General Intelligence

Intelligently navigate disruptive change

Andy Maltz, Founder and Principal

A veteran change leader, Andy is GenIntel's founder and principal consultant. For over four decades, Andy has successfully navigated technology-driven disruptive change in the media and entertainment industry. As a hands-on executive, manager, and individual contributor, Andy's work is evident in products, organizations, communities, and standards throughout the industry.

Current Work

Andy serves as chair of ISO/TC 36 Cinematography, the motion picture industry's international technical standards committee. In this role, Andy oversees the committee's work program, committee management, and projects. ISO/TC 36 has 11 participating countries and 21 observing countries. For more information on ISO/TC 36, please visit https://www.iso.org/committee/48090.html

Andy's standards work and natural attraction to disruptive technology-driven change has also put him squarely in the swirl of Artificial Intelligence. See and hear what Andy had to say on behalf of the motion picture industry at a recent international workshop on the subject here at 00:19:20 and in a Variety Intelligence Platform Guest Commentary.

Results

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Science and Technology Council: Andy was hired by the Academy in 2003 to reignite its long-dormant Science and Technology Council. Given a blank canvas, Andy - together with Academy members and the industry's top technologists and filmmakers - built an organization that quickly became a leader in motion picture technology development, education, and preservation and continues this work today. You can learn more about the Council and its initiatives created on Andy's watch here and here.

The Academy Software Foundation (ASWF): As "the man on the inside," Andy was part of the small team that investigated the state of open source software for motion picture production, identified the need to do something to improve the ecosystem, and created a partnership with the Linux Foundation that quickly became a well-funded and vibrant community to support the continued development of open source software. Andy served as a founding Governing Board member, and co-led the development of the Board's own diversity and inclusion initiative. For more information on the ASWF, please visit https://www.aswf.io

The Academy Color Encoding System: Andy served as Project Director for the development of the standardized digital color management and image interchange system that is used throughout motion picture and television production and in videogame, XR, and other imaging applications. In this role, Andy oversaw development, partner relationships, end-user engagement, IP policy and standards strategy, marketing and adoption, and navigated the conversion of the industry's photochemical film-based production infrastructure to digital. Please visit https://acescentral.com to see what successfully rewiring a 120-year-old industry's technology base looks like.

Digital Preservation: As co-author of the award-winning The Digital Dilemma and follow-up report, The Digital Dilemma 2, Andy is a globally-recognized expert on the challenges of long-term preservation of digital materials. Andy served as a founding member of the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration Advisory Committee on the Electronic Records Archive, project director and principal investigator for a U.S. Library of Congress National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program project, and has spoken in numerous fora all over the world on the subject.

Digital Cinema: As founding President and CEO of Avica Technology Corporation, Andy was a central driver of converting the theatrical motion picture industry from photochemical film to digital projection. Avica's FilmStore was the first and only standard computing platform, comprehensive digital cinema system for both mastering and playback, and its underlying file packaging technologies are incorporated in international technical standards.

Media Authoring Interchange: The Advanced Authoring Format (AAF) is an open, interoperable file format for professional media editing. In his consulting role for Microsoft, Andy authored the requirements document for the project, led the AAF tools and validation development team, and played a key role in AAF evangelism and adoption. AAF is widely used throughout content creation, and is listed as a U.S. Library of Congress Sustainable Digital Format.

Nonlinear Editing for Filmed Entertainment: As a hardware/software/systems engineer, Andy was employee #1 at Cinedco, Inc. where he developed core system hardware and software for the Ediflex, one of the first nonlinear editing systems that ushered in the way all film and video content is edited today.