhere with a stay-at-home order, they could continue to do their jobs without any issues.
MICHAEL BIRD
Wow. That’s super fortunate that you had that foresight and I suppose a lot of it comes down to paying attention to where the world is going and wanting to be at the forefront of the technological curve, right?
ALICE TAYLOR
Yes, absolutely. I mean the studios were paying attention, right, but part of what we do here at the lab is to keep track of the direction technology is advancing in and constantly looking for ways to utilise those emerging tech as they come out and then help our studios so that storytelling does not stop.
MICHAEL BIRD
And storytelling is what you’re all about at Disney?
ALICE TAYLOR
Exactly.
MICHAEL BIRD
OK so let’s take roll back time for a few minutes. We’ve talked about what we’re working on together today but when we first worked together, everything was a little bit more… analogue? So let’s take a look at how we got here
ALICE TAYLOR
Sounds good!
MICHAEL BIRD
And I’m assuming that the device currently sitting between us has something to do with the origin story because if I’m not mistaken, it looks quite like... quite a lot like an HP Oscillator…
ALICE TAYLOR
That would be because this is an HP Oscillator! It’s actually the 200b and this little beast is the beginning of our collective story.
So, Disney, as I mentioned earlier, had produced their third feature length movie, an animated interpretation of eight famous pieces of classical music – you may know where I’m going with this - called Fantasia3 but the cinemas at the time weren’t able to show it in tthe way Disney wanted it, wanted them to, their sound systems simply weren’t good enough. So Disney had created an entirely new system for the film called Fantasound, and that’s where this oscillator comes in.
MICHAEL BIRD
Because before Disney came along, Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard had created what they called the 200A oscillator where this lightbulb here was used as part of the circuit which helped stabilise everything so it worked properly. You could possibly call this…. Their lightbulb moment.
ALICE TAYLOR
Thank you for that terrible joke, but yes. Yes you could.
MICHAEL BIRD
Well, Alice, I am a dad, so I have a reputation to uphold when it comes to dad jokes…
But anyway, as far as I know, Bill Hewlett had taken his 200A oscillator to a meeting of the Institute of Radio Engineers in Portland, Oregon4, which was where Disney first discovered it, right?
ALICE TAYLOR
Yes, exactly. So that meeting there happened to be an engineer from Disney who realised that this oscillator, or similar, was exactly what they needed to test the Fantasound .
So our executives at the time agreed with this engineer because they went to Mr. Hewlett and Mr. Packard and said, “hey. Could you modify the 200a and into the 200b?” this custom for Disney. and that's what you see before you right here. And that’s what they did. And so Disney then purchased eight of these5 for the whopping price of seventy-one dollars and fifty cents each6.
MICHAEL BIRD
It really just happened to be luck that this Disney Engineer was at this meeting when Bill was showing off his new invention.
ALICE TAYLOR
I mean it was an audio meeting - fortuitous serendipity, maybe. I’d hope that there are audio engineers there but yeah. serendipty, and luck.
MICHAEL BIRD
That’s very true!
So the years go by until the next big disruption in the world of movie making – CGI – computer generated images.
ALICE TAYLOR
Yeah, that’s right. Before CGI came along, people used a variety of techniques for practical effects. They would make scale models and film them or used forced perspective to change the apparent size of characters on screen. Here at Disney, we used techniques like rotoscoping7 - still do – which is tracing over a live-action camera frame to make motion appear more natural, and innovative techniques with glass and light to create ripple effects in Pinocchio8
MICHAEL BIRD
It’s really amazing to think how people had to work before we had computers to help animators with creating images for us so let’s focus in on that transition because this is where Workstations come in, right?
ALICE TAYLOR
Yeah. It is.
MICHAEL BIRD
So I guess, before we get into why it was so important, could you just quickly explain what Workstations are?
ALICE TAYLOR
Yes, sure. So Workstations are basically a computer that’s particularly good at performing graphic intensive processes and that’s exactly what you need if you are going to be making a giant digital animated movie.
These workstations would be used in conjunction with render farms to actually produce the movie itself.
MICHAEL BIRD
And I’m assuming a render farm is pretty much what is says on the tin?
ALICE TAYLOR
What it says on the tin. Just think of it like a large number of servers which are all working together to do batch jobs. So you can make your animation on the workstation during the day, and then in the evening you send it off to the render farm to transform it into an actual scene.
MICHAEL BIRD
OK, OK, I think I’ve got it. So what is it about workstations which makes them so vital for production at Disney?
ALICE TAYLOR
Well at the end of the day, Workstations played a huge role in our success during the transition from traditional to digital content creation. So it’s about more than the output right? Obviously the quality of the final product is crucial, but before you can get there, you have to think about the artists too. Workstations could handle the work they needed to do but on top of that, they provided an excellent artist experience.
So at one point, they were the de facto standard across all of the different studios which isn’t an easy feat to achieve.
MICHAEL BIRD
I know they say self-praise is no praise but that is a pretty impressive feat.
Now, we talked about VDI before. So where does this fit into the whole picture?
ALICE TAYLOR
So VDI is... think of it as potentially the next step in the progression. We started with the workstations and render farms but then the workstations went virtual - VDI. So we do still have render farms but in there is evidence that we may be able to roll everything into one bit of compute which helps ensure our resources are being used correctly and that we’re getting the most out of it.
So on top of that, as I mentioned before, VDI allows our artists to work from anywhere and on any device, they aren’t being restricted to being office based so if they have to work at home for whatever reason, and that happens a lot, they are able to do so. This allow us and our artists to have much more flexibility when it comes to our work and our evolving industry.
MICHAEL BIRD
That’s really interesting. And of course we’ve seen lots of changes in recent years. I assume you are finding new and innovative ways to utilise emerging technologies help your teams with what they do?
ALICE TAYLOR
We are exploring loads of practical use cases. We're working closely with the software engineering team within Hewlett Packard Labs, for instance, to build software for something called the dead pixel project.
MICHAEL BIRD
And what exactly is that?
ALICE TAYLOR
So when you have pixels on a screen, if there is an issue with one of them then it doesn’t light up, and you have to look closely, but it’s a dead pixel? And it’ll look like a tiny black dot on your screen which never changes.
Sometimes that’s a hardware issue with the TV screen or the screen you’re looking at which there’s nothing we can do about if the hardware is broken. But if the problem is software base, then that is absolutely something that we have handle at our end. Sometimes the movie can have the problem baked into the actual digital print if you like, and you can end up with render errors in the actual movie and that would very much be a problem that we would need to solve here at our end here at Disney
So dead pixel project is a way of finding those render errors or artifacts. We use machine learning to spot them so they can be fixed, so rather than our QC, our Quality Control folks having to go through the film a frame and quadrant by quadrant, the machine learning can help them with their day job there.
MICHAEL BIRD
That makes a lot of sense. It’s faster and I can imagine more accurate, right? These advances are quite exciting really.
ALICE TAYLOR
Oh absolutely, and it doesn’t just stop at the Dead Pixel Project right.
Due to our amazing Innovation Partnership with HPE we have been able to procure the latest and greatest in emerging technologies to provide to our studio teams. This best in breed technology from HPE, via this Partnership, it unlocks new capabilities that our teams wouldn’t have had access to, enabling new use cases in research and development for our studio banners – so that’s our seven studios, stage and music.
MICHAEL BIRD
Well, in that case, I’m looking forward to seeing what we collaborate on next even more! Alice, thank you so much for joining us on Technology Now and that you so much for hosting us here at Disney StudioLAB.
ALICE TAYLOR
Thanks for coming!
AUBREY LOVELL
wow Michael. I cant believe you got to go to disney. So cool!
MICHAEL BIRD
It really is isn’t it and I think that it’s such a good opener to this series too. Not only is the subject fascinating, but it really links us into upcoming episodes too!
AUBREY LOVELL
Go on…
MICHAEL BIRD
Well the big one I can think of is actually the dead pixel project because it’s using a form of computer vision to check if there are issues and artifacts in the movie renders which is a very similar idea to one of the things that the Spacebourne computer does, which we will be discussing in episode four. The AI is doing a very similar job in completely different situations!
AUBREY LOVELL
I think for me, one of the most amazing parts of this story has got to be the VDI. Like, the fact that Disney StudioLAB had their finger on the pulse of innovation enough to have already started to explore that before it was needed is amazing. but I think it's a testament to Disney's reputation of always being cutting edge and you can see that in what they create.
MICHAEL BIRD
Absolutely, Aubrey. Obviously I’ve mentioned my family before on this podcast, but I think the importance of having that infrastructure which allowed their teams to work from home which improved their work life balance also can’t be overstated.
AUBREY LOVELL
Oh for sure, and we all know that happy workers produce better content, right? But I think the movement from hand drawing to digital work stations and VDI also speaks to how digitisation has given us more freedom too. Like, the digital era has allowed us all more flexibility and agency when it comes to our time and this has benefited companies like Disney and HPE tremendously.
And obviously we’ve been involved with various digital revolutions over the years - but our workstations were part of the original digital revolution in animation too.
MICHAEL BIRD
Yeah absolutely. I think it’s another example of how far technology has come right? Back in the day we had these specialist pieces of kit designed for preparing animations which would then need to be sent off somewhere else to render them and now we can do low level animation on our own computers.
AUBREY LOVELL
Oh absolutely. I mean the high end animation still needs that specialist equipment but the fact that people can do this at home for fun really shows the democratisation of technology too. And to think, this relationship started from an oscillator in a garage! I mean it’s pretty bonkers when you think about it.
MICHAEL BIRD
Yeah it really is.
So you’ve set me up quite nicely for our final thought in today’s episode but I do have a bit of a confession to make, Aubrey. This story starts with Fantasia and the 200b oscillator …
But I’ve never actually seen Fantasia myself!
AUBREY LOVELL
Michael, no! you must stop and watch immediately. It's a classic!
MICHAEL BIRD
I know, I know, I know. But, I thought it would be nice to find out every else’s favourite sections. Producer Harry was a huge fan of the dancing mushrooms – he claims there’s a video of him when he was five or six dancing along with them at home – and Executive Producer Izzie said she just remembers being very stressed when the mops just kept coming at Mickey in his section. But what about you?
AUBREY LOVELL
Well it’s been a long time since I saw it, but my main memory was all of the magic in the stories. I also believe that Alysha who’s been providing production support on this show since it started was a huge fan of the little cupids and the centaurs. How cute!
MICHAEL BIRD
Well, I thought it would be nice to ask Alice the same question and see what her thoughts are about it.
ALICE TAYLOR
My favourite part of Fantasia?
MICHAEL BIRD
Yes.
ALICE TAYLOR
Ahh! Well I mean the obvious answer would be the sorcerer’s apprentice scene because it’s a classic and it introduces the idea of Sorcerer Mickey and the sorcerer’s hat which is emblematic of
Disney these days and there’s a giant sorcerer’s hat outside of Disney animation and in downtown Disney and many more.
But actually my secret personal favourite is the Night at Bald Mountain which is the introduction of Chernabog, the bad guy and the music is classic. It’s that real bad guy moment, sends chills up your arm. I love it to pieces.
AUBREY LOVELL
Okay that brings us to the end of Technology Now for this week. Make sure to come back next week for our second instalment of the History of HPE in Ten Objects where we will be talking about… compute.
Thank you to our guest, Alice Taylor,
And of course, to our listeners.
Thank you so much for joining us.
MICHAEL BIRD
If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please do let us know – rate and review us wherever you listen to episodes and if you want to get in contact with us, send us an email to technology now AT hpe.com and don’t forget to subscribe so you can listen first every week.
Technology Now is hosted by Aubrey Lovell and myself, Michael Bird
This episode was produced by Harry Lampert, Izzie Clarke and Spencer Trinwith with production support from Alysha Kempson-Taylor, Beckie Bird, Alissa Mitry, Emily Nakayama, James Irvine, Todd Soley, Sean Marchetti, Rahil Ali-Mohammad, and Renee Edwards. Our video editor was Mikey Nissembaum and as always, our theme music was composed by Greg Hooper.
AUBREY LOVELL
Our social editorial team is Rebecca Wissinger, Judy-Anne Goldman and Jacqueline Green and our social media designers are Alejandra Garcia, and Ambar Maldonado.
MICHAEL BIRD
Technology Now is a Fresh Air Production for Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
(and) we’ll see you next week. Cheers!
AUBREY LOVELL
Cheers