In our third episode covering NAB 2010 (#81) we talk with Ted Shilowitz and get exclusive access to the Epic demo room at RED Day, we talk with Michael Coleman and Karl Lee Soule from Adobe to get some insight into the CS5 releases of After Effects and Premiere, and Angus MacKay brings us up to date on Avid’s NAB news including reading ProRes and RED files directly.

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Of all the coverage we bring you from NAB our annual wrap up roundtable is one of the most popular. This year Jason Wingrove (Red Centre), Dave Edgar and Mat Graham (fxphd) join John, Mike and Jeff to share what they saw and heard on the show floor.

Topics include Black Magic dropping DaVinci Resolve’s price to $995, Red Rock Micro’s cool iPhone follow focus tool, Autodesk, Assimilate Scratch, Adobe CS5, Arri Alexa, RED Epic, Avid… plus a whole lot more. Visit the fxpodcast page for direct downloads and RSS feed links. To be notified automatically and have the episodes downloaded in iTunes, subscribe via this link.

A few links and photos after the jump…
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In our second episode covering NAB 2010 (#80) we look at Cineform, the latest release of Mocha and we get details on Arri’s latest offering for digital cinematography, Alexa. This new camera can record raw files and at the same time generate ProRes files for immediate use in post production so we asked to shoot the interview with the Alexa, one of the first times the camera has been used outside of Arri.

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As part of our continuing labor series we sit down with Tom Walsh, President of the Art Directors Guild to discuss the role of the Guild. We talk about job categories represented by the Guild, the global business, how the Guild relates to the visual effects business and much more. Tom is also a working Production Designer, you can see some of his work at his site.

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A week ago Lee Stranahan wrote an article in the Huffington Post titled: Open Letter To James Cameron: Fairness For Visual Effects Artists. Lee has opened a wider dialogue for a topic we have been championing for years. We discuss what led him to write the article, the reaction, what should happen next and issue a call to action to artists worldwide to continue this discussion.

Links to the original Huffington Post piece, Lee’s blog and several forums and related articles can be found after the read more…

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Steven Hulett is the Business Representative of The Animation Guild (TAG) Local 839 IATSE, he last joined us for a podcast in August of 2008. We wanted to talk further with him about the Guild and get more of the history of previous efforts to organize visual effects. We talk about the failed efforts a few years ago to organize Sony Imageworks, about the current global economy and about many issues artists are facing. Steven writes the excellent and frequently updated blog on the TAG website. The Animation Guild recently moved into a new building in Burbank that features Gallery 839 where members can display their artwork they create apart from their daily work, a new show just started February 5th entitled, CANVAS, BRONZE AND POLYRESIN.

Visit the fxpodcast page for direct downloads and RSS feed links. To be notified automatically and have the episodes downloaded in iTunes, subscribe via this link.

Several links are mentioned in the podcast, you’ll find those along with photos of the new TAG building after the read more…
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In this weeks podcast we talk with Michael Taylor, new CEO at Rising Sun Pictures. Michael has a rich history in visual effects starting with an engineering background, becoming a visual effects supervisor and then moving into in senior management at Rhythm and Hues, Digital Domain and Ascent Media. This journey has taken him from the UK to New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and now Australia. We talk about the business from his perspective as he moves to Adelaide and Rising Sun Pictures.

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When we talk about the history of visual effects we tend to take digital for granted, yet this transition occurred in our lifetime. Scott Ross is an industry pioneer, from his time at ILM, to founding Digital Domain, he was at the center of the birth of the digital age of visual effects. In our fxpodcast this week we talk with Scott about ILM as they moved from optical effects to digital, creating Digital Domain, and the state of the visual effects business today.

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In February the Visual Effects Society (VES) and American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) held a joint meeting to discuss Image Quality. At the time we wrote that it was clear that “DI and the workflow from image capture to release is not one workflow”. At the VES Production Summit Fred Chandler (Senior Vice President Post Production – Fox) made the point again saying he’s “been in the business 28 years and the color pipeline for every movie is like starting over”. It was with this in mind that we approached Brian Gaffney and Dan Lion from Technicolor Creative Bridge to have a conversation about color workflow. Join us for this podcast as we discuss what people should do to guarantee a smooth process from shoot through final DI. (Pictured is the Technicolor building at Sunset Gower Studios in Hollywood).

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At the Inter BEE 2009 conference in Tokyo Autodesk showed a technology demo and announced Smoke on the Macintosh platform with a price of $14,995 (U.S. suggested retail price). We take an exclusive first look at Smoke on the Mac and talk with the product managers and developers to answer all the questions you may have.

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