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.

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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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In July we posted a press release from the Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP) announcing their digital initiative. We wanted to learn more about this so we sat down with Ed Ulbrich (Digital Domain) who is heading up AICP Digital. The AICP has been around since 1972, this new initiative is designed to tackle business issues, including standards and practices, affecting companies that produce content digitally. We talk with Ed about what this means for companies and artists.

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Posting work online has become such a common and crucial part of workflow and we often take it for granted. In this fxpodcast we talk with Andreas Wacker of INTERDUBS, a company that provides hosting of clips for review and approval for over eighty post production and production companies. This large client base gives Andreas the ability to look at the state of posting your work from a unique view.

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After the jump are some images from the INTERDUBS interface, links to demos on the site, as well as the discussion forum link where we ask for your perspective on the current state of the business.
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In addition to the daily written reports from the show we have posted the first two fxguidetv episodes from Siggraph 2009 in New Orleans.

Episode #62 covers Fluid sims with Exotic Matter and we get the scoop on announcements made by Autodesk at the show.

In Episode #63 we talk with Lucas Martell about his film Pigeon Impossible, shown at Siggraph and we visit the Emerging Technology exhibits.

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In this week’s fxguidetv we have a designer focused special episode. We lead with world renowned Concept Designer Feng Zhu from his new Studio in Singapore and then look at the HUD (Heads Up Display) design of the Iron Man with Dav Rauch. Both men are exceptional designers. Angie and the team get in depth on their thinking, their approaches and the techniques they use to produce such stunning and impressive work. This episode is a real treat for anyone interested in cutting edge visual design.

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