Gondry-fying The Green Hornet
Michel Gondry’s signature filmmaking touches are ever-abundant in The Green Hornet, the director’s take on the masked vigilante made famous in radio serials and comics. VFX supervisor Jamie Dixon guides us through some of the the film’s key 650 effects shots.
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Bending time with The Green Hornet
Some of the stand-out shots in Michel Gondry’s The Green Hornet occur in the time bending fight sequence effects, seen as the character Kato utilizes his martial arts skills to dispatch the bad guys. We take an in-depth look at how these shots were created by CIS Hollywood.
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Life with the HP EliteBook 8740w, Part 1
We’ve got a new HP EliteBook Mobile Workstation in house at fxguide and will be posting over the next month about our experiences with the notebook. With high-end features such as a DreamColor display and Quadro 5000M Fermi graphics, it seems built for our industry. In this post, we have our first overview of the hardware.
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Re-Award me! guest columnist Liz Foster looks at awards
Recognition in any profession is something we all crave. And there’s nothing better than getting recognition from your peers. The advertising industry is no exception. Guest Columnist and Brand Manager Liz Foster looks at Advertising Awards.
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British Academy Film Awards nominees announced
The 2011 Film Awards Nominees for the Orange British Academy Film Awards were announced today. In the Special Visual Effects category three of five nominated films are the same as will appear in this week’s bake-off for the Oscars, however BAFTA adds Black Swan and Toy Story 3. We believe this is the first time […]
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Alembic update with Rob Bredow: What happened to it?
Last Siggraph (2010 LA), a news conference was called to announce a new interchange format. SPI and ILM took to the stage to launch a modeling format that wasn’t FBX, wasn’t OBJ and wasn’t yet released. Now some 6 months later we speak to Rob Bredow, CTO of SPI, to find out what happened to it.
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Atomic Fiction
Atomic Fiction is a new visual effects company formed by three former ImageMovers Digital employees.
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VFX fighting hard to look invisible: The Fighter
For The Fighter, director David O. Russell called on Comen VFX to provide major invisible effects for the boxing film, including processing video for key boxing scenes, crowd replications, other enhancements and even a shot involving a phone number and a bar napkin.
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New server report: day one
We’ve made it through 24 hours with the new server and web site here at fxguide.com and wanted to update our readers with some notes about some of the changes, what isn’t working, and how to report bugs to us.
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The new fxguide & fxinsider
Today we launch the new fxguide. Since 1999, a small group of artists has proudly covered the production, post, and vfx industry. With the support of the community we have published thousands of articles, podcasts, videos, tips and other content. Since our inception, we have grown and yet we love servicing this industry we care so much about more than ever.
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Lagoa Multiphysics
Thiago Costa’s Lagoa Multiphysics teaser simulation video caused somewhat of a sensation when it was released on the Internet last year. Costa talks to Mike Seymour about his physics simulation work.
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Art of stereo conversion: 2D to 3D
Stereo conversion, or dimensionalization as it is sometimes called, is the process of making stereo images from non-stereo traditional 2D images.
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2010 VES Award Nominees
The Visual Effects Society (VES) has announced the nominees for the 9th Annual VES Awards. Nominees were chosen by VES members who viewed submissions at the FotoKem screening facilities in Burbank and San Francisco as well as at other facilities in London, Sydney and Vancouver.
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Gulliver’s Travels’ titles ‘Rock it’ in stereo
Rok!t Studio was behind the innovative main titles for Gulliver’s Travels, giving a tilt-shift and time-lapse perspective of New York City. fxinsider takes an in-depth look at the work with Rok!t visual effects supervisor Lee Nelson.
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Gulliver’s travelling mattes, green screen & fluid sims
Jack Black travels back to Lilliput in director Rob Letterman’s modern take on Gulliver’s Travels. We take a look at some of the key vfx work by Weta Digital, Hydraulx, Scanline, Method and the main titles by Rok!t Studio.
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2010 Scientific and Technical Academy Award Winners announced
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences today announced the winners of the Sci-Tech awards. Scientific and Engineering the awards go to: Dr. Mark Sagar for facial motion retargeting solutions, Mark Noel and John Frazier for NAC Servo Winch System, James Rodnunsky, Alex MacDonald and Mark Chapman for the development of the Cablecam 3-D […]
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Director: Deathly Hallows animation
One aspect of HP7 part 1 continuing to receive an incredible amount of praise is the animated ‘Tale of the Three Brothers’ sub-story directed by Ben Hibon and executed by Framestore. fxInsider talks to Hibon how he approached the sequence and making it fit into the Harry Potter universe, in the lead up to the Oscars.
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Dneg: Paul Franklin & Nathan McGuinness
Double Negative has worked on 4 of the 7 films in this year’s Oscar Bake Off. Plus is now on John Carter of Mars and Captain America. Also the Singapore office has just appointed former Asylum VFX CEO Nathan McGuinness as that office’s Creative Director. We talk to McGuinness about his new role. Plus we have an fxpodcast with Dneg vfx supe Paul Franklin about the studio’s proprietary software tools.
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Short List announced for VFX Oscar, 7 head to Bake Off
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences today announced that the “long list” of 15 films eligible for the Achievement in Visual Effects for the 83rd Academy Awards® has been whittled down to the “short list” of seven films. The members of the Academy’s Visual Effects Branch Executive Committee decided which seven films will […]
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Foundry Formally Announces KATANA Plans
The Foundry issued a press release today formally detailing their plans for KATANA. Created in house at Sony Pictures Imageworks, KATANA is a look development tool specifically targeted towards to the demands of production: non-destructive, dealing with large amounts of data, and collaboration’ At the end of last year, fxguide traveled to SIGGRAPH Asia and […]
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Bullet open source physics engine
Several of the top visual effects studios and game developers are now adopting the Bullet open source physics engine for collision detection and rigid body dynamics work. We talk exclusively to Bullet’s main author Erwin Coumans about the current implementation of the physics engine and its future development.
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Emotion capture
A short ILM/Paramount video on Rango Emotion Capture. Download mov We wanted to post this as it is an interesting way of capturing a more animated acting performance. We have often wondered why this was not done before now – it seems like such a more friendly actor environment than just doing a straight to […]
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New Courses at fxphd.com
A new term has just been launched at fxphd.com for film and TV professionals. This term is focused on three main areas: – workflow from not only a variety of cameras & formats but with a special focus on stereo production (including RED Arri-RAW, HD-SR and more) – along side this is several courses focused […]
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Yogi Bear live action CG integration
For Yogi Bear, Rhythm & Hues mixed 3D versions of the beloved Hanna-Barbera characters with live action whilst preserving the popular elements of the 2D cartoons. We talk to visual effects supervisor Betsy Paterson and animation director Joe Ksander about getting the right performances out of a 3D Yogi and Boo Boo.
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Only EPIC camera delivered has been stolen, $100,000 reward offered
In our most recent Red Centre podcast we talked with Mark L. Pederson from OffHollywood about receiving the very first EPIC camera to be shipped to a customer by RED, serial #00006. On REDuser.net today comes word that this camera was stolen from a chalet in the alps when thieves forced entry and took the […]
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fxpodcast: Steven Poster, ASC
Steven Poster, ASC is the National President of the International Cinematographers Guild, Local 600 of I.A.T.S.E.. In this fxpodcast we discuss his background, the relationship between visual effects and cinematographers, color correction, digital cinematography and the recent efforts to organize visual effects. Visit the fxpodcast page for direct downloads and RSS feed links. To be […]
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The VFX Tourist
Visual effects supervisor Ted Rae oversaw nearly 400 shots for The Tourist, a romantic Venetian comedy thriller starring Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie and directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. We take a look at how Rae simulated a critical train journey and re-arranged the rooftops of Venice for the film.
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Enter the Void made by fx
Director Gaspar Noé’s Enter the Void follows drug dealing teen Oscar who, after being killed in Tokyo, watches over his sister from the otherworld. Images of Oscar’s subjective POV, many based on hallucinations and near death experiences, were created and augmented by Paris studio BUF. Vfx sup. Geoffrey Niquet talks to us about the unique nature of the film.
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Yet Another Facility Closes: CafeFX
We received an email today from Jeff Barnes and David Ebner, announcing that CafeFX/ComputerCafe have decided to shut down. This comes after a downsizing earlier this year. It saddens us here at fxguide to hear the news of their closing and wish everyone the best. The outstanding company has worked on a number of visual […]
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Toy Story 3 technical podcast : Siggraph Asia
fxguide attended Siggraph Asia and caught up with Brian Green of Pixar (California). Brian has the unique distinction of being the character supervisor of the “most successful animated movie of all time” twice. The Academy Award-winning feature “Finding Nemo” broke all box office records in 2003, and “Toy Story 3” broke box office records in […]
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