VFX Town Hall – how did it go, what did it mean?
Last night the first in a series of online town hall meetings was held – organized by Lee Stranahan, the panelists were Chris deFaria -Vice President, Warner Bros. Pictures, Jefferey A. Okun – Visual Effects Society Chair and visual effects supervisor and Scott Ross – Co-Founder of Digital Domain & former CEO of Industrial, Light […]
Exclusive: Foundry NAB Preview
In this sneak peak we outline the new products from the foundry to be shown for the first time at NAB 2010 in Las Vegas. New products include the acquisition of Weta’s Paint and texturing program Mari, a new optical flow tool for AE and new Nuke versions.
Reminder – VFX Online Townhall Meeting
Monday, March 29th at 7pm (Pacific) there will be “an open discussion of a visual effects industry in transition”. This free online townhall meeting has been put together by Lee Stranahan, a former visual effects artist and writer for The Huffington Post whose Open Letter To James Cameron: Fairness For VIsual Effects Artists sparked a […]
Leap Year – Cinesite
Cinesite visual effects supervisor Matt Johnson takes us through the invisible effects of Anand Tucker’s Leap Year, a film in which Amy Adams plans to propose to her boyfriend in Dublin on leap day – Feburary 29th.
Green Zone – Double Negative
In Green Zone, director Paul Greengrass tells the story of rogue U.S. Army Officer Roy Miller (Matt Damon) in the search for weapons of mass destruction during the Second Iraq War. Double Negative augmented numerous locations to double as Baghdad, created CG helicopters and devised other visual effects for the film. We sat down with Dneg’s visual effects supervisor Charlie Noble and co-CG supervisors Julian Foddy and Dan Neal.
I am the DJ
DJ Hero, the popular Activision console game, features a frenetic introduction created by Framestore and directed by Marco Puig. In the intro, the game’s main DJ characters are terrorised by a giant LP needle inside a vinyl planet. Visual effects supervisor Diarmid Harrison-Murray and digital producer Mike Woods tell fxguide how it came together.
Orphan with Image Engine
For Orphan, overall visual effects supervisor Richard Yuricich called on Image Engine to realise several sequences in the film, including a burning children’s tree house set alight by a seemingly evil girl with her adopted brother still inside. Image Engine visual effects supervisor Robin Hackl and visual effects producer Steve Garrad discuss their work with fxguide.
CafeFX “Downsizing and retooling, not closing”
All week there have been rumors that CafeFX is closing. Today Jeff Barnes responded to this chatter by way of David S. Cohen at Variety who said via Twitter (@Variety_DSCohen): Jeff Barnes of CafeFX texted me they are “downsizing and retooling, not closing.” and “Barnes of CafeFX also writes “We did NOT lay everyone off. […]
Hurt Locker Special Effects: Physical Bombs
In Kathryn Bigelow’s Oscar winning The Hurt Locker, a U.S. Army bomb squad unit in Iraq confronts the threat of IEDs and more . Helping to bring the physicality of that threat to the film was special effects supervisor Richard Stutsman. In this Q&A we talk to Stutsman, who recently received a BAFTA nomination for Special Visual Effects, about the difficulties his team faced in creating explosions in Jordan and about keeping everything real.
Nuke Stereo Master Class Plus 6.1 Preview
The Foundry held its second Master Class in London on Friday, playing to packed house at the Vue theatre in Leicester Square. The event was standing-room only, having given away all the seats in only 24 hours when it was announced earlier this year. The event focused on stereoscopic production and post…a timely program after […]
New Moon Rising on DVD
New Moon, the second film in the Twilight series, is just out on DVD.Director Chris Weitz and visual effects supervisor Susan MacLeod called on Tippett Studios to bring to life a pack of large wolves. We speak to some of Tippett’s key visual effects team about the creation of the wolves.
CORE is closing down
It appears that C.O.R.E Digital is closing down. C.O.R.E. Digital Pictures, was one of Canada’s leading digital visual effects and animation studios, based in Toronto, Ontario. The company is closing very abruptly, it seems. Reports on the net are circulating that this closure was so sudden employees entitlements may be in question, (we have not […]
Sherlock Holmes
Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes recently received the Outstanding Supporting Visual Effects in a Feature Motion Picture prize at the 8th annual VES Awards. Vfx supervisor Chas Jarrett led the effort behind more than 1000 effect shots to recreate Victorian London in 1891. In this article, we focus on three visual effects sequences from the film: the shipyard fight and the wharf explosion shot, both by Framestore, and the Tower Bridge shots by DNeg.
Bunny power
French studio Digital District completed the animation for ‘Bunny Fusion’, a Duracell Ultra spot directed by Pleix via Ogilvy Paris. In the spot, hoards of Duracell bunnies launch themselves in massive numers as a waterfall then morph into a tornado, sumo wrestler, elephant and finally a steaming train.
ImageMovers Digital Closing
It was announced today that ImageMovers Digital in Marin County will be closing after completing Mars Needs Moms, expected to be January 2011. ImageMovers Digital was built by Robert Zemekis with Disney and is best known for producing A Christmas Carol. We first heard this news from a San Francisco friend’s Facebook posting, then a […]
Alice in Wonderland
Tim Burton’s re-imagining of Alice in Wonderland features a cast of real and digital characters, plus some that are in-between. One such character is the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) who appears on screen with an enormous and imposing head care of visual effects by Sony Pictures Imageworks. In this interview we focus on the Red Queen shots by talking to Carey Villegas, one of Imageworks’ visual effects supervisors on the film.
Ok Syyn Labs Go…Adam Sadowsky
In the last 48 hours an amazing video has swept the net. The OK Go “This Too Shall Pass” music video – built and engineered by a creative geek group of mad scientists, art lovers, and inspired geniuses that collectively go by the name of Syyn Labs. As Adam Sadowsky, of Syyn Labs, was getting […]
The tech behind the tools of Avatar part 1: Ocula
Ocula is at the very heart of the new post-production tools that have emerged to deal with stereo. Nuke and Ocula were used extensively on Avatar, and we explore the lessons learned with Simon Robinson, Chief Scientist of the Foundry. Ocula, in particular, is a real partnership between filmmakers on the cutting edge and the UK software developer.
Visual Effects link roundup
The internet has been particularly active this week with visual effects news. Here is a list of links that we found interesting, if we missed any please add to comments and if we find more this week we’ll add them here. Visual Effects related links: Wall Street Journal: Working as a Visual Effects Artist Shoot: […]
It’s Official – 5D Mk II Update Date
We know many of you are waiting for the 5D MkII update to 24 P. The date is Mid-March and the features will include: The new firmware incorporates the following updates and benefits: 1) Frame rate now to include 24fps (cinema) and 25fps (PAL broadcast). Shoots a variety of frame rates, overcomes the need for […]
VES Award Winners
The 8th Annual VES Awards were held tonight, Sunday, February 28th at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza Hotel in Beverly Hills, California. James Cameron was honored with the VES Lifetime Achievement Award and Ed Catmull with the George Melies Award for Pioneering. Avatar took a lot of awards with District 9 besting it in one […]
Avatar wins BAFTA for Special Visual Effects
Congratulations to Joe Letteri, Stephen Rosenbaum, Richard Baneham, Andrew R. Jones who took home the BAFTA for Special Visual Effects for Avatar. The Orange British Academy Film Awards rewards the best work of any nationality seen on British cinema screens during the preceding year. The awards took place on February 21, 2010 at the Royal […]
Invictus draws a crowd
Invictus tells the story of South African President Nelson Mandela’s efforts to unite his torn country under the auspices of the 1995 Rugby World Cup Championship. Director Clint Eastwood collaborated with visual effects supervisor Michael Owens and CIS Vancouver to create virtual stadiums and crowds, plus key digital make-up effects, for the pivotal rugby matches seen in the film.
Massive 4.0 Released
The folks at Massive Software announced today that version 4.0 of Massive is now shipping. The release contains new Terrain Nodes, V-Ray rendering, new Stadium placement tools, and other improvements. We’ll have the new release available soon on the VPN over at our sister training site fxphd.com. For the full press release from Massive, click […]
Open Letter, Animation Guild Updates and Other Resources
There has been a lot of activity since our podcast about the Open Letter to James Cameron and our interview with Steven Hulett from The Animation Guild. In the interview with Lee Stranahan about the Open Letter he proposed a VFX Town Hall meeting, a webinar style event to discuss the issue of VFX Fairness. […]
GenArts buys Tinder plugins from The Foundry
GenArts CEO Katherine Hays received a call one day from Bill Collis of the Foundry – a call which led to GenArts buying all of the Tinder plug-ins. The move all but cements GenArts position as the dominant plugin company for high applications such as Nuke and Autodesk systems. But why did the Foundry want to drop its profitable plug-ins and how will GenArts get a return on all its recent acquisitions? Mike Seymour speaks to both companies to get the detai
Red Centre Podcast: Red Day & Shane Hurlbut
Red Centre 56 podcast out. This is our biggest show ever, with Red and Canon news, Jeff’s Heusser reports from LA on the February Red Day. And Shane Hurlbut ASC (Terminator Salvation DOP ) kicks down the door of the Red Room. Click the more button below for a portfolio of images from Shane Hurlbut, […]
fxpodcast: An Open Letter to James Cameron
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 […]
How am I supposed to live without sidekicks?
A sad salt shaker, dejected after learning that Knorr’s ‘Sidekicks’ contains 25 per cent less sodium, is the star of ‘Salty’, a David Hicks-directed commercial with visual effects by Toronto-based axyz. Lead animator Dennis Turner and Inferno artist Andres Kirejew talk to fxguide about the challenges of the spot, which included listening repeatedly to Michael Bolton’s ‘How Am I Supposed To Live Without You?’.
fxpodcast: Another Visit with The Animation Guild
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 […]