Another Night at the Museum

May 29, 2009

Rhythm & Hues visual effects supervisor Raymond Chen discusses his studio’s vast visual effects work for Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (outside the USA: Night at the Museum 2), with fxguide’s Ian Failes.

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Philips 21:9 fxguidetv is Back up Again

May 28, 2009

We were required to remove the now infamous episode #57 of fxguidetv, – for reasons nothing to do with fxguide. Well we are happy to report it is back. Last month the buzz on visual effects forums, Facebook and Twitter has been “have you seen that Philips frozen moment?”. This web promo for a wider […]

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NBA: the barest of all possible great moments

May 26, 2009

The new “Where amazing happens” spots feature famous NBA playoff moments starring Larry Bird, Kobe Bryant, Dr. J, Magic Johnson and Shaquille O’Neal. Empty stadiums are gradually filled (and emptied) with players and spectators as the iconic moments play out, Ian Failes speaks to Brickyard VFX about the task of working with such iconic clips.

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Unpaid Artists update

May 26, 2009

We did a podcast in July of 2008 with Dave Rand about a group of artists that were left unpaid for work they did for the film Journey to the Center of the Earth. Dave posted an update today over on CGTalk that the Discovery Channel has offered them back wages of 45% without overtime […]

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fxpodcast: Visual Effects Society Update

May 21, 2009

Jeffrey A. Okun, Chair of the Visual Effects Society joins us to discuss the mission of the VES, the difference between unions and societies, health care for members, how to become a member and much more. Visit the fxpodcast page for direct downloads and RSS feed links. To be notified automatically and have the episodes […]

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fxguidetv #59: Breaking down Rorschach’s Mask

May 18, 2009

It’s a new week and with it comes a new fxguidetv episode. This week, we focus on the movie ‘Watchmen’ via an interview with Intelligent Creatures 2D Supervisor Greg Astles. Recorded at NAB, he breaks down the process of creating Rorschach’s mask from the start of the concept to putting on the the finishing touches […]

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red centre #34 is On the Air

May 14, 2009

red centre episode #34 is live and ready for download. This week’s podcast includes a look at the Phantom HD high speed camera, an attempt to review the V3 Depth Enhancer, and a conversation with Axel Baumann. Visit the red centre page for direct downloads and RSS feed links. To be notified automatically and have […]

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Faster and Even More Furious

May 12, 2009

Fast & Furious (4), directed by Justin Lin, had the biggest box office opening of the year when it was released in early April (now eclipsed by Wolverine and Stark Trek). Double Negative’s effects team built three tunnels different tunnels for chases in the film. Ian Failes talks with them and also Rhythm & Hues’ Bob Mercier about R&H’s contribution and the opening exploding petrol tanker sequence.

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fxguidetv #58: Star Trek Plus Now ILM !

May 9, 2009

Episode 58 of fxguidetv is live for your viewing pleasure, covering this weekend’s release of Star Trek. The show features interviews with director director J.J. Abrams and actor Karl Urban (Dr. Leonard ‘Bones’ McCoy), including a discussion about how they created the abundant anamorphic lens flares and some cool old school techniques. Visit the fxguidetv […]

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Pixar to Expand to New Studio

May 8, 2009

Pixar plans to open a 20,000-square-foot satellite studio at the end of the year in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The studio is currently scouting locations in the city for the new facility. The Vancouver studio will focus only on the production of Pixar’s short films and other non-feature projects based for the most part on […]

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VES Awards to be Broadcast in US this weekend

May 6, 2009

This Saturday night, May 9th, the Starz Edge Network (channel 522 on DirecTv) will air the premiere of the “7th Annual Visual effects Awards” that were held February 21st. The email from VES says 8:00PM but it does not specify timezone (we assume West Coast, we tried to track down but it does not show […]

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London Sings Along with Michael Gracey and T-mobile

May 6, 2009

In this week’s fxpodcast we talk to director Michael Gracey about his two amazing spots for T-mobile. These two spots will restore your faith in advertising as a positive force. It is almost impossible to see these spots and not smile. Filmed without tricks and without digital manipulation they show Londoners showing Life is for […]

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Wolverine : The Making of an X-man

May 5, 2009

Wolverine is the 4th of the X-Men films or the first of the spin off Origins series, depending on your point of view. We have a look behind the scenes of this film, talking to artists from Rising Sun Pictures, Luma Pictures and Hatch Productions as well as exclusive crew shots from on-set.

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red centre: Anthony Dod Mantle

May 4, 2009

In this week’s red centre podcast we cover Part 3 of our 4 part series on RED post production (Avid and FCP offline), and interview Oscar winner Anthony Dod Mantle. Anthony is giving a series of talks in Australia and talks very openly and technically about shooting on the RED and on the SI-2K, a […]

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A Frantic Evolution of Dragonball

April 29, 2009

Ian Failes returns to fxguide and in this his first new interview he speaks with co-visual effects supervisors Chad Wiebe and Mike Shand of Frantic films about the lava lake and final battle sequences in the new Dragonball: Evolution.

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fxguidetv – Episode #56 NAB 2009 wrap-up

April 25, 2009

A new episode of fxguidetv is available for downloading. In this episode we talk monitors with a look at Cine-tal and HP DreamColor, discuss RED and 16k with da Vinci, see the latest from Matrox and visit with our friends at Eyeon. We also get an update from Ted Schilowitz at the RED user party. […]

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fxguidetv – Episode #55 more from NAB 2009

April 23, 2009

A new episode of fxguidetv is available for downloading. It features a look at an R&D project from The Foundry that removes rolling shutter artifacts, a preview of Trapcode Particular v2 (you can see a new features list in this PDF), we talk global production and on set data pipeline with Sohonet and a look […]

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RED Rocket Announced, update on RED Pro Primes

April 22, 2009

RED started out announcing they would not have a booth at NAB, then announced an event to be held in Las Vegas, but not on the show floor. That event has grown to an all day affair (REDUSER ’09 NAB PARTY) with various presentations, you can view the schedule here. Jim Jannard posted to REDuser.net […]

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The Foundry announces Nuke 5.2 and 6/6x

April 21, 2009

The Foundry announced new versions of their Nuke compositing software at NAB this week. The first, Nuke 5.2, has workflow improvements  with Python scripting, stereo workflow, overhaul of the UI, performance improvements, bug fixes and artist/pipeline efficiency enhancers including disk cache, pre-comp, and 3D LUTs in the GPU. The release is expected to ship in […]

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eyeon Unveils Generation 1.1 at NAB

April 21, 2009

Eyeon announced a new version of Generation at NAB. The release builds upon version 1.0 with tweaks and workflow enhancments including 3D LUT support and more. Click through to read the release from Eyeon.

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fxguidetv – Episode #54 Flare and Flame 2010

April 20, 2009

A new episode of fxguidetv is available for downloading. It features an exclusive and in-depth interview with Autodesk lead product designer Philippe Soeiro, who chats with John Montgomery about the new software only Flare product as well as the new .R3D support, normal mapping and other improvements in Flame 2010. Watch for more fxguidetv eps coming out […]

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fxguidetv – Episode #53 Knowing

April 17, 2009

A new episode of fxguidetv is available for downloading. It features an interview with Animal Logic vfx supervisor Andrew Jackson, who chats with Mike Seymour about the film Knowing shot entirely on the RED One camera. Also, we have a look at the new up coming term of fxphd. Watch for new fxguidetv eps coming […]

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Red Dwarf : Red on Red & the vfx

April 17, 2009

The Red Dwarf: Back to Earth mini-series recently debuted on the UK Dave Channel to a record 2.6 million viewers, almost triple the channels previous highest ratings, placing it as the highest-rated commissioned show on a digital network ever. This week we speak to one of our own as John Montgomery interviews Mike Seymour on fxphd’s involvement with this classic and beloved Sci-fi comedy.

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sgi sold to Rackable Systems

April 7, 2009

 Rackable Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:RACK), a leading provider of servers and storage products for medium to large-scale data centers, announced its agreement to acquire substantially all the assets of Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI)  for approximately $25 million in cash, subject to adjustment in certain circumstances, plus the assumption of certain liabilities associated with the acquired assets. sgi […]

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VFXWages.com launches

March 31, 2009

Back in August we did a podcast and article with Steve Hulett from The Animation Guild where he made the comment “How many visual effects houses do you know say to their top guys “uh, keep it to yourself what you’re making”… it’s against the law.” He went to talk about his feelings that not […]

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da Vinci Announces Native .R3D Support

March 17, 2009

With NAB a month away, add another manufacturer to the list of those natively supporting the .R3D format. Today, da Vinci announced add-ons to their Resolve grading systems which allow varying levels of speed for decoding RED files. The three new products range from a software-only solution which is available for all Resolve systems to […]

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New fxpodcast – Showing Film Some Love

March 9, 2009

We tend to chase the latest technology here at fxguide, but we starting thinking that film is still the dominant media for motion picture photography and projection. So we went to one of the major sources, Kodak, to find out what they have been working on. As you’ll hear when we talked with Gary Einhaus, […]

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HD Expo (and Continuing the Image Quality Discussion)

March 6, 2009

HD Expo has been around since 2001 and holds conferences in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York as well as internationally. Kristin Petrovich, President of HD Expo explained that they are in the process of transitioning the name to “creatasphere”. On March 5th the HD Expo was held at the Hilton at Universal City, featuring […]

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VES and ASC Team up for Image Quality

February 26, 2009

The Visual Effects Society (VES) Technology Committee & American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) held a session this past Tuesday in Hollywood called Image Quality Considerations for Cinematography and Visual Effects. This was a standing room only event at the Academy’s Linwood Dunn Theater, Eric Roth (head of the VES) said in his opening remarks that […]

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Autodesk Introduces Softimage 7.5 Software

February 23, 2009

Autodesk today released an update to SOFTIMAGE|XSI, which it acquired from Avid back in November, and the update renames the product to Autodesk Softimage. Read the press release after the jump

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